ideaI’m a software developer specialist in mobile application development. I have hardware ideas that may succeed, but I don’t have the right specialities to create them, nor anyone that can be trusted for an idea. What is the best way to implement the idea and to become real?
It doesn’t matter that you don’t feel like anyone can be trusted with your idea. What matters is that you lack the skills required to make your idea a reality, and therefor need to develop those skills or get someone else to help you.
And whichever you choose has its tradeoffs.
Sharing the idea means you don’t get 100% ownership of it, but it does increase your chances of actually getting your idea on the market before someone else does. It also allows you to focus on what you do really well, in your case software, and the other guy on hardware.
Keeping your idea means you get 100% ownership of the idea, but it doesn’t increase your chances in actually getting the idea to market. You’ll have to divide your time between software design, software development, learning hardware, hardware design, and eventually hardware development.
I personally think teaming up, in this specific case, is the better idea.
So what should you do?
Build a software prototype, in any language you’re comfortable with, that demonstrates how the software and hardware will seamlessly co-exist to create a beautiful user experience and solve a marketable problem.
If you can do that, you can easily convince a hardware guy to become your cofounder, and later when you need to build a user-interface for your device - you’ll have something to work off of.
It’s all uphill from there, but at least you’ll have someone to hike with.
Learn programming your ideas yourself seems the only way to go. Invest 6 months learning ruby on rails and start from there.
If there is hardware involved, make sure you estimate the costs with a large margin (10x), then if it still makes sense try contacting some of your friends, people you can trust and know about building hardware. Then together reach out to someone who knows how to attract potential investors and understands finance.
If it makes sense financially, you will be able to find partners (co-founders) to have a joint venture together (software + hardware + business dev), and if not, perhaps it is best to revise your plans or seek out another venture.
You can always break the idea into two or three pieces and then outsource the development of those sub components.
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