I wouldn't mind to find a cofounder here (please contact me - I am located in the south of Germany). The problem with my friends is that they are not living in a startup culture. Where I live, everybody has a well-paying job, and startupping isn't the norm. Basically, my friends somehow haven't read enough of Paul Graham's essays yet :-(
My best friend would probably come along as a co-founder, and he is a very good coder, whom I worked with on several projects before. But he works as a freelancer and just got an interesting offer for a new project. It might be a close chase...
Now about the idea: it is true that most of my friends didn't get overexcited when I told them about it. I think that is because it deals with a relatively new thing: build on demand hardware. It is only just starting off (Ponoko, eMachineShop, Apple and Dell online shops...), and people are simply not used to the idea. They think it is exotic and weird, but I think there is a fair chance that in relatively short time it will be really, really big.
Edit: I'll probably be at BarCamp Munchen tomorrow, in case any prospective co-founders want to talk...
I lived in Germany for a little while a few years ago. It has a very conservative culture when it comes to career paths.
My (German) girlfriend was quite talented in the area of hospitality management, but found it very difficult to get a job in hotel management due to not having her degree in the field (she'd had great marks in her international business degree though). Self taught skills were regarded negatively compared to a degree in the field.
In Australia, I'd worked as a journalist for the largest magazine and newspaper publishers in the country, and was training RHCAs and RHCEs for Red Hat, despite having neither a journalism nor computer science degree.
My girlfriend's mother never really understood how I could either not have gone to university, or changed careers. I doubt they'd understand why anyone would leave a job for a startup with a high likelihood of failure either.
When I read your post, I was reminded of a similar article about Asian students, who despite high marks, often exist in a culture that pushes them away from the unknown.
There are, however, always exceptions. Best of luck.
"build on demand hardware" - it means build funny electronic devices(in Ponoko way)? Or it would be something serious HW stuff like PCB for custom device?
Do you mean building on demand hardware something like assembling pcs with 4 gb memory OR building fpgas (or asics) that solve your client's problems in hardware?
Update: for the record, I now consider applying with another idea instead, which I have already done more work on than the build on demand stuff. It is not as ambitious, but at least I might have something to show for.
My best friend would probably come along as a co-founder, and he is a very good coder, whom I worked with on several projects before. But he works as a freelancer and just got an interesting offer for a new project. It might be a close chase...
Now about the idea: it is true that most of my friends didn't get overexcited when I told them about it. I think that is because it deals with a relatively new thing: build on demand hardware. It is only just starting off (Ponoko, eMachineShop, Apple and Dell online shops...), and people are simply not used to the idea. They think it is exotic and weird, but I think there is a fair chance that in relatively short time it will be really, really big.
Edit: I'll probably be at BarCamp Munchen tomorrow, in case any prospective co-founders want to talk...