270: Real People, Real Startups: Lessons from Our Alumni

Most people think you need to be a Silicon Valley insider — or have millions in funding — to start a tech venture.

That’s just not true.

In this episode, Sophia Matveeva shares the journeys of four Tech for Non-Techies alumni who built products and startups without writing a single line of code. You’ll learn:

• How a dentist turned lockdown frustration into a healthtech app (and how you can spot opportunities in your own field).
  
• Why a fund manager realised he didn’t need to code — and the mindset shift that freed him to start building.
  
• How a CFO uses tech knowledge to make smarter investment decisions (lessons every business leader can apply).
  
• The simple framework a banker used to launch her startup on the side, while keeping her day job.
  

You’ll hear directly from Tech for Non-Techies alumni Dr. Marilyn Sandor, Musi Skosana, Gustavo Juarez, and Zahra Almahoozi — and walk away with practical takeaways you can use to move your own idea forward.

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking “someone like me couldn’t do that,” this episode is proof that you can.

Resources from this Episode

FREE class: Build a Startup WITHOUT Learning to Code

https://www.techfornontechies.co/freeclass

Tech for Non-Technical Founders course: https://www.techfornontechies.co/tech-for-non-technical-founders

Growth Through Innovation

If your organisation wants to drive revenue through innovation, book a call with us here.

Our workshops and innovation strategies have helped Constellation Brands, the Royal Bank of Canada and Oxford University.

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TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - Sophia Matveeva

Have you ever wondered whether people like you so busy professionals not Silicon Valley insiders can actually build tech ventures? Well, today you'll hear from my alumni who have done exactly that. Hello and welcome to the Tech for Non-Techies podcast. I'm your host, Sophia Matveeva. If you're a non-technical founder building a tech product or adding AI to your business, you're in the right place. Each week, you'll get practical strategies, step-by-step playbooks and real-world case studies to help you launch and scale a tech business without learning to code. And this is not another startup show full of jargon, venture capital theater or tech bro bravado. Here we focus on building useful products that make money without hype and without code. 

I've written for the Harvard Business Review and lectured at Oxford, london Business School and Chicago Booth, so you are in safe hands. I've also helped hundreds of founders go from concept to scalable product, and now it's your turn, so let's dive in. Hello smart people, how are you today? You know I'm feeling absolutely delighted recording this for you because, in order to make this episode, I got to listen back to my interviews with my tech for non-technical founder students and hearing their voices and hearing their insights and seeing the progress that they've made. It's just been such a joy. It's been a really, really nice reminder. Last week we talked about billionaire non-technical founders and, yes, that's really inspiring. That's why I made it for you but it can feel a bit out of reach. Steve Jobs can feel a bit out of reach, right? So this week is different. You're going to hear from four of my actual students, people with day jobs, people with families and careers and lots of obligations, who are building tech ventures and future briefing themselves for the digital age. And as you listen to them and as you hear their insights, ask yourself which one of them do I most identify with, whose journey feels most like mine? And the day that this episode comes out, I'm actually teaching a free live class called Build a Startup Without Learning to Code, and you will learn the same framework that I have taught my alumni. So we will cover how to go from idea to live product, what's worth investing in and what's just waste, and when to use AI and when to hire developers. And if that's what you want to master, then register now at techantechesco forward slash free class or go to the link in the show note. And if you're listening to this episode after the class is over, never fear, you can go to the Techfinanteches website and you will see the Techfinantechnical Founders course. Then it's in a very prominent position, you can't miss it. So if you just go to techfinantechesco, you will see the course there and it's in a very prominent position, you can't miss it. So if you just go to techfinaltechiesco, you will see the course there and then you'll be able to enroll and also the link is right there in the show notes for you. 

The first person that you're going to hear from today is Dr Marilyn Sandor, and Marilyn is a pediatric dentist in Florida, and during COVID she couldn't treat her patients in her clinic because you obviously can't socially distance if you are looking inside somebody's mouth, right, but her patients still had teeth and so they still had toothaches and they needed care. So Marilyn joined the Techful and Technical Founders Program and she built an app that let her treat her patients remotely, and so, even after lockdown ended, her patients kept on using it. She found it to be a really, really useful tool for checkups, and now other dentists are using it to treat their patients too. In other words, she didn't just protect her practice during that really difficult time, she basically changed who she is. She shifted from dentist to health tech founder, and so I asked her what surprised her most about that journey. 

0:04:11 - Dr Marilyn Sandor

Well, I have to say that one of the surprises was how much I enjoyed it. 

That's good. 

And the other surprise was that I will not say that it is not difficult and I'm absolutely not belittling programmers and software developers and so forth, but it was how welcoming they are to non-technical founders. 

If you have an idea or a solution that makes sense, and if you can work with someone with whom you can articulate your thoughts and be able to listen closely and understand the essence of the conversation. Understand that some of the terminology you may not know at all, but if you can understand the context in which it's used, you can search that up quietly later. And if you can align yourself with developers and developers programmers that do not have an ego, that are actually interested in sharing that really takes you forward quickly, because then you don't have that fear factor, the concern that you're going to embarrass yourself if you don't know or if you misspeak, then you're going to take yourself down a track that's going to waste money because you actually meant to say one thing and meant another. So if you're working with a team that is just really human, then you're able to accomplish what you want to accomplish. 

0:05:42 - Sophia Matveeva

The next person you'll hear from is Moussis Kassane. He is the CEO and founder of an asset management firm based in South Africa, and he's somebody who invests in tech companies, and so he knew that digitization was inevitable, but he needed a practical way to make it real inside his own business. So here's how Tech for no Technical founders shifted his mindset, and helped him future-proof his business. 

0:06:11 - 

Musi Skosana

We are an asset management firm, and so we are very much dialed in into global markets and we invest in a lot of technology companies, and the one thing that had always been on the back of my mind as a business is the fact that we are going to have to digitize, whether we like it or not, and that you're not going to survive, you're not going to be around in 10 to 15 years if you haven't digitized. 

So it was a big solve that we were basically looking for. Number one, number two our clients as well had started getting tired of the analog processes of opening an account, closing an account, withdrawing money, depositing money, and hence we needed to digitize accordingly. And so hence, that's why I wanted to actually equip myself with the necessary tools in order to be able to understand how to build an app and basically digitize myself. But the problem is that the perceptions are that there's always you have to know how to code, et cetera, et cetera, and I did not know how to code, and even though I did try, it wasn't really doing well for me. So hence I wanted another way, and one of the other options was going to another university, but then I came across Tech for Non-Techies, and hence that's why I was like, ok, let me have a look at this option, and it seemed as if it was really a good course, and hence I tried it. 

0:07:32 - Sophia Matveeva

Awesome, thank you, and am I right? 

0:07:42 - 

Musi Skosana

in thinking that it was actually your friend, nassi, who was one of my earliest students, who actually introduced you to Tech for Non-Techies. Yes, correct, so Nassi had posted it the interaction between yourselves and him, and hence that's what actually got Tech for Non-Techies on my radar. And following, going through your profile on LinkedIn and following the videos and going through the history of Tech for Non-Techies. 

I basically thought, you know, this sounds more practical than, rather, having to go to an institution such as like an Oxford or Harvard and trying to get that before coming to you. Yours sounds more practical, and I think we're now at that age where education is also being disrupted, and it was a difficult mindset shift to have to go and say, okay, you don't need to go to Oxford in order to get these tools, which is something that I'd still had to overcome. 

0:08:33 - Sophia Matveeva

Well, incidentally, I have actually taught at Oxford, so what has been the biggest breakthrough that you've experienced while you've been working with me? 

0:08:45 - 

Musi Skosana

It's my vanse shift right. So, firstly, having to understand that you can get the critical skills without having to actually go to a specific established historical institution such as Oxford or Chicago, any of those institutions or Harvard, in order to be able to get the critical IT skills, that's really been a major shift, and I think that's just happening. That's what IT or tech is basically disrupting all over, and no one knows actually where it's going to land, but there is a disruption. So hence that was the first mindset shift. The second mindset shift was the fact of how you approach the tech industry in terms of the thinking as opposed to. It's a continuous improvement model, a circular model, as opposed to having one idea and implementation and all you're trying to reach for is perfection. It's more about being adaptive and consistently adapting accordingly. 

I think that was also a major shift, a mindset shift from my end, because when you go through the schooling, like we all do, it's either you get something wrong or right. There's never you can get it half right or half wrong, and hence you can always improve yourself. It's either you're in or out, whereas with technology, you can always improve, and that's really the big mindset shift that I got. And, thirdly, I didn't need to know how to code in order for me to be able to understand the fundamentals of technology, space, how the business model works and what are the crucial things to get right. 

0:10:20 - Sophia Matveeva

The next person you'll hear from is Gustavo Juarez, a chief financial officer who works in massive corporates in Mexico, and I want you to hear from him because he is not a non-technical founder, but a business leader who controls massive budgets. So, business leaders and founders, we both have to make investment decisions, so we have to decide who to hire, how much to pay them, what tools to invest in, what products to build, and why we're doing all of this. So what's the investment rationale for building something new? And so this is why I wanted you to hear from Gustavo, and here's why he chose tech for non-techies and what he got out of it. 

0:11:03 - Gustavo Juarez

It was my desire to have an understanding about the tech world, of how could I, in place, understand that world without being a technical people? I'm about in the finance field, so how could I get a better understanding of the technical world, and that was my key driver to join this amazing course. 

0:11:24 - Sophia Matveeva

Oh, thank you. So really, how does a finance leader, how does a CEO, need to understand? What do they need to know about technology? Awesome, and what did you get out of Tech Moon Juggies? 

0:11:35 - Gustavo Juarez

Okay, first of all, great understanding about the technological sector and, first of all, to understand that it's one of the sectors that are very close to the customer and really related to the solution that you are providing. So my understanding is with technology, you could provide a solution to any given problem that your customer is facing. So, with the tools that I learned, the overview that I derived in the course, I'm able to assess, for example, investment decision regarding data storage, for example, when you are scaling up your application, your website. So really to have the key factors that you need to consider whenever you are analyzing an investment for technological resources. Or even to have a conversation with my colleagues in the IT side of the company and to understand why are they referring to specific terms that before they didn't have a special meaning for me, and now I understand about backend, frontend, api and a lot of technological topics that is important to understand. 

0:12:50 - Sophia Matveeva

And the last person that you'll hear from today is Zafra Al-Mahouzi, who is based in Bahrain and by day, she works full-time at a bank and on the side, she's building her startup, darb, which helps high school students choose their majors and universities. And she is the youngest person on this show right now, and her story shows that you don't need to put your job or you don't need to already be a business owner to start building something new, because we all have to start somewhere right. And so I began by asking Zahra what was the most valuable lesson that you learned during the program? 

0:13:29 - Zahra Almahoozi

You don't actually need tech. You need to set your mindset in a way and tell yourself I can do this. You can do it through a WhatsApp group, you can do it through a forms, a Google forms. You need to kind of break that thought in your mind that's telling you oh, I know nothing about tech, and actually do things in a very simple way and see if it actually works, See if you're actually delivering value. It has nothing to do about tech to do a startup in tech at a certain point when it comes to implementation. But initially, what you need to do in a tech business is to find what's your problem. I like to call these the three no's you know, Know your problem, know your mission and know your product vision. Once you have these three, you can translate that to any developer, any UI, UX developer, and you're on your road to do your business Okay so what advice do you have for people with tech ideas but no coding skills? 

but no coding skills. You don't need coding skills Like, think of it as simple as if you have a business for cleaners who clean the houses, do you need to know how they are cleaning the house? You're not the one who's going to clean, you're the person who's going to manage. You're going to hire people who are experts in cleaning right, because you're going to hire people who are experts in cleaning right, because you're going to be busy in doing the business, finding customers, finding partners. So coding tools, development tools, are not your responsibility unless you're passionate and you want to be a tech founder. 

There is nothing wrong with that, you know. But there are experts. You need to be experts in starting your business and advocating for your business. That's your main focus, while for coding tools, you don't need to do that. There is we've learned about so many non-code tools in the tech. For non-tech, there's so many non-code. I mean, there is AI in every kind of platform. Now that will do for you the UI, ux, that will generate for you the code. You just need to have that critical thinking of what you actually want and what you want to deliver, and tools and means will just be there waiting for you to be used. 

0:16:07 - Sophia Matveeva

So, my dear small people, I hope that hearing from these TechMontekeys alumni has shown you that building a tech venture and thus becoming a digital leader is not reserved for billionaires or computer scientists. It's about mindset, it's about clarity and it's about the willingness to start where you are. Whether you're a dentist in Florida, a bond manager in South Africa, a CFO in Mexico or a young professional in Bafrain building her first startup, you can take an idea and turn it into something real. And if you'd like to learn the same framework that they all use, then join me for my free live class called Build a Startup Without Learning to Code. It's happening literally today, so don't miss it. 

Register at techfornontechies.co/freeclass or via the link in the show notes, and if you are listening later, you can still get access to this with them. So you can still get access to the Tech for Non-Technical Founders course if you go to techfornontechies.co. That's where you'll find all the tools, the frameworks and support to bring your ideas to life. And remember, the digital age belongs to people who decide to lead it, and that can be you. So thank you for listening, have a wonderful day and I shall be back with your delightful smarties next week. Ciao.