People like the idea of innovation in the abstract, but when you present them with any specific innovation, they tend to reject it because it doesn't fit with what they already know.

Finding a programmer to work with if you don't already know one will be a challenge. Merely judging if a programmer is exceptional vs. competent will be very hard if you are not one yourself. When you do find someone, work together informally for a while to test your compatibility.

Finding a technical cofounder would have been difficult for me. I was an English major and didn't know any computer programmers.

Innovations seem inevitable in retrospect, but at the time it's an uphill battle.

The one thing we learned over 5 years is that nothing works better than just improving your product.

Pick a big enough project, something that's really hard, something that over the years you can work on.

Programmers have not been professionals because they haven't really cared about quality.