I would seek out your local startup / tech incubator and tech meetups in your area as a starting point. Both for building a personal network of people you can rely on. I have lots of fantastic developers I talk to in my city's dev channel, some being among the best in the industry as well. I say hello to the owner of my city's biggest tech incubator, the mayor is a good friend of mine too from nonprofit work I've done. I had a nonexisting network about a few months ago, but show your face enough times people will remember who you are.
You can build a prototype without any technical proficiency. There's lots of off the shelf tools you can just throw wordpress/airtable/zapier/kickstarter etc at it, and see how far you get.
Shouldn’t it be pick two of: build it cheap, build it good or build it fast?
Why would anyone choose good and expensive over good and cheap?
> Fast + Cheap = Low Quality
> Good + Fast = Expensive
> Cheap + Good = Slow to market
Launch a company in a jurisdiction that allows issuing utility tokens (not USA)
Then get them listed on an exchange or sell them
Use the money to build the stuff
Also pay people in the tokens themselves
The latter thing can be done legally with equity in the USA. Look up the book “Slicing Pie”
My #1 advice to first time entrepreneurs is DONT BE AFRAID TO DILUTE YOUR EQUITY ENOUGH TO GET THE BEST PEOPLE ON BOARD AND MOTIVATED TO TAKE INITIATIVE EVERY DAY/WEEK TO HELP YOU.
But it doesn't take a runaway success of a product, to be able to raise money. You can build a prototype, get sign ups with a landing page, use crowdfunding to raise funds and pre-sell a physical product, etc. Or if it's a SaaS product, even as few as a dozen customers and a strong target market can be enough to go raise money through angels/accelerators in Silicon Valley or other tech hubs.
Build a personal network. I went to work for a startup, and delivered engineering goals on time. Now the CEO thinks I'm the only competent developer on staff. Will let you know how it goes.