Don't spend money. $50k is a hell of a lot of money to spend to build a prototype. Depending on what you're trying to do, it should not cost that much. Just get

Don't spend money. $50k is a hell of a lot of money to spend to build a prototype. Depending on what you're trying to do, it should not cost that much. Just get your minimum viable product built, whether you're building it yourself after spending a few months learning enough code, or if you pay a contractor to do it now (get someone to work for equity or just remove features until it's affordable to have them do it). One way or another the experience will be valuable (learning to manage/work with engineers is just as valuable as coding IMHO), but again - don't spend that much to do it. You could build the prototype, only to find that it's not a service people are interested in using. That would suck, but not as much as losing your entire savings to learn the same thing.