I'm in Boston and we have a slightly similar problem. There are a ton of non-technical cofounders out there, but it is rather difficult to find good developer/technical founder/engineer.

I should clarify that, finding a good developer isn't hard. Yet finding one that is available, willing to work for equity and interested in what you're doing is rather difficult.

Let's break those down:

- Available: Good developers have often been snapped up already. Its rather like dating, in that you generally have to find people between things. Top grade developers will probably already have something lined up before they quit another gig, making that gap effectively zero. You need to convince someone that you know is already on the way out that your startup will be better than whatever they are already doing.

-Cash/Equity: I see people talk all the time about the value of equity. Honestly, it generally isn't worth the paper it is written on from what I've seen. There is a huge chance that you'll work on it for a few months and little will come of it. Yes, you could start the next Google/Twitter/Facebook, but it is unlikely.

Equity does not pay the bills. You're talking about people in NYC here. They might have a 2K/month studio apartment in SoHo. You probably won't be doing much for founders salaries even on an angel round, so suddenly this looks to be a really long time without cash flow if you're talking equity only. For people in their 20's that haven't already been through a successfully exited startup and don't have a nest egg (or trust fund) this isn't possible.

They understand the value of risk and stock, but knowing the value of it and being able to realistically quit your job/graduate and work without a paycheck is really hard. If the value was there, then the investment capital would be there. The concept of value is there, but not the value.

- Selling the idea: At this stage, you're generally selling an idea of an idea. 95% of the time when people talk to me about some startup they are doing I'm thinking, "This will never work", "I know 6 people doing the same thing and they are a year ahead of you" or "Where is the money?".

Rare is it that someone has an idea like GroupOn that is an instant, 'duh' moment and you think you'd want to be instantly part of and owning a large portion of. I'm not going to work for a company (and take mainly equity) that I don't believe in.

All of this creates an impression of a bottleneck of developers and technical talent in a city. Throw in Google and a few other large companies (and academia) that can and will pay for top level talent and things really start looking dry.

But here's the thing, <i>I don't think there is a lack of technical talent</i>. Rather there is a lack of top level non-technical co-founders out there will killer ideas, vision, experience, connections and fund raising ability. What are they bringing to the table if not those things? While an early stage startup can run with technical talent only, it can run without a 'biz guy' just fine while things get off the ground.

<b>So what to do as a non-technical co-founder?</b>

- Get technical! A little over a year ago few hard programming skills. Then I started picking up Ruby stuff on the side. I'll never be a top level engineer, but through pain and blundering I can get the job done and get something mocked up in a reasonable amount of time to show that there's something more than just an idea. This also gives me the ability to make better decisions as a business person and understand the rest of the company

- Get money! Paying people gets stuff done. If your ideas are so killer, you can surely raise 50K or so to get them done. I've had friends (in NY) raise 50K to start things that would never scale or go big like PR firms. They did this through networking and knowing the right people. Its a big city with a lot of money floating around. Find it and pay to get your base level prototype made. Developers will blow you off if you're waving your hands and talking about an idea, but if you say you'll pay $125/hr to have a prototype made, then they listen.

- Have better ideas and bring more to the table: There are a few non-technical people that I'd follow anywhere and its because they do have consistently great vision and ideas. Show people that you can lead and followthrough. One of my good friends Tim Hwang can't code at all (AFAIK), but I've seen him execute with the Awesome Foundation, ROFLcon and the Web Ecology Project. I know that if he gets a great idea, that he will hold up his end. Do things like this and you'll have no problem finding developers and technical co-founders.