Start writing code. Don't know how to code? Go to amazon and buy a "learn X in Y days" book. Create a prototype of your web app. Announce it somewhere. See if anyone uses it.
Yes, it will suck. But it will (a) give you some idea of whether or not your idea will ever go anywhere, and (b) give technical people an idea of what it is that you're trying to build.
That second bit is very important. You won't get anyone good by saying "I'm looking for a technical cofounder to help me create the Google of cooking". They won't share your vision and won't have a clue what you mean. Putting up a prototype website allows them to understand your vision and start thinking about how they would fix things.
If your website is interesting, you'll get people coming to you saying "I love this site, but...". Most of them will just be offering suggestions. Some will be looking for work. Find a co-founder from this pool.
Now get out of the way and let your new co-founder rip up your code and replace it. Don't even think about keeping your existing code: No matter how hard you worked on it, trying to keeping it will just slow your co-founder down. Let your technical co-founder make all the technical decisions. That's what he's there for.
Congratulations, you're now the CEO of a startup company.
Bad advice. Some people are just not meant to code. What do you expect them to accomplish with a book and 3 weeks of effort? A lot of junk.
My advice: go out an meet people.
True, you can't test coders, but you can validate how good they are through social validation. Good coders are respected.
Shoot high: find out who the great coders are. Pitch them your idea. That's going to be the challenging part. Find the one great coder who gets excited. The fact that you can pay them just removes a headhache down the road, but don't open with that. Close with it instead.
That's exactly what he expects them to accomplish: a lot of junk.
The thing is, junk that exists is much better at convincing top-notch coders to join than vaporware that doesn't. It shows them you're serious. More to the point, a good coder will instantly pick out a dozen ways in which your prototype sucks, and want to make them better. Because that's something virtually all top-notch software engineers I've met share: the urge to make something, once they've seen it, as good as it possibly could be. If they can't see it, they have nothing to work with. If they can, you might be able to snag them.
Everybody can't code, but everyone can make mockups. Use a tool like mockingbird (gomockingbird.com) and literally sketch out every single page/screen. When you make the mockups, you should be sure to know where every link/button goes, otherwise there's a page missing in your mockups!
Just this task alone would stop 95% of people with vague ideas. It also shows the coder that you have taken it as far as you reasonably can without learning to program.
A prototype is halfway. :-) All the way would be learning to code well enough that you could launch the product yourself.
If you can communicate your product vision in static mockups, that's great. But for most products, there's a world of difference between seeing something working - even if it's held together with string and wires and only works for the inputs you're demoing - and seeing a bunch of pictures.
As nostrademons said, I'm expecting junk code. But that's fine, because junk code still conveys the idea of what you're trying to create far better than the English language ever will. There's a reason why the YC application form asks for demos.
Pitch them your idea. That's going to be the challenging part. Find the one great coder who gets excited
Better to have two or more excited coders so that you can pick the best one; and your odds of having multiple coders excited by your startup are vastly higher if there's actually something for them to look at.
The only problem is, well, being able to pick the best one. From what I'm gathering, the OP is the not-software business type, and as such, he really doesn't have much of a metric to use to determine whether or not the person he decides on dragging into the whole mess as a co-founder will be up to snuff.
Worse yet, he's in an unfamiliar town, and as such, the trust metric he'll be using for people that he meets in SF is probably going to be out to lunch for a while until he can get his bearings down. This is the most troublesome part for the simple fact that it doesn't matter how much networking you do if you can't willingly place enough trust in the people you meet.
For now, to the OP, do everything: Network with people, kludge a project together, and do business development. Welcome to the club.
I don't think you can assume that anyone who's never coded can build even junk good enough to attract a programming co-founder in a few weeks of reading their first programming book. Some can, but surely not all.
My suggestion would be to build a clickable wireframe/mockup using Balsamiq, Flash Catalyst or whatever. That is something a non-technical guy can feasibly accomplish, and it will distill their ideas down quickly and it will be instantly shareable online with potential partners.
A detailed mockup would probably a much better use of his time than possibly making something that would take a technical co-founder a few hours which for him would take weeks.
Go to startup events, get involved in the community. Meet people and let them know you're looking for a co-founder. If you find someone who you think might be a good fit ask technical people who you've met to evaluate them.
But chances are you're not going to find an amazing co-founder this way. Good luck.
Advice like this baffles me. Everyone says you need to find a cofounder with skills that are complementary to yours who can compensate for your weaknesses with his skills.
If the OP is good at the business side, let him focus on the business parts and find someone who's good at the technical stuff. Dealing with the mundane business stuff, marketing, raising capital, etc is very valuable and eliminates potentially massive distraction for the technical cofounder.
Business is selling, so if he's any good at it he'll be able to sell himself and his idea to a cofounder without writing a single line of code.
Of course, but the problem is that you can't just show up in SF with some cash and an idea and expect to find a good cofounder. He doesn't have any connections or technical skills. Potential cofounders have no way to judge him or vice versa.
However just because someone doesn't have a proven track record doesn't mean they won't make a good entrepreneur (neither does the converse). The first step to getting a track record is just doing it. Just power through. It doesn't matter if you suck at coding. The business guy who tries to learn and builds a shitty prototype is way ahead of the guy who "just needs the right person". You have to be a problem solver one way or another.
Maybe the solution is to just bite the bullet and hire someone. Maybe it's to go work for a startup for a while. Maybe it's to settle for a shitty cofounder. Maybe it's to build it yourself. Who are we to say what someone's path to success is? The "learn to code" advice is good because it's actionable, shows commitment, and will give the guy infinitely more perspective on all aspects of operating a tech startup.
Business guys with grandiose plans are like professional NNPPs—they talk a big game but they never get anything done. Just start executing.
I think it's excellent advice, I'm a programmer but with the idea I'm perusing I defiantly have put a lot of time into understanding our target market, how people will use the features and all kinds of business things.
I have a business cofounder which will deal with the details of it all day to day but I think that not at least knowing the overview isn't very smart in a company with size 2.
Ideally you going to want to know a decent amount of high level stuff about the code and how it all flows together, especially the abstract idea of how a web app on you chosen platform/ language works. As a company grows you can safely step away from this but in a team I find it very valuable.
I am interested in learning at least the basics of programming based on the nature of tech startups, even if I never end up doing any. Even if to simply communicate to a cofounder on a slightly higher level, rather than being completely ignorant of the ramifications of certain adjustments the app needs, etc.
I understand that people with an idea are a dime a dozen, but I think my time is better spent on other aspects of the project rather than actually writing code, even if it's the initial version.
This is the route that I am taking, except I am capable of coding to an extent, I am designing the prototype and getting some help (paid from an offshore very-part-time programmer to design some classes, mostly only to speed up the process) and I think I am ready to launch soon, however I am lost about how I would find a co-founder (who's interested enough and that I can offer enough to stay and lead the company in the right direction)
Many times I've tried to convince my friends about an idea, but they almost never take it seriously until there is something they can see and touch.
That's possibly because I'm unpersuasive, or maybe my ideas suck. :D But it's a recurring theme. People, even good friends who respect you, rarely jump in on the first moment.
This is probably because they can't really see the vision, at least for some ideas, that is required in order to get excited about it. I've been working on my elevator pitch when I dream up some new idea, but as excited as I get sometimes about some new app that I think can be great, I understand that if a number of other perspectives (peoples' opinions) disagree, I'm probably deluded.
Hiring a cheap freelance programmer from one of those freelancer website would probably be a better use of time and money. As long as it's just for the prototype.
Just don't be fooled into thinking freelance programmers can replace a technical co-founder, unless perhaps your application is effectively a simple CMS application.
Even if you don't build a prototype, at the very least you should have mockups and/or designs for a basic version of the application.
Start writing code. Don't know how to code? Go to amazon and buy a "learn X in Y days" book. Create a prototype of your web app. Announce it somewhere. See if anyone uses it.
Yes, it will suck. But it will (a) give you some idea of whether or not your idea will ever go anywhere, and (b) give technical people an idea of what it is that you're trying to build.
That second bit is very important. You won't get anyone good by saying "I'm looking for a technical cofounder to help me create the Google of cooking". They won't share your vision and won't have a clue what you mean. Putting up a prototype website allows them to understand your vision and start thinking about how they would fix things.
If your website is interesting, you'll get people coming to you saying "I love this site, but...". Most of them will just be offering suggestions. Some will be looking for work. Find a co-founder from this pool.
Now get out of the way and let your new co-founder rip up your code and replace it. Don't even think about keeping your existing code: No matter how hard you worked on it, trying to keeping it will just slow your co-founder down. Let your technical co-founder make all the technical decisions. That's what he's there for.
Congratulations, you're now the CEO of a startup company.