___Free Options___

1) Make apps without needing to learning to code. Look into "MIT App Inventor" (http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/)

It's an easy way to start making apps with simple drag-and-drop coding, but it's complex enough to let you make quite advanced prototypes yourself.

You can find youtube tutorials that will show you how to make your first app within 5 minutes. I've used MIT App Inventor to make prototype apps for many of my ideas, saving me tens of thousands of dollars if I paid a dev to do it instead.

2) Learn to do "real" coding yourself.

The main investment will be your time. There are plenty of free resources for learning coding on the web. I'd suggest looking into "React Native", it's a relatively new way to code apps, which allows you to make one app that will run on both Android and iOS.

3) Find a software engineer cofounder.

Go to Meetups, conferences, local hackerspaces / makerspaces. Hang out on relevant online forums (e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/ make sure to read their rules for posting before posting though). It won't be easy to find a tech cofounder, your idea will need to be amazing, and you yourself will need to be very passionate and capable in order to convince someone to partner up with you for sweat equity.

___Affordable Paid Option___

Use developers with less established reputations / portfolios (lower cost, higher risk). Find them on Upwork, Fiverr, etc.

You'll have to be very wary of freelance coders on these sites, but here are some basic hiring rules to make it more likely to work:

A) In your hiring script, make sure to ask for all applicants to give their account name for github/bitbucket and Trello. Don't consider any of the responses that don't provide these. It means they didn't read your job posting fully, and it means that they're already not able to keep up with requirements.

B) Don't hire agencies, only hire individuals.

C) To get hired, ask them to do a simple task via Trello and submit the code via github/bitbucket. This task should only take them maybe 1 hour. Check the quality of what the applicants and if they deliver it in a timely manner. Keep the 1 or 2 people that do a good job. If you don't do this vetting these "low cost" developers may end up costing a lot in the longer run.

If you'd like more tailored advice with respect to your specific app idea let me know,

best,

Lee