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.