Youch. That's a painful trap of circular logic to fall into. Keep in mind that most businesses have been started by non-programmers.

We're talking about web technology businesses here, I presume. Otherwise OP wouldn't be trying to round up a programmer. The vast, vast, vast majority of web application startups are started by technical founders. Even the exceptions tend to bring some technical know-how to the endeavor (Digg, MySpace are examples of the non-programming founder, and they're the only two successful startups that meet that criterion I can think of off-hand).

Non-technical founders can create value. But that's hard to prove in the initial "Hi, do you wanna start a company?" phase. That's why he's not getting much traction from developers he talks to.