Elisha Tan is the Founder of Learnemy, a web application that finds you instructors for anything you want to learn. The content of this post was shared in the recent Barcamp entitled “Hey I founded a tech startup…OH SHIT I CAN’T CODE”
The Internet is a great place to start up. The overhead costs are much lower, it is easier to scale and you can operate your business from just about anywhere. But when I started out, the only big problem was that I can’t code!
Admittedly, in my short working experience, I’ve only done social media marketing and I have zero web design or development skills. So I jumped into learning Ruby on Rails, CSS, and HTML to develop Learnemy.com — the site that I’m running now.
And boy, that was really quite a task.
Having gone through this experience — from a non-techie to a somewhat tech-capable founder — I have three tips to share with fellow non-techie startup entrepreneurs.
1. Understand the tech but don’t be a CTO
Will the time spent learning how to code pay off? If you’re thinking this way, I’ll remind you that the goal here is not to become a CTO. It is for you to know enough and ship a minimal viable product out into the market. Putting out a skeleton product will definitely pay off. It will tell you know whether your product rocks or suck.
Plus, you can’t hire someone for a job scope that you don’t understand. And because you don’t know the exact job scope, you can’t tell if you’re getting bullshit when you outsource product development to third parties.
The most important outcome of learning how to code is that I’ve learned to respect programmers and their work. Too often, the calls of a marketer looking for a technical co-founder ends up on the very entertaining Whartonite Seeks Code Monkey site.
2. Learn CSS and HTML first
This is something I regret not starting earlier. If I could begin again, I would learn CSS and HTML before jumping into rails. Just by knowing how to manipulate the look of a website, you can create a really watered down product using static HTML.
Since Learnemy finds instructors based on learning needs, I made a static HTML page and used Wufoo to collect information on what my customers want to learn. With just that, Learnemy could be considered a working product.
Knowing CSS and HTML don’t make you an artist. As Picasso says, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.” So feel free to take inspiration from existing layouts and styles. Firebug is a great tool for you to do just that.
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