MBA1095 Q&A Wednesday: Can I create a software company with no technical knowledge?

Hey. Oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Because your business deserves the best. That's why we deliver practical business lessons every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, the Complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode on our Q and a Wednesday episodes. I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. Today's question is from Vinod. Vinod asks, can I create a software company with no technical knowledge? This is a question I get asked a lot. Can you start a tech company, a software company, without being a tech founder, without being a developer, a coder, an engineer And I have very strong opinions about this. Now I get asked this question a lot because many people think that I'm not a tech founder, that I don't come from a background as a developer. And that's somewhat true. I've never been a developer as a profession and never coded for a living. But that's half the story. I'm going to share my take on this, give my answer to this question and my advice to those who have minimal technical knowledge and want to start a software company. Lots to cover. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Support for today's show comes from Mattress Firm. A five letter word lies at the core of self improvement and motivation. Sleep. But it's hard to get the right amount of rest on the wrong bed. So Mattress Firm has a solution for you. They care about your sleep and your budget and they want you to take 10% off their already low prices using code PODCAST10. That's PODCAST10. Just go to mattressfirm.com podcast to shop now and use code PODCAST10. Again, that's PODCAST10. Sofonote asks a very common question. I get asked, can you start a software company with no technical knowledge? So I run a software company, Webinar Ninja, a webinar software, and we've been doing this for over four years now. Neither my co founder Nicole or I have been professional developers or coders or anything like that in the past. But that's not the full truth. I spent a period of my career early on as an entrepreneur helping people create their websites using WordPress. That's designing and modifying the design as well as coding some elements of it. Now this is kind of the entry level or basic version of web development. I never created an app. I never created anything complex. I Never created a software, but I knew some HTML, some css, a bit of PHP and was able to edit and modify and even create some very simple websites. Now just to give you some background, I'm self taught. I took online courses and I had no formal training. I never went to school for this. But I've always been interested in technology and I've always been a learner. I always love to learn new things. So I had a bit of experience of understanding development and coding and technology before I started my software company. Now when I did start the software company, I also took a deeper dive in understanding web development, app development, software development. I took a crash course in software development. Actually Nicole joined me in that course. It was literally a weekend crash course. And the whole point is to understand how is coding all done. So a very basic understanding of the logic behind creating software. And the point I'm making is that we took this course just so we understand what our team is doing. So I can look at code and understand what is happening. It doesn't mean that I know how to reproduce it or fix things. This is very important because you just can't start a restaurant and not know your way around the kitchen. You don't have to be a three star Michelin chef, but you should have some understanding and know how to make an omelette, right? Should have some basic understanding. You also have to have some sort of understanding of how a software company is run, the technical background of it, what are the moving pieces? What are the elements you need to have? Like you need somebody to take care of your servers, you need a systems admin. What does that person do? What's their job description? How does your software code get distributed to your customers or to the servers? How do things get updated to what kind of code repository are you going to use? What is a code repository? Are you going to be using GitHub or BitBucket? You need to familiarize yourself with this information. Shameless. Plug to one of our sponsors, Codecademy, they have some really great courses for you to get your feet wet in this type of technology. And you can get 50% off your first month. That's codecademy.com and use promo code MBA. So you should have some foundation. You don't have to be a wizard, you don't have to be, you know, a highly, highly skilled engineer because you can hire people that are more talented than you are. But you have to have some sort of general understanding of what you're building. You also have to have some sort of aptitude to learn new technologies. Learn what's on the horizon in your genre, in your marketplace. For example, with webinar technology, I'm constantly learning about new live broadcast technology, delays in technology or delays in broadcasting. I should say if you're starting an email marketing software, then you understand how email works and why does Gmail send things to junk mail? How do you get through those filters? You can't be hands off because you have to have some sort of vision and understanding of where your business is going. Now, having said that, you can hire people to do the development and engineering for you, the heavy lifting. And those experts will fill in any gaps that you have in your knowledge. So you can ask some questions like, hey, I don't particularly understand how this is done or why there's a delay here or, or why you decided to do this. Explain it to me because you're the expert. I do this all the time and it's totally fine. So here are some pointers when you're getting started with your tech company. One, get a foundation. Learn some of this information. Understand what you're building and the technology behind it. Two, you have to decide what language are you going to use or what framework are you going to use to build your software? Is it Ruby on Rails? Is it php? Are you going to be using Angular, React? What? All these things are different. You might be saying, well, which one is the best? Well, they're all good. It all depends on what you need in your software and what kind of expertise you can find to hire to build it. And some software in order to build is very complex. You're going to need many different types of technology like our software Webinar Ninja. We need PHP developers, we need Angular developers, we need Java and JavaScript. We need people that understand HTML and CSS. We need people to understand WebRTCC technology and video technology. So there's a lot of technology sometimes that are involved. So there's a lot of homework you can do to prepare yourself before you start building. Now, if technology is not your thing, you don't enjoy it. You're not really interested in kind of getting your feet wet and understanding your way around it. But you like the idea of starting a software company because you heard, hey, this, this is kind of the up and coming thing. It's a good way to get reoccurring income with, you know, a SaaS model. I highly recommend you do not start that company because this is gonna be your life. You're gonna be eating and breathing technology and the technology that you're gonna be using to build this thing. And if you're not interested in talking about that or learning about that, you're not gonna do a good job. You're just not going to be respected in your team. And to the public, you know, as the founder of the company, people are gonna ask you some technical questions sometimes at a conference or at a meetup or on. And if you can't answer them, it looks kind of strange. I mean, if Elon Musk was asked a question about, you know, what kind of rocket fuel do they use at SpaceX, he probably knows the answer to that. He's expected to know the answer, even though he's probably not the most skilled, you know, rocket scientist on the team. Right? And you want to enjoy your life building this business. You don't want to have a life where you're doing things you hate. So don't choose something if you're not interested in it or, or at least, at least you're interested in learning about it. The more prepared you are, the better the foundation you have, the more chance of success you'll have. Now, business is not just software technology. In a software company, the business requires other things like marketing and sales and vision and leadership. So hopefully those things are really your strengths and you can leverage those to really push the company forward along with you learning the technology. I got more on today's topic, but before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. Support for today's show comes from Betterment. You're not the average investor, so why settle for the same old average investing? Now there's a smarter way to manage your money. It's called Betterment. Betterment is an online financial advisor for people who refuse to settle for average. They use cutting edge technology and build personalized portfolios to help you make money more from your investments. Now, of course, investing involves risk. But in my opinion, the biggest risk of all is not investing at all. 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I personally would take some sort of course like an HTML CSS so you understand what programming is all about. Get to a level where you can at least edit a website. Understand the technologies that you'll need to have to build whatever you want to build. This is called a technology stack. What software options are you going to use? What software technologies, what languages, what are the service providers for these types of things? And my last piece of advice is get a mentor. Find somebody who started a tech company, a software company that can guide you along the way. Say, hey, I have no tech experience, but I'm interested in starting a software company. What's the first step? Now, even though I had technical experience, I had a friend that actually started a really, really successful software company and he was available for me to jump on a Skype call once in a while to get some advice. And I still have him, and I still have him as a friend. I still reach out to him from time to time and his advice is always solid. So it's good to have somebody you can call upon that's been there, done that. Well, there you have it. That wraps up today's lesson. Thank you so much for listening. If you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, just email me at omar@100mba.net before I go, I want to leave you with this. If you're not a developer, if you don't have solid technical knowledge and you're starting a software company as your first business, you're doing what I call compounded risk. Your chances of success are becoming less and less because you've never started a lemonade stand, you don't have an online business, you've never done business. So not only are you starting a business for the first time, but you're also starting a business that you have very limited knowledge about. So I would recommend starting your first business in an area you understand where you have experience. So say, for example, you're a math teacher, you can give math lessons as a business. If you're into yoga, create a yoga course that you can sell online, anytime, anywhere. Establish yourself, earn a buck, understand what business is like, earn your business chops and then dive into something a little bit more challenging. Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter RBA show. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.