I have an idea but need a developer to create it. How do I go about finding someone to build my app?

I have an idea for a web app, but I do not possess the technical skills to develop it. I don't think it's a very complex application to build. How do I go about finding someone to create it? Is it best to have them fill out an NDA before I share my idea with the developer? How much should I anticipate paying? I know it's tough to answer without more detail, but any 'big picture' advice on this topic would be very helpful.

How do I go about finding someone to create it?

You have two options:

1. Find a technical co-founder
2. Pay someone to build it

Apart from someone with just technical skills, you'll need design talent as well. An alternative to having a designer (or a tech person with design skills) is starting with a theme on ThemeForest and using a CSS framework like Bootstrap. Having a technical advisor would help avoid pitfalls.

Relevant questions to read:

• How do I find a technical co-founder?
• Do I need a technical cofounder?
  
• How to find a technical co-founder without compromising our company's plans?

Is it best to have them fill out an NDA before I share my idea with the developer?

Don't worry about having an NDA. Ideas don't have value -- the execution does. In fact, you should be telling your idea to everyone to get validation and find product market fit.

How much should I anticipate paying?

If you're going to hire someone on ODesk, you can find a decent programmer for around $30/hr. Be sure to pick someone who already good reviews and put in 1000+ hours on the ODesk platform (this will be available in the search filters). Again, having an technical advisor will help as most programmers on ODesk will need some direction on what needs to be built.

I would suggest you start with creating user stories. Use a tool like Trello to write down all your user stories. Having this all written down will give you (and a developer) an idea of project scope.

Do feel free to post more questions here on Bright Journey, we'd all love to help!

Hi Courtney,

Do you have any programming or coding knowledge? I find without it, you become an easy target for someone telling you: "This is a really big job" etc, when really it could take a few hours to code.

I am a Ruby and Python developer, and while I only work on my own projects I would be happy to give you a rough estimate as to scale, timeframe, and possible cost so when you do go out looking you will have a ballpark idea of what you should be expecting and then you can judge if any are wildly out.

You can either share a few of your ideas, or give us a rough idea of what you app would do. What features? Social? Chat? Users? Images? Video? Location Based? etc

Otherwise you can contact me via my profile.

Good Luck!