Don't bother patenting, it's a waste of time and money. Development is easy, it just costs money. Feel free to pm me or contact me at HeadFirst Concepts, LLC - Creative Design, Marketing, & Social Media Solutions and I'll work out a quote for you.

The single most important thing is having a plan.

Planning and software design, (engineering) is about designing the software to meet the needs of the user base.

You have to know where you want to go.

How you want to get there.

When you want to arrive.

developing a plan is the first step, for the most part, unless you have successfully developed a multi universe quadratic algorithm that will change computer hardware forever, then I would not bother with a patent, because for the most part, programming is universal,

If I want to perform a function, in say PHP and you do it in some other language, the end result is very close to the same, but that does not mean that it cannot be done in any number of other languages, so patents, not really very helpful plus they are really expensive. (time waster)

The biggest problem faced by non programmers is the ability to digest what is possible and what is not possible.

You can do a lot with a little if you can communicate that plan, having a plan will save you a lot of money.

There are a few courses but sadly they are useless because they are not made by programmers but marketers who wan to earn money from consumers who have little or less knowledge. I have read through several of these outsourcing manuals they are garbage and if you follow them you may save a buck or two but in the long run you still need knowledge.

Without knowledge you cannot hope to communicate in any meaningful way with a programmer, add in a language barrier because off shore outsourcing you have to be able to speak one of the two languages they know, one native or two technical, if you cant speak a combination of those two languages, you are wasting your time.

I have been doing this for 15 years, and I can tell you that while it is not impossible it is not easy either.

As before the first thing you need to do is to generate a plan.

if your software are web based,
maybe we can talk together about your idea,
as i am a web programmer ..

You can't patent ideas. So my first advice to you is find another advisor...

Sorry, but what are you actually bringing to the table here? Obviously you are looking for a developer to work with, but what is in it for them?

You have no software development skills of your own so the developer would need to do all the work.

You have no marketing skills, so the chances of the product being a success are small unless you can get an expert marketer on board.

And to top it off your funding is limited, although I'm not sure if you have enough to pay the developer and marketing consultant.

That last point is key, are you planning on paying them directly or will it be a profit-sharing scheme. If it's the latter how do you plan to make a profit without marketing the product?

And remember, software is an entirely different beast than many other products. The support and inevitable upgrades and bug fixes are often much more work than the actual development. So you'll need someone to do that as well. Especially if it's desktop software or a user-installed online application, the variety of potential platforms that the software can run on make these sort of applications vulnerable to conflicts and incompatibilities. How is your budget for after-sales support and service looking (both time and money wise)?

I'm not trying to be rude or harsh here, but the reality is that all you seem to have is an idea for a software product. As a developer myself I am always being approached with great ideas, great ideas are really a dime a dozen these days. I currently have more great ideas than I could possibly act upon in a lifetime. So one needs to be selective.

Just interjecting some reality into this. I wish you the best of luck in finding the developers and marketers you need to bring your projects to life, and I hope they are a success for you.

Happy Holidays

Bill