[nhangen]

As a non-technical guy with a lot of ideas, I skipped looking for a co-founder and just hired people to make stuff. Eventually I learned enough code to be dangerous, and with a bit of a design background, I've spent a lot of time building mockups and doing front end work to fill in the gaps.

I have found that developers are much more likely to engage in conversation with me because I can speak their language. This also works great at conferences, meetups, and local events.

In the end, I decided to try and build things so awesome that I'd have developers asking to join my projects, instead of the other way around. So far, it's working well.

[scottkrager]

This is exactly how to do it.

It's incredibly difficult to manage your own expectations until you know how technically challenging it is to build your "idea".

[nhangen]

It sure is, and looking back at the way I handled my first few developer interactions, I'm slightly embarrassed. I was ignorant, but try to convince myself that I wasn't. Big learning curve there.