I have had my fair share of trying to find the right development team to create a prototype and final product. Not only did I have to define the scope of my product, I had to figure out which technologies were the best. This process led to allot of trial and error. Here are a few tips that may help you during your initial concept stage.

1. Start with free, off the shelf and open-source. Before you start spending money on concepts, make sure you know your sector and try to find "off the shelf" open-source solutions. You may find that creating proprietary software is less important than focusing on building the right brand by combining existing technologies. If you can't build a prototype in 2 weeks then your idea may be too big...

2. Don't start something that you can't personally finish. Many entrepreneurs are business, marketing or designers and not programmers. This is ok, but just remember if funding runs out you may be left with a product that has up to 10 programming languages that require years of training to modify. You want a product that you can work on even if you lose your development team. (Or... just make sure you have an incredible amount of funding).

3. Focus on one thing. You've heard this before, but I can't stress enough the importance of focusing on one revenue model and one solution. Entrepreneurs are naturally proactive creative thinkers and can see great opportunity - yet I like to think about entrepreneurship like racing... It doesn't only matter that you can go really fast, it matters that you know when to break and make a turn without crashing.

4. Follow the trail. Blazing your own new trail is dangerous. There are many pitfalls, unknowns and unmarked signs along the way. You are best off at looking at what has worked in the past and just enhance it. Follow the trail of others, find out what is important to them and the reason they walk that path, and provide them an alternative route to their desired destination. People enjoy variations on a theme so they can pick it up quickly... No one has time to learn a new process (unless you have massive financial backing to test the market intensively).

5. Think Drugs not Vitamins. Unfortunately no one invests much in vitamins because they are just "good for you" - whereas many invest heavily in drugs (pharmaceutical) because at times you "need them". Customers are driven to purchase based on need and want, and less so on qualitative benefits. So create hot demand based upon need, not a pleasant sideshow.

You can take this advice with a grain of salt or heed the warnings. This is only my personal experience with entrepreneurship. I am sure you will find your path to be an interesting and exciting ride as I have. Tell me your stories. I'd love to hear them.