I hope this answer will help you in two ways: It should help avoid unnecessary expense being incurred and it should also help you recruit software engineers to build your project.

Before you spend a single dime on building, I'd encourage you to validate the idea itself with potential customers. Identify the kind of person you are thinking of solving a problem for, and just explain the high-level concept. Make sure that a sufficient percentage of them are saying "yes, I need this." Then, really distill the idea further into a single piece of functionality that this customer base says they want.

There are tools that allow for "drag & drop prototyping" like fluid.io that you can use to create a clickable walkthrough of the user flow you're looking to create. The more that you can do to validate the idea and focus it, the more you can define your "Minimum Viable Product."

If you can't find enough of your potential customers to get excited about the idea, I would advise against hiring anyone to implement anything.

That said, it's also a lot easier to recruit talent when you can say "I spoke to 100 potential customers and 40 of them said they would use this" or better yet, pay for it.

Convincing anyone to work on your idea will be considerably easier if you can show some existing proof or interest around the idea.

From there, your best source (assuming you don't have a network of people to draw from) might be local colleges & universities. I would advise against hiring online or working virtually with someone when you are new to building product.

I'd be happy to talk to you about your project, how to validate the concept and how - if you decide to pursue it - to hire good talent.

Best of luck!