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
Connections and influence which most technical people focus less on.
If you have those, it usually signals to people that you know your stuff around people.
This is the reason why people choose to get their MBAs in prestigious business school.
While you may not need technical details to build a successful company but knowing the technicalities puts you in a better position as a leader, especially when you’re trying to influence a tech person.
Maybe you don’t know the internal workings of an app but you know that your tech counterpart is bullshitting you when they tell you that you need ten and thousands of engineers to run a certain bird app.
Or that you know that someone is overengineering stuff and delaying shipping.
The first job of non tech founder is to pick up the phone, get out of the office and get customers. No MBA needed and likely a net negative for 0-1 phase. You do not need ‘strategy’ at this phase, but rather a massive willingness to hustle get a million no’s and still keep going. You know what good training for this is? Make a simple website with a biz concept and try and get 100 people to sign up. Even pick a biz concept so crazy compelling (free flights to Thailand on demand) and see if you can get users to sign up for that. You will see how hard it is but also learn how to tap into different channels.
There are a ton of things that a business needs, and tech is just one of them
Marketing, Sales, Fundraising, Strategic Partnerships (think: getting other companies to bundle your app or similar things), Ops, etc
I am a non-technical co-founder CEO with a good understanding of technical lingo. I know a little bit of code (I could code super simple apps myself before GPT :)). I understand how stuff works. I can have a decent conversation with our developers, I can identify the flaws in the specifications and understand restrictions with certain ways of doing things.
As a co-founder of a tech startup, this was an extremely useful skill to have, because we never had a technical co-founder and did most of our development with an outsourced agency. (Yes, I’d change that, if I could find a good partner at the time.) This helped us move faster and give suggestions on what things to test, how to shorten dev time (making MVPs of features), which was crucial with an outsourced team.
But what helped the most were my sales and business development skills. You can always find a great developer (cofounder or an employee). It’s much harder to find a great sales person when you’re very early stage. You don’t know who your true customer is, you don’t know what your product is going to look like in couple of months, you’re sometimes not even sure if you’re solving the right problem.
You can always hire development. But nothing beats founder sales in the beginning.
So if you’re doing some preliminary research right now and trying to set yourself up with the best chances of success, I’d work on understanding the basics of product development and user experience design (even just learning the basics of what’s frontend, backend, how databases work, what languages can do what, can help you have a much better conversations with your potential partners).
But mostly I’d work on:
- learning how to test ideas quickly & iterate (read Lean Startup)
- learning how to talk to customers (read The Mom Test)- learning how to sell & negotiate (read Never split the difference)
- learning how to manage your time (just practice)
- learning how to manage people (Extreme ownership, radical candor)
- learning how to price products/bizdev (monetizing innovation is a good book for that)Thank you so much for your insightful response, this is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Wishing you the best for your business! I will make sure to read all your recommendations
Really resonates with me, this question. As someone with a background in software, I’ve often found myself in a similar spot.
When scouting for co-founders in the past, my main focus was always on finding someone who really understood what the customers wanted, and who had strong skills in marketing and sales. I felt confident handling the tech side, but having a partner who excelled in those other areas made a world of difference.
One piece of advice I often share, especially for those looking to launch an MVP, is to consider using a no-code tool or an AI-powered product development platform. These can be incredibly helpful for getting your first 50-100 users. They not only provide a quick way to build something functional but also offer valuable insights into customer behavior and the potential business model around your product.
For no-code development, Softr and Glide are some of the platforms I’ve seen people have success with. They’re pretty user-friendly and a great starting point for non-tech founders to bring their ideas to life without getting too deep into coding
You need to bring the paying customers. Simple as that.
Early stage CEOs most important job is “don’t run out of money”. That means you are always selling, always looking for investors, always NOT RUNNING OUT OF MONEY.
As an early stage/pre-revenue startup, every time I talk about money my technical cofounder is like “eh, I dont really want to give up any equity” or “I think we are good, I can do X,Y, and Z so I dont see any need for immediate help.” I respect that attitude, and I definitely agree with it to an extent! But the biggest killer of startups is running out of money. Making sure we have money, have a steady flow of money, and have easy access to money is hugely important.
That being said, its always good to have someone to keep you in check. Just because its on the table doesnt mean you have to take it.
Selling
Sales / marketing is just as important as ops / fulfillment. So if you do not have an engineering / tech background and aren’t experienced in operations, focus on sales + marketing.
Do you already have an app vision?
Me being you, I wouldn’t focus on anything but deeply understanding the problem that you’re trying to solve and how to reach your target audience. Everything else can be replaced by a developer/designer at some point.
Talk to people both competitors and prospects, figure out the distribution dynamics, and then build a prototype of what the app should be like. Once you know the market A-Z and are able to build some momentum/confidence, then commit to a co-founder.
If you don’t have that, I’d find it disrespectful to ask someone to commit their time and energy to your vision.
Thank you very much for your advice! I haven’t started anything properly yet, just doing market research at the moment. I was just prematurely trying to gauge what might be needed in the future.
Marketing/business/finance/ops etc.
Whatever you do to learn CS as a half measure will only take your focus away from the stuff you should be doing (and annoy the tech folks).
Agreed. Nothing annoys technical people more than johnny-come-latelys who imagine they can learn your whole career in a month.
If OP loved code, it probably would have already come up in their life.
I do think everyone should learn something about technology project management, software design life cycle etc. - but not everyone needs to learn how to code.
I do think everyone should learn to code. Not a lot, necessarily, but enough that they realize that computers aren’t magic boxes, they do what they’re told - designing programs is mostly about figuring what you actually want to the computer to do, and only then working out how to tell them. As a business leader, the first part is something you need to understand well, because you’ll be doing it constantly (if only at a high level).
That said, if you’re interested in starting a business, there’s a shit ton of stuff you should be mainlining first. Economics, accounting and finance, presentation skills, employment law, product management, relevant portions of law, knowledge of whatever sector you’re working in. Your time is valuable so make the most of it.
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.
Not at all. Be the best in your field and join other tech guy! Focus on vision and planning
Sell sell sell, I would focus on selling. If it’s not clear, get really good at selling, like really good. Get all your shit together and get selling. Sell some shit.
As a non-tech founder I’m focusing on Product discovery / management, domain expertise, and recruitment.
Technical skills wise, I’m learning more about UI/UX and some python for data analysis.
Not a founder but have talked to some about this and they basically said it’s not hard to find someone who can write solid code, but it is hard to find someone who can market effectively, build out a good go to market strategy etc.
Deepen your business skills