I have been an individual contributor in all my career. I like to focus on the technical side, and find the management/business side unbearable. I am leaning toward the idealism side of things and as many people here would love to help a bit if possible to advance technology and innovation.

I would like to build a Data As A Service company that, in a nutshell, would crawl the internet and stream the data at almost real time. Think of it as Twitter's Firehose but for the whole Internet.

In my previous attempts, with ideas I had, I would usually spend a few months working on a functional prototype, and pray it would take off.

This time I thought I'd reach out for the wisdom of HN crowd. Where/how did you start your company? How far in investigating the idea and/or building a prototype were you before you reached out for a business co-founder? Where/how did you find them? Did you go through an incubator? Are there any rough guidelines on how to one should proceed from square one?

Thanks!