[craigmc]

Glad it was useful.

If you can teach yourself visual basic then I'd suggest that you teach yourself some programming. You are unlikely to acquire enough to do the heavy lifting on this venture, but every hour you spend learning how to manipulate your chosen technology stack will pay dividends.

After a while will be able to speak the language of potential co-founders, and you will even be able to look at their code and comment intelligently.

If you have any sort of eye for design, then learning (or improving your skills in) html, css and copy n' paste jquery will allow you to do the marketing site, email newsletters and the like whilst your technical co-founder builds the product.

Anyway, if you are out their pitching and getting feedback, then you are going to find someone sooner or later. There is a heap of advice on the web (like going to tech meetups and events) that you should be following if you are not already doing so.

And if you want to know how I do it? I've always just written a stand out job advert that is designed to speak to the 1% of people who might be interested and post it on the startup orientated job boards and Uni temporary work websites. It has worked 100% of the time for me. If you do have connections (i.e. the ex-agency) who are technical you can get them to help you interview if you are worried about not sounding credible - just introduce them as advisers or something.

Finally, on the subject of hiring contractors do build prototypes, my personal view (from experience) is proceed with massive caution in doing this. You might be better to conserve your cash to help tempt a proper co-founder, who if they are half decent will get something built 3-4x faster than hired help. You (almost certainly) aren't going to get funded with a contractor-built prototype that will be, in effect, a black box to you and your potential investors, so all you are really doing is dulling the pain that you should be focusing 100% on.