I'm a final year industrial design student and throughout the course, we've been trained to conduct user research in effective ways, come up with new products (physical or digital) and also advertise the product. I'd say, we've been trained more on how to be a successful entrepreneur than a designer.
However, now that there's a brief idea about what we have learnt, the biggest hurdle that is extremely common in our field, is a lack of skillset required for entrepreneurship in today's world. We have come up with ideas for multiple startups throughout the span of 3-4 years. We're a group of 3 designers, 2 of us who are industrial designers, we usually do all the brainstorming and define the direction of the entire startup. The other guy is a UI/UX designer, who helps us come out with the most effective interface and build a semi working prototype on softwares like Figma.
But it always just stops there. We, being designers, we learn multiple softwares that cater specifically to design. But when it comes to this, none of us know how to code and actually bring it to life. That's the biggest challenge we're facing right now, because we know we need to find a developer, but we don't know how to and where to approach any of them. This has been going on for over a year.
It would really be appreciated if anyone could suggest platforms that help us connect to like minded developers and are willing to take part in building a startup from scratch rather than just interning or working for one.