No offense, but I would have posted almost the exact same "advice" as a sarcastic joke.

If you follow that advice, make sure that you don't make the mistake of thinking that you can build the real service on top of whatever the guy from craigslist throws together.

I don't think you'll have much luck unless you can find one or more coders who're as excited about your idea as you are, and who you respect enough to treat as equals.

I've seen a few friends take coding jobs like the one you're planning to fill, and while they got their pay, the people who hired them never truly got what they wanted.

I knew of one such instance where a bunch of MBAs outsourced their idea to a single Indian coder. He did a passable job, but the app was full of bugs. And that's when they realized that a .war file doesn't contain source code.

You can't replace knowing what the code does and if the code is good code. However you can get passable demo code from anyone. I believe the poster was talking about a small spend to get a demo not build FaceBook with millions of users.

I'd strongly recommend making at least some sort of visual wireframe, whether it's in powerpoint, on paper, in dreamweaver, etc. Chances are you have a general idea of what you want the first version to look like, and showing the developer what you have in mind will both make it easier for him and make it more likely that he'll make what you want.

i mean, we're making a very specific page by page layout in conceptdraw.

it seems people have a lot to say about this, which is great. i'll probly put up a standalone discussion thread in a bit.

we understand it's going to be damn near impossible to find someone to make a perfect, usable product. that's not what we want.

we want someone to build us an ugly, barely functioning beta, just enough to get a few users on, in closed beta, to prove that it works and such. we just want a demo.