[throwawayAskHN]

This sounds like a good first step, thank you for the reply.

Here are the issues from my standpoint:

Even if I could afford it, I don't know how to hire someone or how to tell them what I need done (or especially actually motivate them or enforce that they'll do it).

I also don't know anybody like this personally, and it's going to be hard to trust random people from the internet.

[gee_totes]

My suggestion (if you have the money to hire someone) is to put up an ad on the web (angelList, craigslist(maybe), StackOverflow jobs, etc. (some of these sites cost money for job ads FYI)) and then, if you find what might seem like the right generalist, offer them a week or two week trial period of seeing how you like working with them. That would go a long way towards dealing with the trust issue.

Or you could also find generalists at meetups (in theory, I'm always terrible at networking at meetups).

Or you could find generalist at tech job fairs (those have been easier for me to network with).

A good generalist will only need your passion and the challenge of the problem to motivate them and won't need enforcement that they'll do the work. In fact, trying to enforce that they'll do the work (w/o a track record of bad results, in which case you should let them go) is bad management.

[throwawayAskHN]

This is a great suggestion. I don't have the extra funds to hire anybody, but if I manage to launch this on my own it's likely I will.

What I meant by "enforcement" is my understanding that leadership/management has a lot to do with things like firmness in language and body language cues, etc. to maintain a power hierarchy. Most of the people I know who are able to assume a leadership role are exactly the kind of person I'm afraid to trust to get on board since I can't defend against them taking control of the project.