274: The Non-Technical Founder Mindset: How to Lead When You Can't Code

Many startups collapse not because the idea fails, but because the pressure gets unbearable.

Sadly, it’s not strategy or funding that takes them out. It’s the grind, the chaos, and the sheer mental weight of building something new.

In this episode, Sophia Matveeva shares three mindset shifts that every non-technical founder needs to survive the rollercoaster. 

From moving past imposter syndrome to staying calm when launches stall, these are practical tools to help you think strategically when everyone else panics.

Listen in and learn how to turn pressure into your unfair advantage.

In this episode, you will hear:

• How to flip imposter syndrome into your founder superpower
• Why panic kills good decisions — and the simple reset that keeps you strategic
• The hidden advantage of owning what you don’t know
• How to turn flops into fuel for innovation instead of founder burnout

Resources from this Episode

Free AI Mini-Workshop for Non-Technical Founders

Learn how to go from idea to a tested product using AI — in under 30 minutes.

Get free access here: techfornontechies.co/aiclass

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TRANSCRIPT (Unedited)

0:00:00 - Sophia Matveeva

When founders quit, it's usually not because of funding or strategy. It's because the pressure just becomes unbearable and they don't have the mindset tools to deal with the inevitable problems. And in this episode, I'm going to share three mindset shifts. Every non-technical founder needs to build resilience, handle chaos and keep moving when everybody else quits. Chaos and keep moving when everybody else quits. 

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, 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, we're going to do something a little bit different. So we usually talk about tech trends and very practical technology tools and so on. But today I want to talk about mindset, because I have honestly noticed that founders usually give up, not because of external circumstances, but because they just can't take it anymore, because basically it gets too difficult. And my aim in this show and Tech for Non-Techies, the program my aim is to help you be really successful as a tech innovator, as a non-technical tech innovator. So one of the key components of success is your mindset. So one of the key components of success is your mindset. And in my experience and you know, in what I've seen with my students, there's co-founder drama, there's investor drama. If you're running a startup, you're definitely going to be running out of cash at some point. Your product launches will definitely be late and all of these problems. They feel really bad and they feel very dramatic, but they're actually solvable and in fact, if you actually look at every successful founder, they have gone through this. But the thing is, when these things happen, you need to be able to think strategically as opposed to panic. And there is a caveat to that, because there are big exogenous events like COVID or maybe like a new government regulation that basically totally outlaws business, and that happens. And these big exogenous circumstances really do put people out of business. That happens, but most of the time this is not happening. You know, covid was this huge exogenous event, but how many times in our lifetimes has this happened? 

So this is why I'm saying that most of the time, your mindset can be the difference between success and failure, and I personally discovered mindset work when I opened this company Tech for Non-Techies and I didn't really know about it in my last company, when I was running my first tech company called Enti. And, honestly, now that I have these tools, I can look back and think that I would have been a better manager and I would have been a better steward of my team and I think I would have actually also made better decisions. And, honestly, right now I have a life coach, I have a therapist and I also have a business coach, and all of this costs money and a lot of time for me, but I get results when I invest in my mindset. My company makes more money, I do more interesting work and I generally have a better experience of life, and that's good return on investment, right? And guess who agrees with me? Ben Horowitz, the billionaire VC backer of Facebook and Airbnb, amongst other things. In his book called the Hard Thing About Hard Things and I did an episode on it ages ago Ben Horowitz says that the hardest part of being a founder is not strategy or funding, it's managing your own psychology. 

So here are three mindset shifts to help you, and I've made these specifically for non-technical founders. So number one shift. Number one is that you need to go from feeling like an imposter to feeling like an innovator. So I'll explain what I mean. Every founder is going to face doubt, but non-technical founders get a double helping of doubt and pressure Because, like, for example, I've literally had an investor tell me if you can't build a product yourself, why would I invest in you? So, as I mentioned a couple of episodes ago, the market has changed and now four out of 10 tech unicorns have non-technical founders at the helm, and Brian Chesky of Airbnb is a great example. Nevertheless, there is still pressure, you know, to get a technical co-founder to become super technical yourself, and amongst some people, among some parts of the market, there is still a stigma against non-technical founders. This is why your confidence and your mindset is so, so crucial, specifically as a non-technical founder, because the truth is the best, leaders do not know everything. 

So, as I'm recording this, I'm literally about to head off to the JP Morgan Tech Conference and Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, is going to be there. Now tell me, do you think Jamie Dimon knows about every product at JP Morgan, like every single product that JP Morgan makes? No, no, he doesn't know about every single product he doesn't know. Like, he's definitely not coding their apps, right? So good leaders know what they don't know. They learn what they have to learn. So good leaders are constantly learning and they also hire for what they know they will never learn, right? Jamie Dimon is going to have a team of lawyers, a team of developers, a team of strategists and so on. And you might be thinking, yes, sophia, I get it, because this is really obvious for the CEO of an international investment bank. But, honestly, this is also possible for a solo founder, because you can hire a part-time backend developer, which then allows you to focus on customer sales, which you know. Commercialization that's what makes or breaks the business, right? 

So, as I said, the best leaders don't know everything and they are aware of it. It is perfectly acceptable to say, yes, I'm not a program, I'm not a coder, but I know the customer and I know the problem and I can sell. You need to have some knowledge, you know. You can't just be, oh, I don't know anything about technology, I don't know any of the jargon. You need to have some knowledge, you know. You can't just be oh, I don't know anything about technology, I don't know any of the jargon. You need to be able to speak tech, but you don't have to do tech. And so here's my practical tip for you Write down what you uniquely know about what you're building. 

So, do you have customer insight? What is it? Do you know why there is some sort of market gap? Do you know, maybe, how to reach customers in an interesting and cheap way? Do you know how to get customers' interest? So, journal on that, because that is your edge, and what I would say to you is that own your ignorance and turn it into your competitive advantage, because if you pretend that you know things that you don't, you'll probably get caught out. But if you're saying, yes, I'm a non-technical founder, but these are all the things that I can do and this is why this business is going to be successful, then people are going to believe you. 

So here is mindset shift number two. I want you to go from panic to perspective, from panic to strategy. So, as I said earlier on in this episode, founders usually quit not because of failure, but basically because of fatigue, and I get it. The startup journey is exhausting, sometimes Like when something goes wrong. So, for example, I don't know your investor pulls out or your product launch is going to be really late. 

The number one thing to do is to regulate your nervous system, and movement really helps with that. So if you get some stressful news you know you get that email your heart is beating. First, just go for a walk, get your body to move for about 30 minutes to an hour, because you cannot make strategic decisions from a survival state. So regulate first and then get to work. I'm a really big fan of walking and honestly, I think it is just a stress relief for me. 

And when you're back from your walk, let's then use your strategic mind to figure out the next step. And here, when you start thinking strategically, focus on the maths, not the drama. What is actually happening, not what are all the bad thoughts that you're having about what's happening. So if your product release is late, which is definitely going to happen. I actually did a video on this, called why MVPs are always late. It's on our YouTube channel, anyway. So if your product is late, instead of thinking, oh my God, we're all doomed, this is a disaster, actually think, well, what is the circumstance? Okay, well, the circumstance is that the release is late. 

And then imagine if it was somebody else's company and you were their advisor and they just said okay, our release is going to be late. What would you say to them? So, kind of, take a step back and imagine that you're not you, you're advising this founder. So you might say that well, you know, lots of companies have gone through this. Lots of companies have gone through late releases. In fact, actually, most companies do so they've survived. How have they figured it out? Because, most of the time, somebody has successfully dealt with the problem before. So research their example. Maybe that person has given a podcast interview, so listen to it. Figure out how did they deal with that problem? Can you do the same thing? Because, in general, when it comes to innovation, when it comes to startups, yes, each problem is individual, but there are patterns. So somebody else would have gone through something similar before. So learn from them and also just get inspired by them. Okay, if they did it, so can you. 

Also practical tip I really love Tim Ferris' fear-setting exercise, so if you've never heard of it, then just Google fear setting exercise Tim Ferriss, fear as in scared and basically just go through his system. So the fear setting exercise is a framework by the podcaster and author Tim Ferriss that helps you think rationally when you are basically terrified, when you are in the drama, not in the math. So in that exercise you literally write down your worst case scenario, then you write down what you can do to prevent it and also you write down okay, if the worst case scenario happened, what would you do to recover from that worst case scenario? And most of the time that you will see that this disaster in your head it's actually manageable head, it's actually manageable. Yes, it's not what you want, but it's manageable. And then once you see that, okay, you can deal with the worst of it, then you get this clarity and you can think okay, now I can think strategically and you basically get karma. And honestly, I use this fear setting exercise a lot in my own life. I recommend it to a lot of our founders. 

We actually go through the exercise together when somebody is really feeling it, and it really really helps, because when you realize that you can mitigate the worst case scenario, you can stay calm under pressure. And remember, staying calm is your unfair advantage, because most people don't stay calm, Most people make irrational decisions which end up sabotaging their plans. And just being a bit calmer than the rest is a serious competitive advantage. And here's my third and final mindset shift for you you need to accept that innovation means failure, because when you innovate, like when you make a new product or when you make new features for a product, sometimes it's going to be a success. A lot of the time it won't be so, for example, if you're making an app, there will be lots of times when you create new features that users don't use. And, yes, you need to test as much as possible before you invest in production, and this is what we teach you in the Tech for Non-Technical Founders course. But even then, even then, you might create something. And even if people say, yes, this is really really great, they just don't use it for whatever reason. Like this happens. And also, you know, this doesn't just happen to startup founders. 

Let's think about the company formerly known as Facebook, right, do you remember? So there was a company called Facebook. Now they're called Meta. Why? Because at some point, they decided that we were all going to live in the metaverse and eat virtual burgers. So, obviously, that hasn't happened. They still have this name, so nobody can forget this whole experiment. And they literally lost $40 billion since 2019. So their metaverse division, called Reality Labs, has lost over $40 billion since 2019. So it happens to everybody. They seem to be doing okay. Mark Zuckerberg isn't crying too much about it. So I suggest you learn from that lesson. So our aim is not to waste $40 billion. Our aim is to learn quickly and to learn cheaply. 

So I'll give you an example, actually from one of our students. So one of our recent students in the Tech for Non-Technical Founders course. She created a test version of her product. She then took it to her target market and the people that she spoke to they said, yeah, this is great, I would definitely use this. And then she probed a bit more and she realized that they would use it, but they didn't want to pay for it or they couldn't pay for it, because her target market was basically young people and students and this wasn't a must have for that target market, because that target market is kind of broke. So she was disappointed, but it's good to know in advance. So we then went through the results and I then said well, how about pivoting this to a corporate market? Is there a way that this solution could be useful to corporates or to corporate leaders? So she created a different version. She then tested this other version with this new, richer target market and she saw that people were willing to pay and that they were able to pay and that they wanted the product. 

So, yes, you know, she herself is a young student. She was really excited about creating something for her peer group and she was disappointed that she wasn't able to do that. But isn't it better to find out that your target market isn't the right one for you? Isn't it better to pivot? Isn't it better to find out who is actually willing to pay for your product early on? So she made her test products using AI, which basically means that it was really quick, it was really cheap, she didn't have to go through developers, and so when she needed to scrap her first version, it really wasn't a big deal. It would have been a big deal if she had basically not done the testing properly and invested in a fully developed product and then realized it wasn't going to make any money. 

So innovation means creating something and then testing it, basically giving it to your target customers and seeing how they react. And this also leads me to my next point, that selling is part of innovation, because you're selling your product, you're selling to users, you're selling to investors, you're selling to your team, you're selling to journalists and you know what, most of the time when you're selling, it's not going to work out. Most pitches fail, and this is completely normal. So in order for you to get a yes, you need to hear lots and lots of no's. You're going to hear more no's than you're going to hear yeses, and if you're not used to this, this is really dispiriting. So I just want you to know that this is normal, because if you never hear no, you will never hear yes. So when you're kind of, you know, when you get a few no's and you're feeling a bit sorry for yourself which happens, I mean, it happens to me definitely then basically just see this as a learning exercise that gets you to the next step, just like with our student. Okay, she learned something. She learned something about her target market. She pivoted and she moved on. So my question to you is after each flop? My suggestion to you, rather, is after each flop, write one line what did I learn that I wouldn't have learned otherwise? And then you will see that your failures are moving you towards your successes. 

So let's have a quick summary of our three mindset shifts for non-technical founders. Number one own what you don't know, because this is how you lead. Great leaders don't do everything. They know how to lead, as opposed to do everything themselves. So own what you don't know, especially important as a non-technical founder. Number two stay calm when others panic. This is how you make good decisions. Have a Google of the Tim Ferriss fear-setting exercise when you're really, really feeling under pressure, because it helps. 

And number three know that innovation inevitably means doing lots of things that don't work until you find one that does so. 

If you do these three things, you will outlast 90% of the founders who burn out or chase hype and basically just end up thinking that this is too much. 

Yes, it will feel like too much, and that's normal, and you can get through it. And, my dear smart person, if you want to pair the right mindset that we discovered today with product development skills. Then check out our free AI mini workshop, made specifically for non-technical founders, and that's at tech for non-techiesco forward slash AI class, and that workshop is free and in under 30 minutes you'll be able to turn your idea into something that users can see without code, without panic, without perfectionism, and then you can actually test your idea into something that users can see without code, without panic, without perfectionism, and then you can actually test your idea and take it to the next level. So go to techfulontekesco forward slash AI class, or just check out the link in the show notes. And now, my dear smart person, I have to go to the JP Morgan Tech Conference. Can't keep Jamie Diamond waiting and I shall be back in your delightful smart ears next week, and thank you very much for listening, ciao.