I could provide a one page combination business objectives statement and high level requirement specification, but a detailed spec would necessarily be longer and more complex in format.

No, I can't fund the development effort. If I could I wouldn't need a Y Combinator Plus.

I appreciate your observation about the seemingly limited value of just "the idea itself", but that's just the issue I was raising. The clear vision of why, what and how is indeed all I have to bring to the table.

Here's the deal, if you can come up with a document that has sufficient detail for someone else to implement the idea, then you could potentially implement it yourself.

Modern web development is not a mysterious form of magic, it's most comparable to a genre of theatre that relies on some very literal actors who will stick to the script exactly.

I've seen people with no more than a community college class in web design build profitable businesses online. That's one of the great things about the current state of the art, you don't need to be a graduate of the right school, or have the right background, you just need to be willing to put in a lot of work and skull sweat.

Given your faith in the current state of the art, what tools would you use/recommend to build either a simple Digg-like service or a threaded discussion board.

This week; I'd just grab the reddit download and start from there.

If I wanted to do something that was a bit more complex I'd start with Django and use the comments application that comes bundled with as a base for the functionality i actually needed.

But if all you need is a threaded forum you're better off with a hosted solution like http://slinkset.com/

If you're starting from zero, pick up a programming language, and go to it. Make mistakes now so that you can put them behind you.