Ask HN: Can I help you be more awesome today? (No strings.)

Whether or not you hire someone, you should definitely learn to code. The more you make yourself aware of the important issues developers need to worry about, the smarter you can be with your decisions and cash. Happy you're pursuing it!

Should you hire someone or learn to do it yourself? That depends on a few things: Are you planning on making money on this idea? Does your interest in pursuing the idea depend on the success of the idea? Do you have a limited window of time to execute on your idea for it to be successful? If there's no urgency to run to market, then I recommend doing it yourself. There's nothing more satisfying.

If you ARE interested in hustling with this idea, then you need to start sourcing your network for help. Do you personally know any developers? Do they want to help you develop a prototype? Do they know anyone who might? Do you know any computer science/engineering students who might want extra experience this summer? Do you know anyone who works in a Computer Science program or college that could help you source interns? Get involved in your local tech community. Go to meetups and find people who are active and involved. Ask them if they know anyone they could introduce you to. Ask people if you can help them with anything they're working on. (Be sincere!)

I wouldn't focus on trying to find a technical co-founder at this point. This can be something that sits at the back of your mind while you're looking for help, but going around asking for a co-founder is like asking the girl to marry you too soon. It would be a shame to pass on good help because they weren't "founder" material. When talking to people who might help you, ask for small portions of help. People are willing to help a little here and there without thinking twice. If they like interacting with you, you'll definitely feel comfortable asking for more assistance (and it's likely they'll offer without you having to ask).

Show the people you're talking to that you've invested a lot of time on this already. That this isn't just some idea you've been toying with the past few days. Let them look over your mockups. Talk to them about the vision for your idea. Try to validate some assumptions about the problem you think the idea is solving.

Scatterbrained delivery, but the principles have worked for the people I know facing the same issue. Let me know if I can elaborate on anything.

Whether you should launch with a mobile app or a web app does not seem to be your problem. Just release something and see if someone uses it. Stop killing your idea with analysis paralysis. If you want to reuse as much of your effort across a web and mobile implementation, create a agnostic API that abstracts your main logic. Then you can build a view for whichever implementation without rewriting much else.