The non-technology founder of a SAAS is usually middle-aged?

First, don't leave your passion. If you love (or L.O.V.E) programing - stick to it. True, from business point of view, you'll make more money because what counts is who's brining the big fish!

Second, age is an issue (unfortunately) clients like to know that they made the right decision, that they actually put the confidence with someone with experience and who's reliable. If you're in your early 20's - they're unlikely to choose you.

Lastly, don't try to be part of the statistics; if you want to move to SaaS - just do it. You'll make mistakes (like your partnership) but hey... you have something that many people don't have: you know what you want.

Age is a factor is you are customer facing, if you try to raise funds, if you deal (physically) with other people, but if you build a consumer self-service product who cares how old you are. I say it's irrelevant. When you go online and look for a product or service, do you look at the founders to see how old they are or what they have done? Not unless you are committing a large sum of money and you want to make sure the company will still be here in a few years. Just put your self in the shoes of your customers, and think about their buying process (if you effectively sell something), often time you will realize that it doesn't matter. The product quality does.

Regarding business partners, it is a never ending discussion, of finding the right partner. You will certainly need some marketing/biz dev skills in your team which will accelerate your development, but during the early days of your business, it might not be as critical because you are building the product. It seems to me that you should build something you really love, quickly test it and refine it with a few beta customers and business partners will come. It's interesting that you have a hard time finding a business partner, usually it's the other way around!

One key point in choosing: Find someone with which you have very strong personal affinity, someone you get along with without a single doubt in your head. It's better to loose a few months in the beginning to find the right person, that spend a few years trying to recover from a bad choice. go meet people in Business schools maybe, meet, dine, go out, do personal stuff to really know the person. Then it's easy to structure a deal with milestones as a test drive.

I don't want to be blunt, but as a technical co-founder you will need to let go of certain decisions, if you build a business, decisions will have to be made that drive the product roadmap, positioning, partnerships and strategy. You have to realize that the product is not your baby but a tool to grow the business. I'm not saying the product is not important, but what is really important? The fact that you build the product you dream of, or to have a successful business, sometimes the two don't go together.. you have to accept that fact to, to a reasonable extend of course, because if you start not liking what you build, then you have a problem to. One important thing: listen to the customers, test against your customers, talk to your customers..

good luck.

All successful startups - actually all companies - are a function of good product development and marketing.

Sometimes it's as simple as having a single developer blog about their work. Sometimes it's a whole team of developers and marketing people.

The bottom line is that you need to build both product and an audience. If you're not good at both, you need a partner - regardless of your fears and past experiences.

The upside is that this time you're likely to pick a much better person, assuming you learned some lessons before.

Good luck!