I'm going to be brutally honest.
Unless you're FAANG, don't be paranoid about someone stealing your idea, cause unlikely it's going to happen.
With a population of 7 billion people, your idea more than likely already exists in some form and there's a great chance that someone else or multiple others already launched something very similar.
But it's not a train smash.. contrary, it means there's a validated market for it and you have a chance to execute it better, combined with your touch, that makes it original.
It's very difficult to validate the market with an absolutely brand new idea that people have no clue about - and honestly, a developer willing to spend 90 hours coding that pro-bono with the hope for some equity (taking 98% failure rate into account) would be dumb.
Do yourself a favour and search any app on the app store - you will find many apps that mainly does the same job, however there's always just like 2 or 3 that executed the idea successfully and gets all the traction.
It's all about execution and perhaps finding your niche target market.
On the side note (especially other developers reading this), as a contract developer myself, I get these requests all the time and it would be dumb of me to say yes and code anything pro-bono, but you probably can make deals so that the developer doesn't go hungry, buy coffee, can still pay his bills and add a drop to their savings.
Example, I'm currently on a negotiated a deal where I get paid 80% of the hours I put into coding the SaaS (measured on
Wakatime) + 20% revenue from the project once it's live.
Still, the only way I agreed to this is because it's a client that I've worked with in the past a lot, surfed with a lot, etc, so I trust him, but I know this '
plugs' into his existing business which is doing fine so the market / demand is there.
I took my current situation (unmarried, no kids, minimal expenses, debt free) into account and realised I can sacrifice a dash of income for:
1) I will be getting experience using some new technologies / libraries while I'm at it. Will be beneficial for future projects and clients.
2) if the off-chance happens that the app becomes very successful, 20% would be a nice extra almost passively to have that paying for my coffee / rent / ???
3) I will have extra time for another hobby I'm pursuing.
4) Client saves 20% on his upfront development costs and can spend that on other things like marketing, etc.
Considering I'm doing 100% of the code which is by far the most important part of a SaaS, it's only fair that I don't carry any further risk - even more considering it's someone else idea.
I'm all for shipping your own ideas, in your own time, on your own risk, but as soon as you make
someone elses idea a reality, you need to be compensated with real money for your effort.
You don't see construction companies building a restaurant for equity because the chef had a good idea.
Having software developed by a developer isn't any different.
Bitter pill to swallow, but if you're not willing to pay a developer well, you're going to want to build it yourself, even if you can't code (yet).
You can learn online relatively easily as there's an abundance of resources to learn to code, you just need to put in effort.
For motivation, check out
https://www.indiehackers.com.
And give this book a read, its short and sweet and teaches you to keep your software minimal to bring down development costs etc.
https://basecamp.com/gettingreal
