Long answer: if you feel you can't get started in any meaningful way on your own, hire somebody who can assist you. While truly good people can be hard to find, it will be a thousand times easier to find a competent paid consultant than a competent co-founder. After all, why in the world would somebody experienced who has valuable skills that can be monetized want to start a business with someone he or she doesn't have a long-standing relationship with? The folks who would be interested in this are precisely the folks you want to avoid.
Additional benefits of paying instead of partnering include the ability to retain full control and ownership of your business (if one materializes) as well as the ability to quickly and cleanly terminate the person you retain if he or she is unable to meet your needs.
If the person you retain delivers and there's a great personal fit that would lend itself to an ongoing collaboration, there's nothing stopping you from later negotiating a co-founder relationship.
Long answer: if you feel you can't get started in any meaningful way on your own, hire somebody who can assist you. While truly good people can be hard to find, it will be a thousand times easier to find a competent paid consultant than a competent co-founder. After all, why in the world would somebody experienced who has valuable skills that can be monetized want to start a business with someone he or she doesn't have a long-standing relationship with? The folks who would be interested in this are precisely the folks you want to avoid.
Additional benefits of paying instead of partnering include the ability to retain full control and ownership of your business (if one materializes) as well as the ability to quickly and cleanly terminate the person you retain if he or she is unable to meet your needs.
If the person you retain delivers and there's a great personal fit that would lend itself to an ongoing collaboration, there's nothing stopping you from later negotiating a co-founder relationship.