272: Why This Is the Best Time to Be a Non-Technical Founder

For years, non-technical founders were second class citizens in tech. 

Not anymore. 

In this episode, Sophia Matveeva shares five reasons why today is the best time in history to start a tech venture without being a coder — and why, in some cases, non-technical founders actually have the advantage.

You’ll learn:

• Why investors are backing non-technical founders more than ever
• How AI and no-code slash startup costs from $35,000 to $20
• Why niche markets are exploding — and how to spot them
• How global talent and cheaper tools make launching safer and faster
• Why distribution — not code — decides which products win

This episode will leave you inspired and equipped to take your next step as a founder — even if you can’t write a single line of code.

🎧 Listen now and see why this is your moment.

Free AI Mini-Workshop for Non-Technical Founders

Learn how to go from idea to a tested product using AI — in under 30 minutes, plus get a downloadable framework.

Get free access here: techfornontechies.co/aiclass

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TRANSCRIPT (Unedited)

Sophia Matveeva

10 years ago, almost every billion dollar founder was a coder. Today, four in 10 cannot write a line of code. The game has changed. Today, vision beats programming, and I'll show you why in this episode. 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 lectured at Oxford, london Business School and Chicago Booth, so you are in safe hands. I've also helped hundreds of founders both from concept to scalable product, and now it's your turn, so let's dive in. Hello smart people, how are you today? 

Today's episode is all about good news. I'm going to give you five reasons why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder. So if you have an idea for an app or a tech venture but you're not a coder yourself, then this episode will be music to your ears. And two of these reasons actually give non-technical founders an advantage over the techies. So let's get started. Reason number one why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder Investors have changed their team. 

So not that long ago, the startup world basically really worshipped only hoodie wearing coders who were preferably about 21. And if you didn't have a STEM degree, you were dismissed. But that is no longer the case. So there is a study by Cowboy Ventures and they researched who was running unicorns, who was running billion dollar tech companies, back in 2013. And they saw that back then, 90% of unicorn CEOs had technical degrees. Then they looked 10 years later only 60% have technical degrees now, which means that today, 40% are non-technical founders, and so that means that people with MBAs, people with humanities degrees, people with business backgrounds and remember, a unicorn company is a company valued at over a billion dollars. So the investment that founders are getting, that non-technical founders are getting, they're not small change. They are raising serious, serious money, and that research was done in 2023. This was before the advent of AI and no-code tools really exploded, so I expect that this number is even more today. So investors have already. 

Even before AI came on the scene, investors were already realizing that vision, commercial instincts and sales ability were basically just as important or, frankly, more important than being able to code the product yourself. Often, these skills are the difference between why a product becomes a company and one that basically just stays in a garage. So, as I mentioned, ai and NoCo tools have really changed the game, and that's reason two for why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder. So, basically, until recently until you know, chad GPT really changed everything. If you had an idea for a tech product, your only option was really to hire a product team and pay them a lot of money before you knew if anybody really wanted the product. This was risky, expensive and intimidating, and so I actually remember that when I first started my first tech company back in 2015, we paid about $35,000 to use experienced designers to build test versions of our product and get feedback from our target customers. So this is 35 grand basically, before you really know if anybody wants it. It was scary, and today we teach at Tech for Non-Techies. We teach our students to build test products themselves using AI design tools, and most of our students just use the free version of these tools. You know, some of them splash out and spend 20 bucks. You know, 20 bucks versus 35,000. It's amazing. So AI and no-code tools let you test your idea. They let you build a prototype and even get early traction, all without writing a single line of code. And Actually, I want to tell you a story about one of my students. 

Her name is Noor and she is an entrepreneur and she runs offline businesses in the sectors I love. So she has a florist and a chocolate shop Amazing and she had an idea for a tech product to help small businesses like hers take orders through Instagram, because often you know florists, chocolate shops, they have large Instagram followings, and so when she took the tech from a technical founders course, she had no tech background whatsoever, and so we taught her how to use ai to create a test version and to validate the concept of what she wanted to build. And then this thing, this thing that she created in our class that helped her raise money from accelerators, because it showed that she already had a proven thing, and because she raised money from accelerators, she could then use that money to hire developers, and so in under a year. So she took my class back in November and I'm recording this for you in September the following year. So in less than a year, she has gone from idea to product without blowing thousands on guesswork. 

I do want you to be careful about AI hype these days, because I am telling you that AI tools have really, really decreased the cost of experimentation, but it is very, very likely that you will have to hire professionals. If you want to build a decent product, you will need to hire professionals at some point, but that point is now later than before, which means that by the time you hire the pros, you are going to know how to get the best return on your investment on working on them, and also, because you're basically hiring them later, you basically end up paying less, which is a good thing. And, by the way, if you have an idea for a tech venture that you want to test out, I have created a free AI mini workshop for non-technical founders, so in this mini workshop, you'll learn how to go from just having an idea in your head to having a test product, all using AI tools. And this is a short class, it's not super long, it's about basically less than half an hour, and you'll also get a guide on our key AI framework that you can keep and download. So this mini workshop is free. So just go to techfornontechiesca forward slash AI class and put your email and get the class, or just go to the link in the show notes and you'll get it. 

And now let's move on to reason number three, why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder. And reason number three is that niches are the new gold rush, and I know we have a lot of US audiences. So I believe you say niches, but niche sounds so much nicer, but anyway. So I believe you say niches, but niche sounds so much nicer, but anyway. In the early 2010s, the big money was building in mass market product for everybody. So think Uber, think Pinterest, think Tinder and the founders who were building them. There were technical founders, as I mentioned in point one, and there were technical founders who were often solving their own problems. You know, a bunch of nerds needed to find a date. The trend has now shifted because the best opportunities now are in the niches, so solving specific problems for underserved communities that, basically, technical founders haven't necessarily thought about. So I'll give you some examples. 

Draftkings is a fantasy sports platform. Then there is Calm, which is a meditation app, or ClassPass. This is an app that I use all the time to book fitness classes, and if you are a fan, if you know this company, then to you it feels absolutely huge. But if you're not interested in fantasy sports or if you're not interested in booking fitness classes or dance studios, then you would have never heard of it. It's not like Uber or Tinder, and none of the founders of the companies that I just mentioned, none of them were software engineers. So these products Calm, classpass, draftkings they were built by founders who deeply understood the problem and who deeply understood the people that they were serving. 

And this is really where I see non-technical founders shine, because you can't code, but you can do something that I think is far more important Not only me, but also investors. Investors think it's far more important, not only me, but also investors. Investors think it's far more important which is understanding your customer and understanding their problems. So your lived experience, your domain expertise and your commercial instincts are now really prized as competitive advantages. I've got two more for you. I've got two more reasons why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder and said here is reason four building is now cheaper and talent is global, and these are great things. So let's contrast with you know what was happening before. 

So back in the 2000s, just getting a startup off the ground basically just meant raising millions, even before you've done anything. You had to buy service, you had to hire an expensive engineering team to sit with you and you had to hire an expensive engineering team to sit with you, and you had to build every single feature from scratch. Today, it is a completely different world, which is a great thing. As I said, you can create a simple test version for free with AI tools, just to validate the concept and get some feedback from your future users. Then from your future users, then, if you have done that, when you want to hire professionals to just build a really simple thing, you can actually get something working, built by professionals, for under $20,000 to $30,000, depending on what you're building. So this is much, much cheaper. You know, when we were looking at this, when I first started out, it would be like 200 grand. 

So why is it so much cheaper? Well, partly it's because you don't need to build as many features and you don't need to build as much of the infrastructure yourself. You can basically rent it. So, for example, you can rent your servers from Amazon Web Services. If you want to take payments, you can get payments via Stripe and via PayPal. If you need location, you can get that from Google Maps. So basically, you just take all of these products and you wire them together, which is much, much cheaper. So you save time, you save money and you massively reduce your risk because you know that Google Maps works. You're not creating it from scratch yourself. 

And the other game changer and why it's so much cheaper now is that you don't need a Silicon Valley co-founder and you don't need a team of full-time engineers sitting next to you in an office, which is basically what you were expected to have, and especially investors would say OK, who is your co-founder, where is your team, if they're not sitting next to you? I'm worried that's actually not the case anymore. So many of my students they start with freelancers to get their first version out, so they use AI to create a test version. Then, after they've done that, they start working with freelancers to create a really, really simple product and then later, as they grow, they often work with outsourced development teams in Eastern Europe and Latin America or in South Asia, and these teams they are really high quality and often actually the big tech companies hire these outsourced teams to work for them. So these teams are extremely high quality but a cost fraction of Silicon Valley rate because the developers they're not living in San Francisco, so they don't have to have Silicon Valley rent themselves. And this gives you amazing flexibility because you can experiment cheaply and you can only invest in long-term hires once you know that people want your product, once you know that people are willing to pay for your product, and this is a great thing. So, basically, the cost of building has plummeted and global talent is now at your fingertips and you can be more flexible than ever. And this is what's making launching a tech startup today safer and faster and basically much more accessible for non-technical founders. And last but not least and I think this is where non-technical founders and last but not least, and I think this is where non-technical founders really have the edge over technical founders. So the fifth reason for why this is the best time to be a non-technical founder is that distribution is everything, and non-technical founders tend to be better at it. So I'll show you what I mean. 

So one of the most overlooked parts of creating a successful startup is not the tech, it's getting people to use it, because having the best product in the world does not matter if nobody knows about it, but if you already have an audience or if you have credibility, basically your startup is already 10 steps ahead. So, for example, if you're making a consumer app, you will usually be spending a lot of money on Facebook and Google ads, because advertising is basically how most apps grow and it's really really expensive. But if you already have credibility with the market, or if you already have a lot of people who want your stuff, you don't have to pay mugs a kebab. Wouldn't that be wonderful? So here's an example there is a fitness influencer called Kyla Etsines I think I'm saying her name right, but she has created this app called Sweat it was originally called fitness empire is now worth 400 million dollars, which is not bad. Not bad for a fitness influencer, right? So the way she started was that she was basically creating fitness videos on instagram. I believe she was also creating like diet videos on instagram. Then her following grew. She had millions and millions of users. She had millions of followers, rather, on instagram, and then, when she amassed these loyal followers, she launched an app. So she didn't need to pay Instagram, she didn't need to pay Facebook right from the start. Yes, she's doing advertising now, but her product is now, you know, really successful. So you might be thinking, okay, well, are you telling me that I need to amass millions of followers first? You don't have to. 

Let me tell you about my student, musi Skosana. So, musi, he worked in banking and then he created a fund, so he was running his own fund. He was a fund manager like running his asset management business for a few years, and then he decided to expand his market share and add a fintech app. So, basically, investors could invest and trade on his fintech app. And, yes, he did not have millions of followers he still doesn't, but you know what he had. He had trust and credibility and reputation in the marketplace, and so, when the app launched, early adopters came on board quickly. Yes, they needed to be told about it, but once they learned about it, they were like okay, this guy, this company, they know what they're talking about because they've already been successful in the offline world. So now that they're offering a tech product, yeah, I'm going to trust them. 

So this is distribution power, and this is generally, I find, where non-technical founders really outshine technical ones. So the good news is that you do not need to be the best coder. You don't even need to be the worst coder. You don't need to be a coder at all. You need to get people to care about your product, and then you can use AI and hire the right people to help you create your vision. So these are the five reasons. 

Let's have a recap, a recap of all the good news that I told you today. Number one investors are backing non-technical founders more than ever. So if you want to raise money for your product, for your vision, you are actually much more likely to be successful now than ever before. So reason number two to be happy AI and no code tools are making testing cheaper and faster and getting the product out of your head into something that you can actually show people, and this is a wonderful thing. Reason number three to be happy for non-technical founders is that niches are exploding. So if you really identify a problem that you think just hasn't been solved and the techies probably haven't thought of it. Then, yeah, this is your goldmine, go after it. 

Reason number four to be happy for non-technical founders is that the costs of building your product have plummeted. Reason number five is that distribution is the new king. So that basically means if you already have a bunch of people who know about you, or if you already have a reputation in the marketplace, if you already have basically some success in serving customers, in serving your clients in the offline world, then you can actually much more easily translate that into the tech world and you're much more likely to have success. So the bottom line is the conditions for non-technical founders are better than ever. So if you're a non-technical founder, honestly, this is your moment than ever. So if you're a non-technical founder, honestly, this is your moment. 

If you've just discovered the show, welcome. Make sure to subscribe, because this is literally the only show that I know of specifically for non-technical founders. And if you want to learn how to use AI tools to get your first version live and to learn how to test it properly, then check out the AI mini workshop for non-technical founders that I have lovingly made for you, and it's free. So the link is in the show notes or just go to tech for non-techiesco forward slash AI class. In this mini workshop, you will learn how to go from idea to a tested product using AI tools, and you don't even have to pay for the area tool. So it's basically double free. And on that note, I shall love you and leave you until our next episode next week. Ciao.