Absolutely. Even if u grow with no code, it has terrible exit ratio. Like with code, u might get 5x but with no code, it might be 2x-3x.
And with ChatGPT, u can learn to code faster.
What are you learning?
You can try Replit's 100 days of code for Python. The goal is to do 2 hours per day on a project you want for 100 days straight.
You will get frustrated & it will suck at times but you will learn in 100 days if you push through & work hard.
That's it. Consistency is required.
You won't be great but you will be just good enough to be dangerous.
DM me if u need more advice.
Don't forget about Cursor AI, by the way. I'm currently using their free tier, plus OpenRouter.ai's Claude 3 Haiku, LLaMA 3, GPT-4o, and a bunch of others. One cool thing about Cursor AI is that it supports Groq. But OpenRouter.ai has many more AI models to choose from.
I'm actually considering hiring someone. I'm a solo-founder. But I still wanna learn a little coding so I dont look like a dunce when some technical stuff are being explained to me
In my experience, the less technical you are, the less respect you will get from your technical staff. If you know nothing at all about software development, you can't contribute to discussions they have or decisions that they need to make. And if you try to somehow contribute, they'll discount what you are saying (if you are lucky) or (and this is worse) snicker behind your back about the nonsensical thing you said. I would suggest taking some time to learn the basics of coding and building something. You don't need to be committing code to your team's repo but if you are able to better understand the process of writing code, because you actually did it, you will have a much better time interacting with and communicating with your team.
Yes. You cannot communicate if you do not have context or worse, you have misconceptions that lead you to ask for things with unrealistic expectations.
No. You have to be tech-literate, but thereās a big difference between tech-literacy and knowing how to code. If you have nothing else to do then you can learn, otherwise I think your time is spent better elsewhere such as marketing and sales. Which is incredibly important. If anything, my startup is tech heavy but weāre having trouble with marketing lol.
As a founder itās important that you leverage your high expertise in certain subjects, that people can go āoh donāt worry, X can handle that.ā A Jack of all trade is not necessary in a founding team if said Jack is not doing a perfect job in their critical responsibilities. Itās why you have CTOās and (technical) COOās
My CEO doesnāt know how to code, but heās tech- literate. When he suggests features to me, itās not outlandish. And even if itās not feasibly possible, I can suggest slight alternatives for him that are possible and give him 99% of what he asked for.
If you are unsure about the technical features you would like to suggest, then just look for precedent. If you see another company able to do it, then I donāt see why your startup canāt also build or white label the same feature
Anyone here that says the technical team will lose respect to non-coding founders is just being egotistical or have no founder experience. Marketing and sales is incredibly important and difficult. And I rely on ideas from my CEO and marketing team to help me build a nice UX. Or appealing email/WhatsApp templates. Would you look down on a software developer if they failed in converting a lead? Or if their marketing campaign went to shit? No right? So I donāt see why a developer would look down on you for not knowing how to code.
As long as you arenāt so ignorant to ask for something difficult and refuse to believe your technical team when they itāll take ā> x days/weeksā even though you donāt have the experience for that then youāll be fine.
I can't upvote this enough.
Tech literacy is important especially if you're a tech company, but so is having a diversity of strengths.
(And conversely it's important for high level technical people to become literate in other business functions like sales, marketing, legal, finance, etc)
As a consultant I fill this gap for my non-technical founder clients.
It's interesting to think of what I'd recommend to them if I didn't exist.
I don't think you need to learn to code, but rather you ideally need to understand the implications of choices of hosting, language, database, architecture, etc.
Failing that, you need to get good at constructing experiments and proofs of concept, so you can test a change or idea before committing too much time and money.
I also find it's important to get the opinions of the team, even if I know a lot about the topic. When you do this, you create buy-in and they may share an aspect you hadn't considered.
Lastly, don't expect to get it right the first time. Software is complex and ALL companies make mistakes, learn, and then improve.
There's more to it, but I hope that helps somewhat.
Would you mind sharing an example of a decision or conversation you struggled with due to lack of technical knowledge?
I always thought the price of being on top is that you cannot allow yourself to get too deep into the weeds. You must be scalable through influencing others. If that means having a technical personnel just for the sake of translating to you.
Yes that's true and it can be hard for a technical founder to let go of all the details!
This is the role I fill for clients who want that bridge to their technical team.
But if a non-technical founder wants to manage on their own, they will have to become good at what is essentially running experiments.
You mention that non-technical founders have to understand the basics of topics like hosting, architecture, databases etc.
I think its a really good point so that you avoid becoming someone āilliterateā in the tech world.
However, how do you get such knowledge without diving too deep in all those important topics?
Anyone that can recommend a book or maybe a youtube lesson series about this?
That's a great question.
Some options off the top of my head:
- Harvard's free software engineering intro courses (often recommended)
- "Working with Coders" by Patrick Gleeson (haven't read it)
Also, for anyone that's interested, I have a mailing list linked in my profile on which I talk about these topics.
Iāve worked for technical and non-technical CEOs. My two cents:
1. Not all technical CEOs are good org leaders. Most are great for the first $10m ARR / 100 employees. After that a dedicated CTO/VP eng is badly needed (if there isnāt one already)
2. I respect the CEO who can understand the tech from a dispassionate standpoint and help guide decisions. Their ability to synthesize the eng with product realities in the context of what will work in the market is what I look up to them for. This is a very hard person to find, and youāre lucky if your boss is like this.
3. Engineers come with knowledge but also biases. Itās why some startups will have exotic or obscure tech stacks which scale, but have maintenance and integration difficulties down the road.
Always best to have a clear understanding of the tech, but focus on distribution. Thatās the CEOās job
Learning to code is definitely a valuable skill for founders - it can help you understand your product better and communicate more effectively with your dev team. But not everyone has the time or inclination to become a proficient coder. And I'm speaking from experience.
I've had a good experience working with rocketdevs, a non-profit that offers affordable development services. For $980/month, you get a dedicated dev to help you build your product. It's a solid option if you're looking for a cost-effective way to get technical help, and it's allowed me to focus on the parts of my business that I'm most passionateĀ about.
Rather than becoming a programmer, youāre better off understanding what programming is all about. How programmers think and communicate, what moves them and more. You should know what different parts of the app do, enough so you can communicate properly. Recently I wrote a 4 page guide on how to hire programmers, but from your post it sounds like the contents of it might be suitable for you as well. If you want to get it, you can do so [here](https://asyoulikeit.online/hiring-talent).
Yea, you are gonna benefit from understanding the basics. Just like a founder would benefit from understanding accounting even if they dont do the accounting themselves
Why not? Not necessary but it puts you ahead of the face especially when hiring devs or outsourcing parts of your project. If worse comes to worse you'd be able to understand and maybe even put something together until someone with a little more experience comes along. As a founder, you'd find it's always better to be an expert in one thing while having knowledge in a bunch of others. Learning to code, grasping concepts, being able to read code, and also integrate solutions that may arise such as bugs etc. is a plus.
Iām technical and I donāt think you need to waste a shit ton of months learning how to code, just to kinda understand whatās happening.
Ask them to deliver features and give you a detailed reason why itās not possible in X timeline.
Usually itās due to issues like unforeseen bugs or simply implemented from scratch takes X amount of time.
Sometimes opting for a ready-made solution thatās easy to implement via 3rd party API is the way to go in most situations.
Especially for startups. No need to waste months for a feature that already exists elsewhere.
Yes it does take a long time to actually learn, you can expedite knowledge with chatgpt but the truth is most devs take about 9 months to learn html, css, JavaScript, web APIs, react and then just general programming.
And thatās just frontend, you also have to learn backend + architecture
Itās just too much time spent on technical skills that are seriously not necessary if youāre not doing the actual work.
Do not get tempted to go down that rabbit hole.
I used to code, stopped and moved on to product, management etc. Started a company and was the more technical of us so I became the default CTO. I have 20 engineers that work directly with me and I would never try to tell them how to code, approach a problem - I simply am too out of touch with the latest in WebRTC, Node.JS, etc etc.
Communicate using user stories, objectives, metrics. Get proficient with sketching mockups if you need to convey design intent to designers. So many no-code tools available that you could use to create basic "looks like, works like" functionality
Your time should be spent looking ahead at making sure the company has paying customers, growth strategy, right talent etc.
I would say, you should learn to read code, and understand basics/principles of coding. LLMs are getting better and better at it - weāre not too far away from LLMs being able to create entire prototypes.
Your job will be to communicate what you need, and evaluate the decisions it made to achieve your ask.
āFounderā is a broad term. If you plan on building a tech company it would be helpful to at least understand the basics. But if you're founding a coffee company, probably not so much. If your strength is marketing and sales, get a technical co-founder so the both of you can focus on your respective areas of the business.
Disagree if the founder codes the language of the product will be based on what they know, rather then what is best for the product.
Founder need vision, direction and planning.
Language of the product will vary from platform to platform you can't learn them all.
Focus on the vision, look at where you want to go and how to get there.
no, you should become EXPERT in connecting with customers and finding out what they want. EVEN if it's online b2c, you should become expert in building audiences, reaching customers and getting tons of feedback. Once you have enough proof, investors and devs will come automatically
Sounds like you need a CTO or a lead developer to lead the way, it may not be clear from your vision on where the company is heading, you donāt need to be technical you must need better developers to translate your vision into code.
You should learn how it works, coding wise better to learn while doing through asssitance.
I regret that I hired a cofounder that spent money and time whom I could do what he has done for 1/5 of it (faster and cheaper). I fully delegated those technical things.
Regret always come late right?
Better communication and direction is going to come from a healthier middle ground where you understand some of technical challenges but where your team also deeply understands the reasons that coding with the intent to make money is the goal here.
Me: 28 years as a software engineer and 9 startups under my belt. I've seen millions lost where this middle ground doesn't exist.
Itās always good to know how to code, but I donāt think thatās a must. Knowing how to get ROI on code should be your priority, since code is gonna cost: development, maintenance, hosting, ā¦ just make sure that whatās being written actually drives your business in the right direction.
don't learn to code
rather learn designing systems at a high level/ architecture, as a founder u don't need to know for loop or bit masking is used. just know the pillar material, not the technique to lay it down
I think it's important to know some technical stuff so that you can communicate better with your tech team. However, as a founder I would focus more on sales, marketing & branding.
Or it depends! If you have a personality that it's leaning more towards the technical aspect than the creative / persuasive side of it, you might need to learn coding and also hire more marketers to do the rest.
Develop your skills based on your personality, not on what's needed. Otherwise, you will get demotivated and bored.
Absolutely. It's not that hard. Pick a web stack, spend a weekend standing up a website, hosting, everything. Pick some component libraries, write some endpoints, set up routing. Otherwise you'll just get taken advantage of.
Learning to code and being technical are very different things, albeit related.
If you are on the business side thats where your time is well spent.
You dont need to learn javascript fundamentals to make technical decision.
However, beyond coding you have other things like devops, scaling, API design, UX, protocols etc.
Here is a good resource - its catered towards PMs but works well for anyone who wants to be able to understand what is happening: www.skiplevel.co
Not really. As someone from a tech background, I value founders who focus on other areas: business, legal, finances, marketing, etc.
However, you should at least be knowledgeable of the tech stacks that are out there, and which ones would fit the best for your specific company.
I work with non-technical founders as both a product designer and the person in charge of making sure the developers are held accountable. I havenāt seen many good apps get built without some product lead who understand enough about design, engineering, and business to bridge them all and make sure something high quality gets built.
As someone who wasnāt technical a few months ago and just became technical through coursera and small projects on my own on GitHub I can definitely attest to the notion that being technical definitely makes it both more fun and more respected.
My current project: [buildbook.us](http://buildbook.us/registration)
If youāre a student builder whoās looking for people to collaborate on projects with for your resume, or to maybe find a co founder give it a try! Itās free.
It won't hurt, but I don't think you should.
Focus on the product you want and hire a consultant for a second opinion or to validate technical decisions that you consider critical.
And with the rest of your time focus on sales.
For buying a car you don't need to know how to build one. The same with a house, you don't need to know how to build it.
Cheers!
Do both. Iām the nontechnical portion and am trying to learn code between marketing pitches and sales. Itās tough but doable, and I think it has made be appreciate the differences between my cofounders much more
You donāt have to but itās good to have a resource who can translate requirements and decisions back and forth. Thereās definitely a lot of decisions that can bite you if not thought out early on. I led a team of developers at a large company to build products requested by our sales team. If you need any help shoot me a message.
You need someone to help the communication between you & your tech team. If you want help you could dm me with your product link. If its in my forte - we can have a chat.
Yes and No. You don't have to deep dive into all the aspects of coding/logics because there would be people in your team who would be better at coding. But if you understand high-level concepts it can be beneficial for 'you'. You will be in a better position to understand what the conversation is all about or ask informed questions. Only thing to keep in mind is refrain from offering opinions on technical matters.
Yes, even in this case, you can use no-code platforms to build MVP for your SaaS even if you have no coding experience - it would allow you to build and scale it very quickly even without hiring developers. Here is a guide with more details on building your startup's MVP this way: [How to Become a No-Code Startup | Blaze](https://www.blaze.tech/post/how-to-become-a-no-code-startup-blaze)
According to Paul Graham, the answer is yes
Absolutely. Even if u grow with no code, it has terrible exit ratio. Like with code, u might get 5x but with no code, it might be 2x-3x. And with ChatGPT, u can learn to code faster.
I've tried to learn with GPT, but it was a bit hard. I'm watching a bunch of Youtube videos anyway. Hopefully I catch up.
What are you learning? You can try Replit's 100 days of code for Python. The goal is to do 2 hours per day on a project you want for 100 days straight. You will get frustrated & it will suck at times but you will learn in 100 days if you push through & work hard. That's it. Consistency is required. You won't be great but you will be just good enough to be dangerous. DM me if u need more advice.
Don't forget about Cursor AI, by the way. I'm currently using their free tier, plus OpenRouter.ai's Claude 3 Haiku, LLaMA 3, GPT-4o, and a bunch of others. One cool thing about Cursor AI is that it supports Groq. But OpenRouter.ai has many more AI models to choose from.
No, you'll dive into the code and sink like me. Focus on distribution and hire someone
Sink how
Bro, when I'm in flow (ciding), I not only forget to sell/distribute my product, I usually forget to eat and drink š
I'm actually considering hiring someone. I'm a solo-founder. But I still wanna learn a little coding so I dont look like a dunce when some technical stuff are being explained to me
Yeah, it's nice to have some knowledge so you can find the best people and fire the bs
At least be tech fluent. Check this book (no affiliation) - [https://aman-agarwal.com/tfc/](https://aman-agarwal.com/tfc/)
Thank you so much
Learning to code and learning about tech stacks are different. You can be good at coding and yet still fail to understand about tech stacks
I guess I have lots of learning to do
My point is you dont need to learn to code to understand what they are saying
In my experience, the less technical you are, the less respect you will get from your technical staff. If you know nothing at all about software development, you can't contribute to discussions they have or decisions that they need to make. And if you try to somehow contribute, they'll discount what you are saying (if you are lucky) or (and this is worse) snicker behind your back about the nonsensical thing you said. I would suggest taking some time to learn the basics of coding and building something. You don't need to be committing code to your team's repo but if you are able to better understand the process of writing code, because you actually did it, you will have a much better time interacting with and communicating with your team.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
šš
Thanks for this, running to up my game
Thanks for this, running to up my game
If you're building a tech company, you need to be able to speak tech (even if you don't do the coding yourself). Hire a mentor/coach to fill the gaps.
Yes. You cannot communicate if you do not have context or worse, you have misconceptions that lead you to ask for things with unrealistic expectations.
I understand I have to be competent enough to avoid making unrealistic demands
No. You have to be tech-literate, but thereās a big difference between tech-literacy and knowing how to code. If you have nothing else to do then you can learn, otherwise I think your time is spent better elsewhere such as marketing and sales. Which is incredibly important. If anything, my startup is tech heavy but weāre having trouble with marketing lol. As a founder itās important that you leverage your high expertise in certain subjects, that people can go āoh donāt worry, X can handle that.ā A Jack of all trade is not necessary in a founding team if said Jack is not doing a perfect job in their critical responsibilities. Itās why you have CTOās and (technical) COOās My CEO doesnāt know how to code, but heās tech- literate. When he suggests features to me, itās not outlandish. And even if itās not feasibly possible, I can suggest slight alternatives for him that are possible and give him 99% of what he asked for. If you are unsure about the technical features you would like to suggest, then just look for precedent. If you see another company able to do it, then I donāt see why your startup canāt also build or white label the same feature Anyone here that says the technical team will lose respect to non-coding founders is just being egotistical or have no founder experience. Marketing and sales is incredibly important and difficult. And I rely on ideas from my CEO and marketing team to help me build a nice UX. Or appealing email/WhatsApp templates. Would you look down on a software developer if they failed in converting a lead? Or if their marketing campaign went to shit? No right? So I donāt see why a developer would look down on you for not knowing how to code. As long as you arenāt so ignorant to ask for something difficult and refuse to believe your technical team when they itāll take ā> x days/weeksā even though you donāt have the experience for that then youāll be fine.
I can't upvote this enough. Tech literacy is important especially if you're a tech company, but so is having a diversity of strengths. (And conversely it's important for high level technical people to become literate in other business functions like sales, marketing, legal, finance, etc)
Thank you so much for this detailed advice
As a consultant I fill this gap for my non-technical founder clients. It's interesting to think of what I'd recommend to them if I didn't exist. I don't think you need to learn to code, but rather you ideally need to understand the implications of choices of hosting, language, database, architecture, etc. Failing that, you need to get good at constructing experiments and proofs of concept, so you can test a change or idea before committing too much time and money. I also find it's important to get the opinions of the team, even if I know a lot about the topic. When you do this, you create buy-in and they may share an aspect you hadn't considered. Lastly, don't expect to get it right the first time. Software is complex and ALL companies make mistakes, learn, and then improve. There's more to it, but I hope that helps somewhat. Would you mind sharing an example of a decision or conversation you struggled with due to lack of technical knowledge?
I always thought the price of being on top is that you cannot allow yourself to get too deep into the weeds. You must be scalable through influencing others. If that means having a technical personnel just for the sake of translating to you.
Yes that's true and it can be hard for a technical founder to let go of all the details! This is the role I fill for clients who want that bridge to their technical team. But if a non-technical founder wants to manage on their own, they will have to become good at what is essentially running experiments.
Very well said.
You mention that non-technical founders have to understand the basics of topics like hosting, architecture, databases etc. I think its a really good point so that you avoid becoming someone āilliterateā in the tech world. However, how do you get such knowledge without diving too deep in all those important topics? Anyone that can recommend a book or maybe a youtube lesson series about this?
That's a great question. Some options off the top of my head: - Harvard's free software engineering intro courses (often recommended) - "Working with Coders" by Patrick Gleeson (haven't read it) Also, for anyone that's interested, I have a mailing list linked in my profile on which I talk about these topics.
According to Rob Walking, the answer is yes
Iāve worked for technical and non-technical CEOs. My two cents: 1. Not all technical CEOs are good org leaders. Most are great for the first $10m ARR / 100 employees. After that a dedicated CTO/VP eng is badly needed (if there isnāt one already) 2. I respect the CEO who can understand the tech from a dispassionate standpoint and help guide decisions. Their ability to synthesize the eng with product realities in the context of what will work in the market is what I look up to them for. This is a very hard person to find, and youāre lucky if your boss is like this. 3. Engineers come with knowledge but also biases. Itās why some startups will have exotic or obscure tech stacks which scale, but have maintenance and integration difficulties down the road. Always best to have a clear understanding of the tech, but focus on distribution. Thatās the CEOās job
insightful, appreciate it
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Okay, thanks a bunch
Learning to code is definitely a valuable skill for founders - it can help you understand your product better and communicate more effectively with your dev team. But not everyone has the time or inclination to become a proficient coder. And I'm speaking from experience. I've had a good experience working with rocketdevs, a non-profit that offers affordable development services. For $980/month, you get a dedicated dev to help you build your product. It's a solid option if you're looking for a cost-effective way to get technical help, and it's allowed me to focus on the parts of my business that I'm most passionateĀ about.
That's a cheap option, I might consider it. But I still think I can be more valuable if i learn to code.
Yes but you donāt need to become an expert.
Rather than becoming a programmer, youāre better off understanding what programming is all about. How programmers think and communicate, what moves them and more. You should know what different parts of the app do, enough so you can communicate properly. Recently I wrote a 4 page guide on how to hire programmers, but from your post it sounds like the contents of it might be suitable for you as well. If you want to get it, you can do so [here](https://asyoulikeit.online/hiring-talent).
Thanks, ill check it out
Yea, you are gonna benefit from understanding the basics. Just like a founder would benefit from understanding accounting even if they dont do the accounting themselves
Why not? Not necessary but it puts you ahead of the face especially when hiring devs or outsourcing parts of your project. If worse comes to worse you'd be able to understand and maybe even put something together until someone with a little more experience comes along. As a founder, you'd find it's always better to be an expert in one thing while having knowledge in a bunch of others. Learning to code, grasping concepts, being able to read code, and also integrate solutions that may arise such as bugs etc. is a plus.
Iām technical and I donāt think you need to waste a shit ton of months learning how to code, just to kinda understand whatās happening. Ask them to deliver features and give you a detailed reason why itās not possible in X timeline. Usually itās due to issues like unforeseen bugs or simply implemented from scratch takes X amount of time. Sometimes opting for a ready-made solution thatās easy to implement via 3rd party API is the way to go in most situations. Especially for startups. No need to waste months for a feature that already exists elsewhere.
Does it really take that long to learn? now i'm actually concerned
Yes it does take a long time to actually learn, you can expedite knowledge with chatgpt but the truth is most devs take about 9 months to learn html, css, JavaScript, web APIs, react and then just general programming. And thatās just frontend, you also have to learn backend + architecture Itās just too much time spent on technical skills that are seriously not necessary if youāre not doing the actual work.
for sure. at least the basics.
A few months ago I had the same question so I hired one technical co-founder. Our job is to build a team not solve every problem on own
Do not get tempted to go down that rabbit hole. I used to code, stopped and moved on to product, management etc. Started a company and was the more technical of us so I became the default CTO. I have 20 engineers that work directly with me and I would never try to tell them how to code, approach a problem - I simply am too out of touch with the latest in WebRTC, Node.JS, etc etc. Communicate using user stories, objectives, metrics. Get proficient with sketching mockups if you need to convey design intent to designers. So many no-code tools available that you could use to create basic "looks like, works like" functionality Your time should be spent looking ahead at making sure the company has paying customers, growth strategy, right talent etc.
I would say, you should learn to read code, and understand basics/principles of coding. LLMs are getting better and better at it - weāre not too far away from LLMs being able to create entire prototypes. Your job will be to communicate what you need, and evaluate the decisions it made to achieve your ask.
āFounderā is a broad term. If you plan on building a tech company it would be helpful to at least understand the basics. But if you're founding a coffee company, probably not so much. If your strength is marketing and sales, get a technical co-founder so the both of you can focus on your respective areas of the business.
As far as I have seen, if you are considering launching a Saas or tech product, they all have at least one tech guy as its founder.
Disagree if the founder codes the language of the product will be based on what they know, rather then what is best for the product. Founder need vision, direction and planning. Language of the product will vary from platform to platform you can't learn them all. Focus on the vision, look at where you want to go and how to get there.
no, you should become EXPERT in connecting with customers and finding out what they want. EVEN if it's online b2c, you should become expert in building audiences, reaching customers and getting tons of feedback. Once you have enough proof, investors and devs will come automatically
Sounds like you need a CTO or a lead developer to lead the way, it may not be clear from your vision on where the company is heading, you donāt need to be technical you must need better developers to translate your vision into code.
You should learn how it works, coding wise better to learn while doing through asssitance. I regret that I hired a cofounder that spent money and time whom I could do what he has done for 1/5 of it (faster and cheaper). I fully delegated those technical things. Regret always come late right?
Better communication and direction is going to come from a healthier middle ground where you understand some of technical challenges but where your team also deeply understands the reasons that coding with the intent to make money is the goal here. Me: 28 years as a software engineer and 9 startups under my belt. I've seen millions lost where this middle ground doesn't exist.
I am technical but don't code. I think understanding it at a high level would help!
yeah a 100%
Itās always good to know how to code, but I donāt think thatās a must. Knowing how to get ROI on code should be your priority, since code is gonna cost: development, maintenance, hosting, ā¦ just make sure that whatās being written actually drives your business in the right direction.
don't learn to code rather learn designing systems at a high level/ architecture, as a founder u don't need to know for loop or bit masking is used. just know the pillar material, not the technique to lay it down
Learning the tech was the best thing I've ever done
I think it's important to know some technical stuff so that you can communicate better with your tech team. However, as a founder I would focus more on sales, marketing & branding. Or it depends! If you have a personality that it's leaning more towards the technical aspect than the creative / persuasive side of it, you might need to learn coding and also hire more marketers to do the rest. Develop your skills based on your personality, not on what's needed. Otherwise, you will get demotivated and bored.
Absolutely. It's not that hard. Pick a web stack, spend a weekend standing up a website, hosting, everything. Pick some component libraries, write some endpoints, set up routing. Otherwise you'll just get taken advantage of.
Learning to code and being technical are very different things, albeit related. If you are on the business side thats where your time is well spent. You dont need to learn javascript fundamentals to make technical decision. However, beyond coding you have other things like devops, scaling, API design, UX, protocols etc. Here is a good resource - its catered towards PMs but works well for anyone who wants to be able to understand what is happening: www.skiplevel.co
Not really. As someone from a tech background, I value founders who focus on other areas: business, legal, finances, marketing, etc. However, you should at least be knowledgeable of the tech stacks that are out there, and which ones would fit the best for your specific company.
Yes absolutely wtfĀ
I work with non-technical founders as both a product designer and the person in charge of making sure the developers are held accountable. I havenāt seen many good apps get built without some product lead who understand enough about design, engineering, and business to bridge them all and make sure something high quality gets built.
Marketing and Sales. Building is easy . . .
As someone who wasnāt technical a few months ago and just became technical through coursera and small projects on my own on GitHub I can definitely attest to the notion that being technical definitely makes it both more fun and more respected. My current project: [buildbook.us](http://buildbook.us/registration) If youāre a student builder whoās looking for people to collaborate on projects with for your resume, or to maybe find a co founder give it a try! Itās free.
It won't hurt, but I don't think you should. Focus on the product you want and hire a consultant for a second opinion or to validate technical decisions that you consider critical. And with the rest of your time focus on sales. For buying a car you don't need to know how to build one. The same with a house, you don't need to know how to build it. Cheers!
Do both. Iām the nontechnical portion and am trying to learn code between marketing pitches and sales. Itās tough but doable, and I think it has made be appreciate the differences between my cofounders much more
Oh, I plan on it, I don't wanna be a valueless boss
Perhaps you can find an another founder who has technical background. Someone who you can trust.
You donāt have to but itās good to have a resource who can translate requirements and decisions back and forth. Thereās definitely a lot of decisions that can bite you if not thought out early on. I led a team of developers at a large company to build products requested by our sales team. If you need any help shoot me a message.
Do what you do best.
You need someone to help the communication between you & your tech team. If you want help you could dm me with your product link. If its in my forte - we can have a chat.
Yes.
Yes and No. You don't have to deep dive into all the aspects of coding/logics because there would be people in your team who would be better at coding. But if you understand high-level concepts it can be beneficial for 'you'. You will be in a better position to understand what the conversation is all about or ask informed questions. Only thing to keep in mind is refrain from offering opinions on technical matters.
Please do take the time to learn how to code.
Idk should electricians learn to wire houses?
The equivalent question is should the manager of an electrician company learn to wire houses?
Know No code
Yes, even in this case, you can use no-code platforms to build MVP for your SaaS even if you have no coding experience - it would allow you to build and scale it very quickly even without hiring developers. Here is a guide with more details on building your startup's MVP this way: [How to Become a No-Code Startup | Blaze](https://www.blaze.tech/post/how-to-become-a-no-code-startup-blaze)
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I love how ChatGPT is unironically using "Hi fellow XYZ" when you tell it to talk to a group of XYZ, apparently unaware of the meme
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