It's not really a Catch-22; if you can't sell your idea well enough to get a coder interested in being your cofounder, then the fault lies in either your idea o

It's not really a Catch-22; if you can't sell your idea well enough to get a coder interested in being your cofounder, then the fault lies in either your idea or your pitch, not in some insurmountable market force. There are a lot of talented developers out there who haven't come up with a billion-dollar idea of their own yet, and who would be happy to hitch on to someone else's if they're getting a fair piece of the action. However, if you're trying to convince them to do work for hire (i.e., give up any rights to their own work) at far less than market rate with some vague promise of more compensation later, you deserve to fail. The developers who will fall for that argument are going to be inexperienced and/or just plain incompetent; the rock stars (who you really want to work with) know the value of their work, and are unlikely to jump on a bad deal.