Hi guys,
I was just wondering if you were someone who had little to no grounding in tech as a founder of a tech (mobile app) company. Would you direct your efforts into CS/learning how to program or would you develop your business acumen / softer skills, potentially considering an MBA in marketing? I have no intention of writing the program but hope to find a tech confounder who would or at least be able to liaise with a dev team.
TIA
Personally, I’d ignore the MBA in all honesty - decent option for folks that are part of a larger, traditional organization/more strategic well past product-market fit. Horrible if you’re in a startup or pre-PMF and in the “scrappy stage”. At that point, it’s about learning what works on the fly.
Realistically, you can fill in knowledge gaps through YouTube videos + experience testing for cheap iterating with feedback.
As a non-technical co-founder, you should prioritize everything and anything that doesn’t touch the tech itself. Sales, marketing, finance, ops, user relations, etc. Identify your strong points and see where the knowledge gaps are; focus your efforts to become more well rounded.
But I wouldn’t entirely ignore the CS portion either. If you come from zero technical understanding, it’ll cause friction between you and your co-founder in terms of priorities, deadlines, etc. It can be like talking two different languages (depending on the co-founder). Put in some work to better understand how the software works, basic understanding of your tech stack.
Personally, I did a few months of full-stack codecademy courses for a few hours a day and it worked wonders. I have a basic/intermediate understanding of coding fundamentals and can brainstorm better product solutions.