I have been through this a lot with a music/art interactive platform I've been working on for the past year and a half or so. My gut take on this is that programmers have the same problem musicians have; although they may be in demand, they overestimate their ability to evaluate potential enterprises. (great players have about as much trouble evaluating whether a band is worth joining as A&R people did picking winners)
I started not only with an innovative and fun product idea which is fairly contained technically, but also very significant technical ability of my own (working professionally as everything from an SEO guy back in the day and a UI/UX guy for 10 years), niche expertise/perspective and very hard to get connections, marketing experience, a fairly coherent business strategy with potential customers expressing interest, and although I don't have a ton of funding I have never asked anyone to work for free or "just equity" ... ever.
And I still can't hire objective C developers. What's wrong with this picture?
Did I mention I live in a major US city. And I'm friendly and (usually) easygoing?
One conclusion is that I have an unrealistic view of what I'm offering, or that I am terrible at looking for people (probably both true) but another factor may be unexamined assumptions on the part of developers when they evaluate a potential opportunity. Perhaps they already "know" what a cofounder looks and talks like, without realizing their preconception exists. Perhaps they have a picture in their head already of what a "good" or "successful" product will be ... or perhaps they really want to be working on a idea of their own but are having trouble getting started, which creates semi-conscious ambivalence about working on the ideas of others. I don't know that any of this is true, but having spent my life around talented creative people of widely varying levels of "success" that's what occurs to me.
Your biggest problem is probably that Objective C developers are in extremely high demand. They can make a lot of money, or if they have an interest in start-ups the barrier for entry is so low to get in the app store that they probably don't see a need to partner. Everyone has a dozen ideas for cool apps.
It sounds like you have a pretty compelling pitch, but you are pitching to a very small market with tons of competition.
Yeah, that's kind of the conclusion I came to. But that just makes me ask the question: Then why doesn't every developer with a related skillset just learn Objective C already and try to charge me lots of money? I mean, if I didn't already have two jobs on top of spending months of the year on tour, that's what I would do. Sometimes capitalism doesn't work.
I started not only with an innovative and fun product idea which is fairly contained technically, but also very significant technical ability of my own (working professionally as everything from an SEO guy back in the day and a UI/UX guy for 10 years), niche expertise/perspective and very hard to get connections, marketing experience, a fairly coherent business strategy with potential customers expressing interest, and although I don't have a ton of funding I have never asked anyone to work for free or "just equity" ... ever.
And I still can't hire objective C developers. What's wrong with this picture?
Did I mention I live in a major US city. And I'm friendly and (usually) easygoing?
One conclusion is that I have an unrealistic view of what I'm offering, or that I am terrible at looking for people (probably both true) but another factor may be unexamined assumptions on the part of developers when they evaluate a potential opportunity. Perhaps they already "know" what a cofounder looks and talks like, without realizing their preconception exists. Perhaps they have a picture in their head already of what a "good" or "successful" product will be ... or perhaps they really want to be working on a idea of their own but are having trouble getting started, which creates semi-conscious ambivalence about working on the ideas of others. I don't know that any of this is true, but having spent my life around talented creative people of widely varying levels of "success" that's what occurs to me.
Just an outside perspective.