I'm not sure about what to do in terms of hiring programmers other than the obvious things people might already suggest, but I do think you should at least take an introductory programming class and maybe an introductory database class. Not to necessarily develop it, but so you can better communicate with your people, have an idea of what needs to be done and the scope, and maybe be able to pick up on if you're getting screwed around a bit.
Like then maybe even if you have your guy or your team locked in, and he's like "I think this or that language or framework would be best for this project" then you should get your feet wet with it. If you were a manager of a larger company and you have people under you to spoon feed you all the details, you can get away without going into the weeds but small teams need to be as hands on as possible.
I took a C# class, and have been slowly working on that, but I work a full time job now, and it got pushed to a back burner. With the job market as it is, and what's been going on at work, I'm trying to keep an eye out and develop this on the side incase something happens. I'd like to be self employed again.
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.
(post is archived)