Tech for Non-Techies

Andi Govindia has gone through three accelerators on her start-up journey. This helped her build a business model, find co-founders and get her first major clients. Andi leads Riviter, a visual search company that uses AI to predict fashion and beauty trends, and counts L'Oreal amongst its clients.   If you're interested in entrepreneurship and how non-technical founders can succeed in tech, this...

Hiring developers and designers to build your tech product is always risky, because as a non-techie, you're hiring people to do things you don't know how to do. Is outsourcing more risky because you're far away from the team? Or is in-house more risky, simply because it usually costs more? Listen to this episode to find out.   Learning notes from this episode: Always  get employees and contractors...

More money is entering venture capital today than ever before. This means more career opportunities for investors, and funding options for founders. In this episode, you'll hear from Check Warner, parter at Ada's Ventures, and co-Founder of Diversity VC. Check talks about her career transition from advertising to VC, how the venture industry is changing and how that affects founders.   Learning no...

Why do some products go viral and others die a quiet death? The answer lies in growth hacking.  Growth hacking is a type of marketing that combines working on the product, which is an inside job, and working on promotion, which is an outside job. It is a new discipline born with the tech sector, and growing in popularity today. Learning notes from this episode: The  Dropbox growth hacking case stu...

Neither life nor business are linear. Startups often pivot their business models several times to find product market fit, just as we try out different careers. In this episode, you'll hear from Hannah Feldman, the CEO and co-founder of Kidadl, which helps families do fun and useful things with their kids. Hannah began her career as a corporate lawyer, then worked in banking, and then with Dragon...

"The business strategies employed by highly successful start-ups and the career strategies employed by highly successful individuals are strikingly similar," says Reid Hoffman in his book  The Startup of You . If you want to have a great career in tech as non-techie, but don't know how to get started, this episode is for you. Learning notes from this episode: Hoffman says we all have  3 puzzle pie...

Space tech developments aren't just a battle between middle aged billionaires. Nor is it a Cold War leftover.  The technologies we use every day to watch TV and hail a taxi rely on connections in space. As the cost of space tech falls, and VC investment in the sector rises, the opportunities for business and consumer innovation open up. Listen to this episode with Dr James Lambert, Head of Operati...

Big data and predictive analytics can help you make profits, sell clothes and strike oil. But, unless you know how to ask data scientists the right questions and then use their answers, data are just a collection of meaningless facts. Listen to this episode to learn what data scientists do and how to work with them.   Learning notes from this episode: Every senior level professional today has to l...

Put on your party pants! In this episode, you'll hear from Julie Novack, the CEO & non-technical co-founder of PartySlate. PartySlate is a platform that connects event professionals to people planning events. During the pandemic, PartySlate had to quickly reinvent its offering, but managed to end 2020 with no revenue loss. This is a great story in about resilience, leadership and giving users what...

Storing stuff costs money, this is why it's good to look in the back of the cupboard and decide whether you really need all those spices you bought 5 years ago. This is the same with data stored by tech companies. Companies have to pay to store data on servers. Google pays to keep all of those cat videos on YouTube.  Learning notes from this episode: Storing data costs money and most companies ren...

A robust venture capital industry is one of the pillars of the today's tech boom, because it provides the funding for new companies to grow. But "venture capital is not a job for everyone," says venture investor Dr Itxaso del Palacio in this week's episode. Itxaso is a leading venture capitalist. She launched Microsoft Ventures in Europe and is Partner at  Notion Capital  today. She also teaches E...

Most start-ups fail, but founders and investors can still use this for career success. Learning how tech products get made and how the companies behind them make money, opens so many doors to interesting and lucrative opportunities. Many product managers and venture capitalists have transitioned into their jobs via start-ups. Learning notes from this episode: Almost every company is now a tech com...

"Come to developers with good research and understand your customer. If you don't understand your customer, how can you expect the developer to build features for that customer?"  says developer Ariana Waller, founder of Wally Tech. Ariana works with non-technical founders and helps them bring their visions to life. But, many founders want to hire developers too early or make the wrong hires. List...

"The biggest lie told in tech is that you that you need to be a coder. I think that being able to understand the user experience behind tech, being able to articulate technology, and being able to get other people excited about it, is what you really need to run a good company,"  says Jenny Griffiths MBE, founder of Snap Vision. Jenny is the founder and CEO of Snap Vision, a visual search company...

Making a prototype is a key step in your journey in bringing your tech idea  to life. Begin with UX research, which we covered in last week's episode. With your research done, it's time to move on to making a "fake product," which you will test with real users to see if there is enough demand to invest in creating the real thing. To do this, Sophia takes you through the  Sprint method  developed b...

The prototyping process is the first step in the product development journey. To go from idea to live app, site or algorithm, you need to test it with target users. A good prototype can get you funding, but more importantly, it can show you whether the concept is worth pursuing in the first place. One of the biggest mistakes non-technical founders make is hiring developers before they have a teste...

Learning notes from this episode:   APIs are tiny snippets of code that allow one tech product to be integrated into another tech product. For example, each time you see Login with Facebook in a website or an app, that company is using the Facebook API to allow you to login. Railsbank allows companies to move money around just like a bank would, by giving access to its services via its API To lear...

Learning notes from this episode:   The bit of an app or site you interact with is called a front end. If you can touch it, swipe it or speak to it, it is a front end. The front end is a computer that speaks to humans. The front end is like your sensory organs: eyes, ears and mouth. The back end (the server side) is the bit of the app that you cannot interact with yourself: it is a computer that o...

Learning notes from this episode:   The new breed of tech successes today value people who have a strong understanding of the user, not only engineering.  Many of the technologies underlying the products we use today are not as frontier as they used to be. This means that products compete on their usability, not just on functionality. Learn to think like a designer researching an idea. Study peopl...

Learning notes from this episode: Technical debt is the mess that gets left over from writing code and should be regularly cleaned up in order for the engineering team to work properly.   Alexandre suggests thinking of the tech development process like a restaurant kitchen. Having spillage and potato peels dropping on the floor is a normal part of the cooking process. But if you do not have a regi...

Key learning notes from this episode: A product is a solution to a problem someone is experiencing. The goal of your product is to solve that problem.   Different products focus on different metrics , because they are solving different problems. For example, Airbnb measures the number of nights booked, but Facebook focusses on daily active users.  Product goals are not the same as business goals....

Learning notes from this episode:   Venture capitalists have three main jobs: sourcing deals and investing, raising capital for their own funds and helping the start-ups in their portfolio. Early stage investing, like early stage start-ups, is risky. In the early stages, companies are still finding structure and product market fit. This makes them the right environment for some people, but complet...

Learning notes from this episode:   The no code movement is the idea that you can build a digital product using existing tools , which you assemble together without writing any of your own code. It includes everything from website and app builders like Bubble, to tools that automate e-commerce processes and marketing, like Mailchimp.   Building a simple solution using tools that are already out th...

Learning notes: The tech CEO's job is to work with other people who have different skills to reach a clear business aim . It is not to supervise everything or do everything themselves.  You can use technology and data to answer all sorts of business questions , such as: Where shall we drill for oil? Should we make more lipstick?  How should we price our product?  Who are our most profitable custom...

Learning notes from this episode: Beri's first hire was a designer, not a developer.  He found her through via a recommendation. This is the best way to hire product talent. Beri has never had a technical co-founder,  like most of the successful non-technical founders we've had on TFNT. Many people get put off starting work on their venture because they do not have a technical co-founder. We keep...