I mean this positively and am in basically the same situation: it sounds like you want to find someone to build your business for you and hire you to do the eng

I mean this positively and am in basically the same situation: it sounds like you want to find someone to build your business for you and hire you to do the engineering work you want to do. That would be great, it's never actually possible outside a few very lucky and sheltered situations. If you want it to be your business, you need to find the customers and investors (you can probably hire someone for the paperwork, but not as easily as you'd think I've found). What makes it a business is lining up the money / customers. Otherwise it's a research or engineering project. If you're not part of that work, you're working at someone else's company, which there is nothing wrong with, but it's a different thing, and comes with less ability to influence direction of the company.