The Non-Technical Founder Newsletter.

I class myself as a non-technical founder because I didn’t do software engineering at university, I don’t come from a technical career background, and I don’t know how to code.?

My first venture into starting a tech company was digitising my family’s music business where I worked with various development agencies. During this time I was burned badly and wasted a huge amount of money, so I know first-hand all of the challenges of being a non-technical in the tech startup world.?

This led me, alongside my co-founders, to build Founder and Lightning to help non-tech founders build tech companies and avoid our mistakes. We help them explore, validate, build and scale their companies without the need for a development agency or CTO. So far we have built 30+ tech companies with non-technical founders and are now investing in them too.?

We want to make it clear that non-technical people can, and have, built successful tech companies, they just need the right tools and guidance.?

To help in some capacity, I thought it would be useful to start a monthly newsletter that shares all of our learnings from the last 8 years and everything I’d like to have known at the start of my journey as a non-technical founder.?

Here’s a snapshot of some topics it will cover:?

1) Why non-technical founders don’t need to hire a CTO in the early stages.?

Around a third of co-founder relationships split up. We’ve seen it happen a lot, and it’s very messy.?

The desire for a non-technical founder is to get in a technical co-founder straight away to cover the tech side, but often times it’s too early, they rush to bring them in and realise that there isn’t a culture fit (but at this point, the equity is dealt out).?

We always recommend starting the business with a venture builder, technical partner, or a good development agency (more on this in a following newsletter) and waiting to find the right co-founder. No co-founder is better than a bad one.?

2) The right way to build a product with your technical partner.?

I always recommend non-technical founders to avoid building their product with a fixed scope.?

A fixed scope means every detail of what is being built is agreed upon in advance and is fixed– there is little room for movement and every change needs to be requested and re-estimated.?

Instead, I recommend Agile development which helps you make quick changes, prioritise the right features for your users, is more efficient and allows you to get feedback faster. Here’s more info in one of my recent posts.?

3) The most important qualities in a founder.?

Spoiler alert: it’s not knowing how to code.?

The best and most successful founders we’ve worked with are:

1. Domain experts- they have detailed knowledge of a specific domain/industry and know the problem they want to solve first-hand and in detail.
2. Commercially-minded- they have a commercial background, instead of technical, meaning they know how to sell a product and have a network to sell into.
3. Confident yet humble- fast learners, extremely competent, passionate, gritty and determined

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More on all of these topics in later newsletters. Looking forward to kicking this off, and always open to questions and suggestions on what to cover.?

– Matt