"How do we convince that brilliant engineer that has the idea he's really passionate about, that can change the world, to start a startup and not go work as an

"How do we convince that brilliant engineer that has the idea he's really passionate about, that can change the world, to start a startup and not go work as an engineer at a big company?" Silicon Valley's engineer fetish is inane. Most early-stage web startups simply need CRUD applications that work at limited scale. Commodity-level web developers can build these applications. What is not a commodity, in order of importance: 1. Domain expertise. 2. Product development/management. 3. User experience. I'm sure lots of people would disagree, but you can test this. Go out and try to find the following: 1. Somebody who has worked in an industry for more than 5 years, knows it inside and out, and has relationships that can be leveraged for sales and business development. 2. An experienced product manager. 3. A proven UI/UX person capable of designing quality experiences around moderately complex workflows. 4. A PHP or Rails developer who can build a working application if given a reasonable spec and design assets. #4 is not your problem. Most of the time, this person will be the easiest to locate and cheapest to acquire.