5 Tips to Start a Tech Startup If You Are a Non-Technical Founder

To launch a startup, you need to have a product. To create a product, you need a person who can write code. This may seem to be a serious problem for a startup founder lacking programming skills.

However, if you look at the problem from another perspective, there is still hope. At least three ways to solve this problem are as follows:

• learn to code;
• find a technical co-founder;
• outsource technical work (hire a remote team).

Moreover, instead of complex technologies, startups more and more often use ready-made solutions and affordable tools combined together to get the results desired.

In this article, we will provide you with several tips to help you launch a tech startup if you are a non-technical founder.

Start Selling From Day One

If you are a non-technical founder, this is the first thing you should do while a technical team is working on your product. You need time to discuss your future partnership, raise investments, and negotiate sales contracts. The sooner you start, the faster you succeed.

Furthermore, you can start selling your product even before you get it ready for sale. Hearing from people that they like your product and they are going to use it after its launch will not suffice. Convince your future users to pre-order it, offering them good discounts or other incentives in case they pre-order your product. Pre-market sales will be a great confirmation of your idea’s viability.

It is, actually, one of the best options to take full advantage of your time while development is still ongoing.

Always Test Your Ideas

The time you spent to test your idea at an early stage will return to you a hundredfold and will surely help you create a much better solution than when you skip such preliminary preparation. Perhaps you will be able to make important changes to your future plans and, in any case, save money and time.

There are several efficient ways to test an idea, and they will work with almost any product. Read more about it in this article on our blog.

Explore the Market, Not the Code

The startup founder should not only understand the technical part of the project but also know users’ problems perfectly will. To create a high-demand product, you do not have to be a good coder yourself because you can hire skillful developers. However, it is crucial for you to study the market and strive to comprehend the target audience’s needs. The market is full of examples of technically complex and functional products, but no one needs them anyway.

The possibility to get feedback from the target audience before you release your product is very important. This way you will be able to understand what your potential customers need and make a product capable of solving their real problems.

Make a Good Description of Your Future Project

Define the main idea of your product. Find several dozens of potential customers and arrange an interview with them. Ask them what features a product should have to make these people ready to pay for it. Write down their answers and try to trace patterns. Based on this data, you will be able to word a vision of your product.

To make any startup successful, it will take more than just to be a good technical specialist. You also have to understand customers’ problems very well. You can always hire good outsourced developers and avoid the need of looking for a co-founder. Research the market and see what it needs.

Hire CTO or Find an Outsourced Team

If you lack the skills and experience in a particular area, the best way to cover that gap is to find a partner who has the skills required. However, taking into account the potential risks of any partnership, you may find it more advantageous to hire an outsourced remote team or a chief technical officer (CTO) who will take care of this task.

Hiring freelancers will cost you less. The risks, however, are much higher, and, having no good technical background, you had better discard this option. To outsource technical expertise is the most reasonable solution at least at the MVP stage. An outsourced company will likely manage to provide you with all the necessary expertise to allow the further development of your project.

Do What You Can Do Well

Your ego does not belong here. Your responsibility is to do all things for which it would be irrational to waste developers’ time. Moreover, a non-technical specialist can handle some things much better, such as marketing, design, or sales.

As you expand and scale your startup after the launch, you will have only two action options: have a lot of money at the ready to hire other people or learn how to become a jack of all trades. And we believe the latter option is better.

To summarize

If you are a non-technical startup founder, you will anyway have to look for a partner with technical skills or hire outsourced developers. However, you can significantly reduce costs and launch a startup with ease if you follow the tips we have recollected above.

Test your idea, communicate with your target audience, analyze the market, start selling even before the release, and in general, just do what you can do well. Then, you will surely succeed.

If you are looking for a reliable partner who will take on the solution of technical problems, contact us. We will help you turn your ideas into reality.