A little background. I'm a programmer at a company that would be described as a "technology start up". We're in a similarly niche field so I might be able to give you some advice. It will be harder than you think. We are now starting to get some traction in industry, but it's a long road. Been going over a decade with some very lean times. E.g. we all (about a dozen staff) went about 6 months without pay one year, there was so little money that we couldn't afford to buy toilet paper for the office. What I would look for is: - people from other companies who have done similar things to give you advice. Not necessarily the exact same field, but other niche fields. - avoid ad hoc development, at least for the core architecture of the application. Instead get a good lead dev with software engineering ability/ experience. Rare as hens teeth though. Getting the architecture right, or at least not horribly wrong, the first time will save heaps. - don't outsource anything. Every time I've seen that tried it turns into a streaming pile of shit. - getting a good team together will be paramount. - figure out how your going to fund it. Can you get R & D finding from anywhere. I'm not much of an expert in that area though, spend my tin be stick in the code. - if you're trying to hire devs, a written test with problem solving and coding questions is really useful. It will scare away ~80% of applicants, but that's a good thing. Feel free to ask me anything else.