Q:

Costs/profit of/when starting an indie company

In short, I want to start a game company. I do not have much coding experience (just basic understanding and ability to write basic programs), any graphics design experience, any audio mixing experience, or whatever else technical. However, I do have a lot of ideas, great analytical skills and a very logical approach to life. I do not have any friends who are even remotely technical (or creative in regards to games for that matter).
So now that we've cleared that up, my question is this: how much, minimally, would it cost me to start such a company? I know that a game could be developed in under half a year, which means it would have to operate for half a year prior, and that's assuming that the people working on the first project do their jobs good, don't leave game breaking bugs, a bunch of minor bugs, etc.. So how much would it cost me, and what would be the likely profit in half a year? I'm looking at minimal costs here, as to do it, I would have to sell my current apartment and buy a new, smaller one, pay taxes, and likely move to US/CA/UK to be closer to technologically advanced people (and be able to speak the language of course).
EDIT: I'm looking at a small project for starters, not a huge AAA title.

A:

This is mostly an unanswerable question, but I'll go through some of the things you mention.
You don't have any useful skills to bring to the table - sorry to be blunt - so you basically have to bankroll the enterprise if you want anybody to take you seriously.
Your main cost is the people you need to employ. Unless you know what sort of game you're going to make, you're not going to know how many people you need, so that hinders things somewhat. But I'll assume you can make the game you want to make with 1 programmer and 1 artist.
According to the Game Developer 2011 Game Industry Salary Survey you'd expect to pay a programmer about $7750 a month and artists about $6300. Most developers can be hired for significantly less than that - but with a small team, you probably can't afford to gamble on junior people. So that's almost $85,000 on salary for six months - not including paying yourself. Perhaps you can save a few thousand on less experienced developer, but there are other roles such as sound, music, web developer, etc, so I don't imagine you'll be able to do it much more cheaply than that.
You may be able to get away without spending money on an office and have people work from home instead, but you'll probably have to spend on technology and infrastructure - this could be anything from next to nothing to maybe $5000 for a few engine licenses, app approval fees and developer network fees, server hosting, IT support, etc.
Then you'll need some sort of publicity for the game. That means advertising campaigns, marketing, PR, etc. I would expect to spend several thousand on that if you mean business.
So, I would estimate the costs for you to be roughly in the area of $100,000.
How much profit would you make? Well, most games don't make a profit. One survey of iOS games said the average revenue was $165,121, so you might expect profit of $65,000. Unfortunately revenue is not distributed normally across all games - and in fact the median revenue was $2,400, meaning you might more commonly expect to lose about $97,000. So it's a very risky gamble.
I would suggest learning a technical skill so that you can contribute directly to your game and decrease your salary costs. It also means you can work on the game while otherwise employed, and then only take the company full time when the game is released and successful - if it ever reaches that point.

