Cheap country is a no go, got it. Freelancing is a great option for bootstrapping in cases where you can live cheap. It gets more difficult as your situation g

Cheap country is a no go, got it. Freelancing is a great option for bootstrapping in cases where you can live cheap. It gets more difficult as your situation gets more expensive. Most obviously, the higher your expenses, the more you have to work (while also raising your rates) and this cuts down on your "start-up" time. With freelancing, your clients have to be your first business priority. You can't give them a lower priority than your start-up. Work / life separation goes away and it can be difficult to fit start-ups in there. If a start-up can be hell, consider that your freelancing would be yet another start-up. Again, it's a great option when you can tame it (which is easy to do when you can live on next to nothing) but it can get really hairy as you need to scale up your earnings. It might still be worth a shot though, you don't know until you try. Who knows, it might blow up and go much better than you expect. Argument for sharing your ideas. Look at the logistical problems that you are running into.You need a lot of talented labor and you need a lot of money. You have no idea if you are going to be able to make money and you haven't yet been able to convince anyone to invest in it. Investors don't even care about the idea so much as they want to make a lot of money. In many cases they are investing not in the right ideas, but the right people. Who is going to make the insane sacrifice with the same passion and the same vision as you? If the idea were easy to steal, then it probably would have been easy enough that you would have built it already. I think people generally get these things backwards anyways. The best time for someone to steal your idea is when you have already built up some traction. At that point, you have done all the hard work so the copy cats can see that your idea is worth stealing. They can also watch your mistakes and possibly roll out a better service. You might as well tell everyone about it now. There is also the possibility that your successful idea may look entirely different than what you are thinking about right now. As soon as you get real users, it starts evolving. It's better to get that process going as soon as possible. Otherwise, I don't have much more info for you. Good luck!