My suggestion would be to join a local college games club. There is tremendous overlap between techies and people who play non-mainstream games (e.g. Rail Baro

My suggestion would be to join a local college games club. There is tremendous overlap between techies and people who play non-mainstream games (e.g. Rail Baron, Dominion, RPGs, San Juan, Fluxx, etc). Playing card / board games with people for a few months, means you will: a) have a lot of fun b) make new friends c) have a chance to get feedback on your idea d) discover who the talented CS / designer / whatever people are, and get a pretty good picture of what they are like. If you're looking to take someone on as a technical co-founder (which I presume, from your mention of 'free tech talent') you'd better know in advance if you can stand to be around them. General games club meetings are fun and will provide you with contacts and information on those contacts. If you want an in-depth picture of someone, get into a role-playing game with them. To use D&D references: do they play the cleric and heal the party, or the assassin and backstab their teammates? Do they hog the snacks? Can they listen to other players' suggestions politely and implement them if they are better than their own ideas? Do they participate in the group when it isn't their turn to speak, or do they have their laptop open in order to play WoW && IM && check email? There may or may not be "right" answers to any of the above questions, but they will give you a lot of information to make a decision on. You will also find that college games clubs consist of more alumni than current students. This is a great way to network to experienced people (techies among them). As an example, at the Columbia games club, we have someone who currently works at Google. I met my co-founder at CUGC.