If you’re a non-technical entrepreneur who has an excellent idea for a startup, there is a lot you can do other than worried about the chances of success being a non-tech guy. Thinking about the lack of technical skills is not an excuse for not working on your idea. Remember that your driving power must be the right mindset; only it can make you confident and lead to success.
We often witness situations like tech founders searching for non-tech people for their startups. The role of a non-tech person and a tech person is like two sides of a coin. Both have unique talents and skills for building a strong tech-oriented startup.
Well, It’s a fact that while we look around, we can see tech guys with great coding skills build most of the successful tech startups. But it doesn’t mean that no non-tech people are making their ventures. Startups of many non-tech guys are also unbeaten in this world. Technology is the future, so if you believe in your startup idea, rest thoughts are negligible.
You don’t have years to think. Instead, start from the beginning.
The Initial Steps
1. Find your non-technical MVP
If someone asks you about your idea, you must try to deliver the concept with your wireframe and get them excited about having it in life. To create an MVP or initial framework, you don’t need an excellent technical experience or your wireframe look fancy or technically sound. All it has to do is, people have to understand the idea. Your primary focus should be the concept of your idea and user experience. Beyond creating your product’s initial wireframes, if you are much confident, then launch your idea with a non-technical MVP.
2. Find creative ways to finance
Use your skills to generate a small amount of money for your project to begin. Raising money will help you do things faster. But you don’t need a big budget at the initial stage when you are validating an idea. While you’re starting from zero, prioritize the things that are important and work within your budget. Instead of spending money on design, sales, and marketing, try to focus on getting people for your product with the help of free resources and tools. Even though you’re small, start to figure out creative ways to make money, so play to your strengths. If you are lucky you might be able to find a cofounder who would app development for equity
3. Learn along the way
Just because you are not from a technical background doesn’t mean you can’t understand the basics of building your product. To create a SaaS product, Only you need the hunger to learn more about the fundamentals. Self-teaching is a best practice to understand what you need for your product, and it helps fix the gap in your knowledge. Teaching yourself will make you take the next step. So, It’s clear that you don’t have to learn how to code your entire product. But when you have a strong team, you must have to learn questions to ask. You also need to understand how to share your startup equity among the startup team to motivate them. There are many insightful co founder equity calculator to get an idea about the equity split. It will make you a strong leader to guide your team.
4 Must-Do Things
1. Ask Your Customer
You’ve got an amazing idea that could help to solve the problem of people. Before you start working on it, make sure your users really need it, and they are thinking the same.
When you communicate with your users, find out the following:
- What challenges can your product solve?
- Is it a real problem, or are you trying to solve a non-existent problem?
- Will people buy your product?
- How much would users spend to buy?
The essential part you have to consider is don’t even think about developing your product idea before understanding your customers’ needs. In fact, you are the perfect person to communicate with your customers directly. A non-techie can do this task more efficiently than a tech guy. Understanding the opinions of customers will help you to make better decisions.
2. Create a Mockup of your Product
You might be thinking, How can a non-tech guy create a mockup?
Well, It doesn’t have to be a coded version; instead, it can be a simple product representation. It can be a rough drawing, PowerPoint representation, wireframe – and it must explain what your product does for its users.
Some of the ways how to create a mockup of your product include:
- PowerPoint Slides
- Wireframes
- Storyboards
- Crude Drawing
- Photoshop
- Image Editor Tools
The purpose of your product mockup is to display your product’s idea in the simplest way to potential co-founders, investors, team, etc.
3. Start Pre-Selling
Now you have done the part of ‘ask customer’ and ‘know their opinion.’ But, It’s not enough! The next step you have to do is convince your customers to buy before launching. You can do this by providing some discounts, offers for pre-ordering. By doing pre-selling, you can convince the investors that customers love to buy your product, increasing their interest in your startup idea. If the pre-selling goes successfully, then you can feel double confident in your idea. It validates your idea and opens the way to finding a co-founder and a large number of customers.
4. Search for a Technical Co-Founder
You have to be so confident in your start-up idea before you start looking for a technical co-founder. You need to do the steps mentioned above and be more confident in your product. The more confident you are, you can easily convince your partners, investors, or co-founders. If you wonder like, Is it necessary to have a technical co-founder? I would say No! But a tech person with you can solve and understand many of your product’s inner core and suggest better tech ways to make it most user-friendly. Even you can collaborate with startup incubators like CodeVentures. CodeVentures is a startup studio and a technology incubator for startups that don’t have a technical co-founder.
Wrap-Up
If you’re a non-technical person with a vision to build your startup idea, one thing is now clear that you don’t need to learn how to code your entire product. Instead, you should know how to get things done. Leave the technical part to your technical co-founder and development team. There are many other things for you to contribute. None of the team members can do your role. Follow the above steps and be confident about your idea. Learn yourself, and It is a best practice to understand what all your products need.
There are two options for you to build your idea, one you can partner with a startup-studio, and other, you can make a deal with a dedicated development company. Search for your technical partner and work together. Nothing can stop you from building your dream.
