First of all, welcome to HN. It sounds like you might have already answered your question, as you say you don't need the money (yet). In general, the earlier

First of all, welcome to HN. It sounds like you might have already answered your question, as you say you don't need the money (yet). In general, the earlier you go out to raise funding, the more it will cost you; when your company is nothing but an idea, your valuation is quite low, and raising something like $10,000 at this stage might require giving away 50% of the company. But if you wait until you have a working prototype and a handful of users, raising that same $10,000 might only cost 10% of the company. In general, you should avoid raising money before you need to, and you should avoid raising more money than you can reasonably make use of. Of course if you turn down money that's on the table, you run the risk of later on needing funding and not being able to get it -- perhaps the investors changed their mind, already invested in another company, or otherwise lost interest... Finally, if you do decide to bring on another person, I recommend trying to find someone who is willing to join you as a co-founder. Simply hiring an employee, paying them a salary, and expecting them to "work as hard as [you] have" isn't going to turn out too well, because they won't really benefit from your company's success. PS: As it turns out, the term "reverse auction" is in somewhat widespread use (apparently nobody else could come up with a better name, either): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_auction