More business rational to head over to HTML. Interestingly enough their pricing model puts it directly in competition with engines like Unity and even the Unreal Engine.
A coder who can do sales and management work are worth their weight in gold. I would look at the situation in two ways:
1. Your value in the startup is far greater as you get better at all those different roles.
2. Even in the worse case scenario if the startup doesn't take off, your experiences place you in a super elite group of developers that can manage and sell.
Make the changes required to fix the single biggest gripe you have gotten, and relaunch under a new name.
Some tough love for you: Quit being so negative and complaining about hard work failing. It's a part of entrepreneurship - things will go wrong. How are you (especially if you are a CEO or founder) going to pivot and survive despite the hardship?
Dust yourself off, take a deep breathe, deal with the problem in front of you and address the core issue.
Your product plan made the assumption that a million users would use it locally. This part never happened, so how are you going to fix it?
This isn't only a tech problem, but also a marketing issue. You need to address how you will get a lot of users in one geographic location using it in order to make it really thrive.
This. Kickstarter is generating revenue in exchange for goods and services you're providing. It is not investment. I believe this is described in the Kickstarter FAQ.
I however disagree that it isn't worth doing if you aren't already popular. You can use it as a place to become more popular than you already are, or use it as a means to show some traction even if you only raise $10,000.
What is the alternative for him? Another major, or just not going to a university?
You can use payscale websites to judge what kind of pay a programmer that has gone to a college gets in relation to one that has not and compare to the costs of going to college.
In regards to hectic schedules and hardcore math... it's not THAT bad, and the harder it is the stronger he'll be coming out.
At the end of the day its about how will he differentiate himself to other programmers. When he's looking for a job without a college degree but with a few projects under his belt compared to a fresh college grad with a 4.0, it might be a coin toss on who they pick. What if the college grad also did some work on the side, or internships? It may tip the scales out of your brother's favor.
The issue is what kind of reputation does the incubator general partners have. Can they pull in the top VC's consistently each and every year? Can they anticipate the sectors and industries venture capital wants to go to?
If all you did in 2000 was internet startups and the bubble burst, of course incubators for internet startups would be wiped out along with the companies. If there was a "housing" centered incubator in the early twenty first century, it would have done well until the bubble burst as well.
It has nothing to do with early stage startup support services (since YC isn't really an incubator), but with everyone in the space putting all their eggs in one basket with internet technologies.
It depends. If the financial gains of SOPA are out weighed by the financial loss of losing customers then sure they can just decide not to support it anymore.
It just comes down to which is a better business decision. They have to operate on numbers not on ideology.
It is worth trying at least. In the meantime make some personal projects that prove what you can do. It can be a simple game, or a solution to help a small business.
Don't forget that networking can also help you bypass such requirements if you have an internal referral.
The VC taking the bait assumption is a bad one. They will look at the team you have, and if you can't get the job done, they'll establish the terms in a way they can push the founders out and replace them with a team that can get the job done.
Can you convince a couple customers (businesses or consumers depending on your project) to sign up for a pilot program? That is usually an easy way to tell if it has merit and value. If you can convince a few of them to cut you a check to be a part of it? Even better. Beyond anything else that will validate if the product is of interest, and that your team can make the sales.
Reduce the concept to its core and eliminate all other features that are unnecessary and see if that is within your means to develop.
If you can't get initial interest through a pilot program, or a prototype built on your own it's probably not viable for your team.
I tend to be of the mind to learn by doing. As many of the others have mentioned, have conversations with your team members and spend time with them. A common practice is to grab lunch with them. This will help you get to know them and become more comfortable talking and listening to them.
I would also recommend regular work oriented meetings with them. Some may disagree, but I think regular meetings to review work, and go over tasks has a lot of value. You will see when they are finishing up their work and be able to hand off tasks more readily. Also do what you can to get feedback from them on you, and don't take it personally when they are critical and learn from it.
Ultimately there is no one answer and you have to find your own style as well as a style that works for your team. A conscious effort and trial and error will be better than books.
You should always ask for an estimate on how many hours any job will take and how much it will cost (ask for a max if you need to in order to get a cap) when you have them do work. At all times you should know how much any of their jobs will take. To protect yourself in the future you can also say that for anything costing over $X you need to have written approval by the CEO/CFO before they can start the work, they will complain about it, but you can always play it off as establishing internal controls in the company. If you've done the above and if something is wrong, talk to them, they are usually reasonable people. Customer service is a part of their business.
In your particular case, I'd recommend asking to split the payments over time. They may ask for interest, but at least it will help your cash flow. Keep in mind, they want to make you happy now - You just got funded and are a growing company. They want you to stick around and be their client as you grow into a billion dollar business, not have you leave to a competitor over a $40k+ bill. It's almost trivial when compared to a long term business relationship.
edit: What's the worst that can happen? They say no and you pay the bill.
He should make his own website regardless of whether there is another place he can contract his services out. Anyone interested will check for a website prior to committing contract work with him.
I would recommend gamedev classifieds that was pointed out earlier, good ol' craigslist, or Gamasutra's contractors section if he has some money to use to get his name out.