That's a good question. If you look back in time, you'll definitely find a bunch of non-technical people looking to start technical businesses. Some of them ha

That's a good question. If you look back in time, you'll definitely find a bunch of non-technical people looking to start technical businesses. Some of them have good track records of churning success out of it too. Among these "non-technical" people, you'll find that some aren't entirely non-technical and they do understand what it takes to lure their target audience into using/buying what their business sells. For example: I have a cousin, a mechanical engineer, who's always looking to do mobile apps. He doesn't have the skill to develop them himself, but does have sufficient knowledge required to deal with any technical guy and reads a lot (possibilities on the specific platform, understands technical terms like 'Activity' understands that web services called 'APIs' are available for use, etc). But again there are exceptions, and I guess we've all come across people who just blindly want to develop a GroupOn or Facebook clone, because the original ones were successful. These are the ones I would clearly stay away from by just politely giving them a good reason or try pushing some real business questions into their mind (like "do you have something different to offer?").