Really wish I knew how these kickstarters learnt and started in the hardware business, I have so many idea's for phones, smartwatches and android TV box's but have no idea how I would even prototype this stuff or even develop the OS behind it all... Sighh

post it here
www.flopstarter.com

You can look for "eval boards" or something like that and then cobble stuff together. Either it's the ARM Cortex-A ballpark, which should come with Linux, so the OS question is solved. Or if you want to go low-power, it can be Cortex-M, for which there are also nice eval boards, but you'd have to know how to program a microcontroller bare metal. Or integrate a small RTOS.

An EE background may be useful, perhaps even more than CS.

yeah like @Charon92 says shenzehn is the place to be. There are acelorameters/Incubators companies who provide you with what you need knowledge, connections to build your thing in exchange of stock.