How do I develop my idea for a web app while lacking resources and development drive?

I have a web application idea with great potential that I trying to turn into a start up business. I currently work with building application in a .NET environment but for this personal project after some research decided that java will be the best programming language to develop this in.
With this I have some challenges that I find it difficult to overcome and will welcome some feedback on these.

• My financial resources are limited to just development hardware and hosting and I don’t not have the luxury to hiring expert developers. (I am open to in rewarding development time with a % of the company once is it launched.)
• Coming from a .NET background, majority of my friends are .NET developers and are not willing to take on a project of this magnitude
• The few java developers I know believe that the task at hand is more than they can handle.

What advice there is for someone in this situation to get an idea developed into a solid web application given the challenges I have? Definitely looking forward in making this idea into a reality. Thanks in advance.

Start building it yourself.

When you come to people with an idea, it's hard to get them excited (and usually justifiably so). If you come to them with a prototype, then that's different. I think it's different for 2 reasons:

1. They can actually see your vision in front of them. It makes it much easier for them to decide if they like it or not.
2. It shows you aren't just talking, and prepared to put the hard work in to get it done.

No matter what advice you get here, you can't go wrong with just starting building it. It won't be wasted effort.

Start developing language-agnosticism, you seem way too focused on the language in which to implement rather than the implementation itself, if you think you can "make it happen" in Java, not speaking about optimized code, but rather - working architecture which will hold long enough to test your hypothesis, that's all you need.

If you're already a developer, moving from .NET to java is an EASY move, you should try that not for the sake of satartup, but for the sake of personal growth.

Start building, iterate, and improve.

I would actually start this by:

• Doing research on the market. Who will be using this app, what are they using now, what competitors exist.
• Why will your app be better or different than the competition
• Do mock-ups and design concepts of the application. Prototype a couple screens.
• Talk to some of the potential consumers of this application and see what they are using now to solve the problem your app solves.
• Show them your mock-ups and prototypes and discuss what something like that would be worth to them. Get their feedback and what pains they face.
• Maybe even see if you can get some initial development funding from some of the people you talked with.
• Then start with the smallest concept possible to provide value to these customers. What set of features can just give them a taste of the benefits. Build and deploy that.
• Get customers using that and get feedback.
• Release new features and improve the product continuously based on their feedback
• Collect their money

From your list of concerns or limitations above you don't list YOUR TIME has a limitation. If you have a few hours a day then you can build whatever you want yourself. If you know .NET you can pick up Java.

Good luck!