282: 5 skills to master before you worry about tech

Most people dive into tools, stacks, and AI hacks the moment a new idea lands.

Sadly, that’s the fastest way to burn cash and momentum.

Here’s the thing: before you touch a single line of tech, you need to master the skillset the best companies in the world return to again and again — the skillset that actually creates traction.

In this episode of Tech for Non-Techies, Sophia breaks down the five core product-innovation skills every modern business leader must build long before worrying about Bubble, React, or any new AI tool.

You’ll hear real examples, simple frameworks, and the mindset shift that separates people who waste months building the wrong thing from those who get paying customers fast.

In this episode, you will hear:

• The hidden trap that makes smart people obsess over tech too early
• How a simple prototype and five honest conversations can save months of work
• What separates useful user feedback from polite lies
• The habit innovative companies like Amazon repeat long after they scale

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

Check out the Tech for Non-Technical Founders program

https://www.techfornontechies.co/tech-for-non-technical-founders

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TRANSCRIPT

Sophia Matveeva  00:00

Both technical and non technical. Founders obsess over technology because it feels smart, but honestly, it is not the right place to start. Yes, it matters, but it's step two, and in this podcast episode, we will cover step one and the world's most successful companies like Netflix and Amazon repeat this step one over and over again. That's how they grow.

Sophia Matveeva  00:34

Hello and welcome to the tech for non techie podcast. I'm your host. Sofia Matvei, 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 tedro 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.

Sophia Matveeva  01:27

Hello, smart people. How are you today? How was Thanksgiving? Are you still alive? Are you slightly larger than you were? It happens to all of us anyway. So I gave a podcast interview recently where the host was asking me about what we teach about technology to non technical people, because obviously tech is such a big subject, and I said that actually technology is the second thing that we teach. The first thing is product innovation. And I know that the distinction might sound really pedantic, but actually is the difference between success and failure, because if you focus on the tech before focusing on proper product innovation, having a proper process to do that, you will lose your time, your money and your sanity. And I know this because I didn't know this. You know, intuitively, I basically had to learn it the hard way, and now I'm teaching it to you. And what I find is that founders, both technical and non technical, obsess over tech too early, and they're asking me questions like, which tech, tech should I use? Should I build in bubble, or should we try react? Should we use this new AI tool? And yes, these questions are relevant and they are important, but they are how questions you need to answer them eventually, but the first thing that you need to do is to understand the key innovation questions. What are you building for whom and why? This is Mastering product innovation, because this is what creates clarity and traction and sometimes even early revenue. And if you're fundraising, this is what you need to convincingly speak to investors about what you're doing. And honestly, you are going to use product innovation skills way before you need any technical skills. And this is why, in the tech fund and technical founders program. You basically get both. You get the product innovation skill set, which we teach in three one on one coaching sessions, so you can basically get started with product innovation, and it's tailored uniquely to you and to your idea. And you also get an online course which focuses on a lot of the technical aspect. So go and check out the tech one on technical founders. Program on tech one on techies.co. If you want to build your tech venture now it is story time. I'm going to tell you two stories about two founders. And I know both of these founders, but I'm not going to mention their names, and I'm just going to call them both. She so founder one, founder one did what so many early stage founders do. She started with technology, which is basically what I told you not to do. She hired developers. She spent nine months building the full version of her idea. She paid people to do this. She built dashboards and features and integrations, and it was all very impressive, and she was feeling really impressed with herself, but because she skipped speaking to users and validating problem before she made this investment, when she finally launched, basically people didn't want the product, so she didn't get users, she didn't get traction, she didn't get any excitement. It was a massive, expensive slap in the face. And this is what happens when founders jump straight into thinking about the how. And I think non technical founders can kind of feel so insecure about this non technical status that you then try to overcome. Compensate by thinking like, Oh no, I'm going to figure out this whole tech stack thing. But honestly, yes, you do need to understand some of it. I mean, this is literally why I have a successful business. You do need to understand some of it, but that is not the number one thing anyway. Now let's get to founder two. Founder two took a different path. So instead of starting with technology, she started with product innovation. So she used AI to build a simple prototype, which is what we teach you to do in our one on one coaching sessions in the technical and technical founders program. So she wasn't focusing on coding. She didn't need to have a development team. She didn't need to have a budget. She then showed that test product to just five users. She basically just did five tests, and she spoke to people, and based on those conversations, she learned that some things that she thought were super important for the users nobody cared about, and she realized that there were some things that she hadn't even thought about that actually people really, really wanted. And so she found out this information for basically, you know, with some elbow grease, but essentially, she found out for free. So with it within one month, and after just five conversations, she had a refined test protege. She really understood the kind of customer she was going after. She actually had interest from potential customers. She had proved that people wanted this, and then she had the confidence that what she was doing was a good thing to do. She had the confidence to invest more time and money and effort into this thing. And so this product innovation process showed her that she was on the right track and that her concept was worth investing in. And only then did she actually start investing in it by hiring developers to build out the thing. So her product, when it was built, was built much faster and much cheaper than founder one, because she wasn't paying for guesswork, and she also really understood what needs to be in the minimum version, as opposed to building a whole singing or dancing thing. And that allowed her to get early paying customers, and those early paying customers basically helped her pay for the rest of the development. Now, which of these founders would you like to be? I think you would like to be founder too. I would want you to be found too. Okay. The thing is, both of these founders are clever. They had the same starting point, but they had dramatically different results, and that's because one of them focused on tech first, that should be number two, and the other one focused on product innovation first, and that should be number one. So basically, product innovation is number one. Tech is number two, and this is exactly how we structured the program that we teach, the technical and technical founders program, which is why it has been so successful. Okay, now I am going to share the five product innovation skills that you absolutely need to master as a founder. This is for non technical founders. But honestly, this is just for founders. This is for people who want to be innovators and who want to be successful innovators. And if you're distracted and if you forget everything from this episode, just remember this. The main point is that technology changes very quickly. Human behavior changes very slowly or not at all, because there were some things that people wanted in the biblical age that we still want now the human condition, right? So founders obsess over technology because it feels advanced, but you actually need to obsess with human behavior and understand human behavior. And it's these five product innovation skills that really help you understand human behavior and how it pertains to what you're building. And this, honestly, is an advantage to the non techies, because as non techies, you don't do the coding, but you understand all of the aspects of business to do with people. You understand the sales, you understand the marketing, you understand how to convince people to do things. So use that advantage for all that it's worth. Okay, now here are the five product innovation skills that every founder has to master. Number one, you have to be able to pick a clear niche and to stick to it. So think about it. Amazon started selling only books, but even if we just go even kind of smaller, when Facebook started, they started only serving college students within Harvard. So it wasn't even all of Harvard. It wasn't PhD students, it wasn't the staff, it was literally just people in the dorm room. So college students, it's super, super narrow, and when you have a very narrow niche, you know exactly who you're building for you. Can picture them. You know their name, you know their habits, you know what they like, you know what they don't like. And because you you're basically tailor making this product for a very specific person, that person, when they see it, they're like, this is for me. Yes. Thank you very much. So it makes it much easier to create a good product if you're speaking to a specific person, and also to market it. So start small, so you can win big later. If your niche is everybody, your niche is nobody. And this is really hard for founders to do, because often I find that people think, oh, maybe it could be these people, or maybe it could be these people. Okay, I'm just going to do it for all of these different you know, maybe you think of five different categories, and you decide to launch to five different categories, that is going to be a losing strategy. A winning strategy is going to be to pick one of the categories. And you know what? You might pick the wrong category, maybe out of the five, you know, number one is the wrong one, but number three is the right one. Pick one, see what happens. Let that fail, then get to number two. Let that fail, then get to number three. So essentially, follow the scientific testing process to figure out what your niche is, as opposed to being like, I'm just gonna go out and speak to everybody and see what happens, because you won't be able to really collect data properly if you do it this way. So, number two, build a test product, and this is what we teach you to do. And actually, as I've mentioned before on the show, we have a free AI class on how to build your prototype using AI. Basically, you don't need a developer to do this, you don't need to be like a super, super whiz person at AI engineering. You just need to create a basic test version, something that real people can react to. And this is true whether you're creating a B to B product, a B to C product. It's true whether it's an app, whether it's a platform, whether it's a dashboard, whatever it is. So if you don't know how to do that, I recommend that you just go to the link in the show notes, to the AI class in the show notes, it's literally 27 minutes long, and then get one of the free AI tools that we recommend, and just use that and create your test product. If you can't see the link in the show notes, for some reason, it's tech for non techies.co,

Sophia Matveeva  12:23

forward slash AI class. Before you could

Sophia Matveeva  12:28

build prototypes using AI, you would have to basically either work with a professional designer to do it, or you would have to do it yourself using figma, which is kind of fairly fiddly. The point is, you need to be able to build something that looks like the real thing, but is not the real thing. That's kind of like, you know, in Hollywood movie sets, when there are just the front bits of the buildings, like when you picture a Hollywood movie set and you picture a street the actual buildings, they're not buildings, right? They're just the fronts of the houses which are going to be probably taken apart in order for a new movie set to be created. That's kind of what a prototype is. It looks like the real thing, but it's not the real thing. You need to know how to create that, and you also need to know how to test it with people. Which brings me to number three, your number three product innovation skill, you need to know how to get real user feedback. And this might sound easy, but this is, I'd say, out of the three so far that I've told you, that's probably the hardest one. So basically, when you've made your prototype, you have to get feedback from your target customer. So you have chosen a niche, you've got your test product now you need to take it to people and get feedback from them. Why is this difficult? Well, I'll tell you. So literally, just yesterday, I was coaching a founder how to do this, and for founder personalities, this is really, really difficult because founder personalities. We want to sell. We want to tell everybody how amazing this thing is. We want to find out their pain points. And we want to say, Oh, this is why it was going to solve all of your problems. You literally have to go against all of your instincts as a founder and become an anthropologist instead. And if you think of the anthropologist personality and the founder personality, they're very, very different, right? An anthropologist is basically sitting there and observing, usually like fairly silently and taking notes. A founder is more of a salesperson. They are, you know, usually quite visible. This is not the case for an anthropologist. So if you're a founder and you're learning this skill set, it is going to go against the grain. What happens when you don't do this properly? So imagine. You take a product to people you know, and you ask them for their feedback. Well, a lot of the time people are going to lie to you. It's like when, you know, somebody gets a new haircut, or they get a new outfit, and you think it's really dreadful, but they say, Oh, look, I got my hair done. Or, you know, I got a I don't know, I went shopping, I got a new out of it. Most people are just gonna be like, was great, sure, even though you're thinking, oh my god, this is horrendous. So this is what people do with test products too. This is why, if you don't learn how to ask the right questions, how to hold space, how to be this anthropologist, when you're getting user feedback, people are going to lie to you. They're going to people please. They're going to tell you that it's wonderful. You're going to believe them. You are then going to invest in making this product, and then 100 grand later, you're going to be like, Hey, here's the thing you said you loved. And people are just going to be like, Oh yeah, I didn't actually mean that. So this is why I genuinely suggest that you do not try to learn this skill set by yourself. Definitely, you know, read a book, watch some videos, but get some professional guidance to learn the skill set. Because if you are an innovator, if you're a founder, and especially if you're testing your own product, it is so against the grain for you that you really need somebody to give you guidance, to give you feedback on how to do this properly and honestly. Learning how to do user interviews properly is a multi million dollar skill set. And in fact, Brian Chesky, the founder the co founder of Airbnb, said that he still does it. So basically, once you master how to do this for one prototype, you will use the skill set for every new feature and every new idea that you have. So it's really worth investing in. So the fourth product innovation skill set is understanding what to do when you actually have your user feedback, because you might think that, okay, well, users are going to basically tell us what they want, and then we're going to build it, and then life will be good, and if only things were that easy. So users are not going to give you a road map. You will see patterns. You will see that most people find this relevant. Most people are interested in this and not that, and this is exactly why we're doing user testing. But you are not there to completely take orders, right? So you need to balance your vision with what the users want. So it can't be completely only what you want, but it can't be completely everything that they want. So it has to be a combination. And also, frankly, you have to think about the money, because users might want a bunch of things, and some of them are going to be really expensive to create, and some of them are not going to be expensive to create, and you need to be able to balance out that. Okay, maybe users want this video feature, but we know that to create it and to hold all of this data, this is what it's going to cost. And do we think that this users, these types of users, are going to pay for it? Well, you need to be able to basically find that out before you go ahead with the decision to build this feature. So knowing what to do with this feedback, it's both a business decision and a product decision. So just remember that when you get feedback from your target customers, you are not just using it to take orders. You are using it to get insight. So then you combine it with other insights, and then take the relevant action. Okay? Number five, this is the last but not least, product innovation skill set that every founder, technical or non technical needs to know. Product Innovation, my dear smart person, is not a phase. It's a habit that you need to learn. So meta and Netflix and Amazon, they run constant experiments, and this is how Amazon keeps on growing and coming up with completely new business lines. And remember, they started selling books, right? So this product innovation cycle, that's what makes companies start at the beginning, because this is how you go from zero to one, but when you are massive, this is the innovation skill set that you need to grow and to thrive and to keep on evolving. And essentially, if you don't keep on evolving, then somebody else is going to come over and eat your lunch. So the main point of this lesson is that you will use product innovation skills long before you ever touch technology. And also, this is the skill set that you're going to constantly need, even after you've already made tech stack decisions. And all of that is working really well, and you need to keep on reacting to the market and to keep on creating new things. This is. Why? Yes, you absolutely need to know how to speak tech. This is what we teach you in the tech for non technical founders course, but you must combine it with the skill set that I talked to you about today. And in fact, we actually have many developers who want to take the tech for non technical founders course and who listen to this podcast. So hello developers, hello engineers. I know you're there. And the reason why they want to take the course and the reason why they listen to this podcast is because they have never learned product innovation. They only learned to write code. And if you want to get to, you know, a higher level, not just be an individual contributor, but if you want to get to get to a higher level in a tech company, you need to understand both the technical aspects, if you, if you're on the tech side, and the innovations aspect, because this is how you actually create new things. And if you're thinking, Okay, well, so here I am convinced I need this framework, I need these skills and I need somebody to guide me through it, then my answer for you is that you check out the tech for non technical founders program. It is honestly the best program if you have an idea for a tech venture, but not the tech skills to build it. And it is not just an online course where you get a bunch of videos and you just get left to your own devices, because I've taken those and, you know, I'm a motivated self starter. But even for me, if you just get a bunch of videos and nobody ever speaks to you, it can be kind of hard to continue, right? So this is why we combine one on one coaching with online lessons to make sure that you get the most out of this program, and that you actually build the tech venture that you want, and that you actually get the insight that you need. And hundreds of people have now gone through this program, and our alumni have built tech ventures, scaled their businesses, raised funding and joined impressive accelerators, as you've heard on previous alumni episodes. So if this is what you want to then check out the tech for non technical founders program. The link is in the show notes. Or just go to tech for non techies.co and you will see details about the program there. And on that note, thank you very much

Sophia Matveeva  22:19

for being with me today. I appreciate the time that we spent together, and I shall be back in your delightful, smart years next week. Ciao.