I had a friend asking me essentially the same question as the OP a week ago (I'm a professional iOS dev who also picks up a lot of loose ends in a production Dj

I had a friend asking me essentially the same question as the OP a week ago (I'm a professional iOS dev who also picks up a lot of loose ends in a production Django app for an established NY startup and have a couple pet Rails projects I work on on the weekends). Said friend had a product idea and was eager to invest a few thousand dollars into an MVP but does not have a programming background. He insisted on majority ownership and "just needed someone to build it". I told him that he needed to be more respectful of the fact that the product he wanted to sell was a PIECE OF SOFTWARE. Though a lot of people here will tell you about the importance of user acquisition, etc. the software in a software business cannot be regarded as secondary. My breakdown of his options I presented to him is below: (1) solicit quotes -- if you get one that you can stomach from someone not in a third-world country, go with it, but I wouldn't be too hopeful. (2) Consider partnering with a young and ambitious person with technical ability, and be prepared to give him at least 50% percent ownership in respect of his 100% authorship of the product that is at the core of your business. (3) Do it your damn self. This is what I most strongly suggest and there's a massive community out there eager to give you assistance and encouragement. You could truly own the thing AND not be vulnerable to your technical co-founder/serf deciding he doesn't like you and wants to, say, expose all user data and get you sued and/or arrested. Furthermore, it's very, very fun: (resources I pointed my friend to below. note: friend was interested in building an iPhone app) http://rubyonrails.org http://rubyonrails.org, https://www.djangoproject.com https://www.djangoproject.com, etc. <--- for your backend http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/ http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/navigation/ <--- for your client (or, if your lazy, http://jquerymobile.com/ http://jquerymobile.com/) http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/ <--- for hosting http://git-scm.com/ http://git-scm.com/ <--- so you don't break shit http://www.gnu.org/s/bash/ http://www.gnu.org/s/bash/ in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Terminal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Terminal or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xterm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xterm <--- so you learn shit