I never really understood why a technical founder is quote unquote “more important” than a non technical founder, until I taught myself the technical side.

TLDR: As a nontechnical founder who taught myself coding and software development, I’ve realised the value of becoming technical. Initially I thought I could just outsource the technical side but trying to build it myself helped me learn faster and progress further than I expected. Even though my product isn’t perfect, having something functional has been far more valuable than just ideas. The key takeaway: learning the technical side is crucial even if it’s challenging as fuck at first.

I’m somewhat new to startups (10 months in) and even newer to the software development side of things.

Prior to my startup I had absolutely no interest or knowledge of coding let alone building a functional product for users.

In my head, I would say “well, I know how this is going to work and what it’s going to do, so why not just outsource the technical side or hire someone remote to build it?”

Somewhere during those few months of trying to find the right person or team to involve, I would see what I could do with whatever tools, resources or tutorials were out there to get me by.

Before long, it was almost as if every experience trying to learn or put something together that works, no matter how small, just fell together in a way where I instinctively had this knowledge and understanding of the software development and technical concepts that are required to actually build what I was trying to hire someone to do.

Albeit at a much slower rate and initially at a level I’d probably get laughed out of a room with actual software engineers, but it’s kind of crazy how fast you can develop your skills when subconsciously you’re working at something every hour of every day.

My point being, I’d probably still be looking for excuses, or trying to find people to work with, or just straight out wasting time with all these “ideas” that never amounted or transformed into anything other than an idea in my head.

I certainly wouldn’t have been at the stage I’m at now which is having a full stack, functional web app with real customers (let’s be clear, certainly not up to the high standards I’d like to have it), if I hadn’t just had a go and failed so many times in the process. Mind you, I was shocked how much I actually learnt along the way and on almost a daily basis.

That whole “just ship it” cliche which I thought was such a cringey thing to say, couldn’t be more appropriate.

I’m probably yapping on here, but I’m honestly trying to give a real example to those that are in a similar position to where I was ~10 months ago, that the absolute best thing and I’d say in my opinion, necessary thing, is to just learn how to be technical and be able to build something you envision, no matter how shit it is initially and how far below your expectations it may fall, because even then, it’s something you otherwise wouldn’t even have, and that’s not even mentioning what you learn along the way.

So yeah, moral of the story, I get the whole technical > non technical founder argument now lol