In the UK, it is notoriously difficult to team-up with someone to build a startup. The mindset is very different. If you go to US, India or China, engineers are willing to take risk. In the UK, the conversation starts something like this:

Me: "I am looking for a tech co-founder; the startup is at an ideation stage, and I have already talked to people who have shown interest in the project. I think having a tech co-founder at this stage will help a lot."

Listener: "How much are you paying for the role?"

Me: "This is an equity-based role because the startup is at an early stage."

Listener: "So you want people to work for you for free??"

This doesn't matter if the listener is an engineer or not. In the UK, there is little understanding of how very early stage startups work. It is equity based, that concept does not go down very well with the population.