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.

DM the link please. Would love to take a look!

Cold starting a two sided marketplace is HARD (speaking from experience).

You have to get scrappy. Where do your users live? Find out where and niche down to build an initial community. Get people onboarded, get feedback, iterate. Try to make the feedback / ship loop as fast as possible and continue tracking new people coming into both sides of the marketplace.

I don’t know what your funding situation is, but having some money for paid ads can be helpful as you start growing. I wouldn’t even think about it until you start building a core user base.

Shoot me a DM if you have questions. Happy to help. Good luck!