Welcome to the Tech for Non-Techies podcast

Great design is at the centre of the apps and sites we love. Bad design can kill a product, even if the underlying technology is world class.

Knowing how to hire the right designer and work with them effectively is a key skill all product makers need to have to succeed.

Listen to this episode to learn from Jasper Squier, MD at Intergalactic, a creative technology agency, and Ben West, Co-Founder of Eventbase, which mobile apps for the world’s premium events.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Always work with designers before hiring developers. 
• Come to UX designers with a problem you want to solve, rather than a feature list
• When you're thinking of target users for your product, think about their behaviour, not just demographics. 

If you want to get more practical advice on how to hire designers and developers to make your idea come to life, get our ebook: How To Hire Your Product Team And Go From Idea To App: a guide for non-technical founders. 

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In this episode Sophia Matveeva talks to Rags Vadali about what product management is, what PMs do and what you need to get a job in PM.

Rags Vadali has managed product at Google, Facebook and various start-ups, and like Sophia, has an MBA from Chicago Booth. This interview is an excerpt from a PM masterclass Rags taught on Tech for Non-Techies.

Learning points from this episode:

• A product manager is like the conductor of an orchestra. Conductors don’t play every single instrument and are not the best player, but it is their job to bring the best out of the players to create something together.
• To get a job in PM, you don’t need to code. You do need to think like a PM: understand who the user is, what problem they are facing and then create solutions.
• Influence is a key skill for PMs, because the engineers, designers and marketers working on the product don’t report to the PM. However, the PM is ultimately held responsible for the success of the product....

In this episode Sophia Matveeva covers the top five mistakes non-technical founders make, most of which she made herself. 

The main five mistakes to avoid are:

• Don’t make developers your first hires. Your first hire should be a User Experience designer
• Don’t confuse product metrics with business metrics
• Set your team tangible product aims with metrics and time frames
• Co-create with your users, rather than being rigid in your thinking
• At the start focus on product improvement, not on growth

Listen here on Apple Podcasts. 

Listen here on Spotify. 

Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here.

To watch the full session on video and access learning notes, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• ...

Listen to learn how and why corporates acquire technology startups. Understand why traditional businesses like Lululemon buy technology companies like Mirror, what red flags corporates look out for and how to startups can prepare themselves for acquisition.

In this episode, Paul Cuatrecasas, a technology investment banker, who has advised on over 50 TMT M&A transactions worth over $25 billion, shares his insights on why tech startups get acquire. Paul is also the author of Go Tech, or Go Extinct.

Key learning points:

• The tech sector is growing exponentially, so the time to invest in tech is now.
• A decade ago only 1 company out of the top 10 companies in the world by market capitalisation was a tech company. Today, 7 out of the top 10 are tech companies.
• The Techquisition process Paul describes consists of 12 steps.
• The first step to making the right acquisition is clarity of vision of what the corporate needs. 
• Red flags in startups include under-prepared...

David Segura is a perfect example of how non-techies can thrive in technology. His first venture, Giant Media, was a native video advertising exchange which David sold for millions to an ad tech company backed by TPG & JMI in 2014. Since then David has invested in almost 50 startups, many of which have technology at their core.

In this interview, David talks about what he had to learn about tech as a non-technical founder, whether you need a co-founder and why learning to code is a waste of time.

Listen here on Apple Podcasts. 

Listen here on Spotify.

... 

Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here.

To watch the full session on video and access learning notes, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• Library...

Tech products like apps, sites and algorithms are constantly evolving. Every time an app is released, its makers track how people use it. They use that information to improve it for the next release. 

Traditional products like the chair you are sitting on, are just made and sold to you. The manufacturer doesn't monitor how you sit on the chair to make it more comfortable. 

Tech products are made using a cyclical production process, whereas traditional products are made using a linear one. 

This is the biggest difference and hardest for non-techies to understand, because it is a philosophy of imperfection and co-creation with your users. Instead of making an elaborate plan for the best product possible, you release something simple and improve it with time and use. 

Listen to this episode to understand the steps in the tech cycle. 

Listen here on Apple Podcasts. 

Listen here on Spotify. 

To join our weekly expert...

Robyn is the CEO & Founder of HER, the world’s largest brand for LGBTQ women & queer people. Their app is home to 5 million people across the world, with dating and community connections, and their events run in 15 cities, hosting 50,000 people per year.

She is also an alumna of Y Combinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator, and has raised $2.5 million from investors.

Despite Robyn's Silicon Valley successes, she is not a technical founder. Her background is in branding.

Listen to hear how Robyn:

• built a global technology company without a tech background
• made her first technical hires & hear her advice for non
• technical founders and non-techies working in tech 

Listen here on Apple Podcasts. 

Listen here on Spotify.

... 

Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here.

To watch the full session on video and access learning notes, join the Tech for Non-Techies...

Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works - Steve Jobs

Great design is vital if you want your app or site to succeed. Having great code is meaningless if your users cannot understand how your product works, or simply don't enjoy using it. Intuitive and easy to use design lies at the heart of tech giants like Facebook and startups like Peanut. A career in UX design is also a great way for non-technical professionals to participate in the tech boom.

Watch this video to learn from Sang Valte, Design Standards Board member at General Assembly and ex-Head of Design at leading multinational UX agency Tigerspike.

•  What User Experience design is
• What sits in the UX umbrella
• How to work with UX designers to make great tech products

This session is presented by Sophia Matveeva, Enty founder, Forbes contributor and Chicago Booth MBA (seen in Financial Times, Wall Street Journal etc). Say hi to Sophia on Twitter https://twitter.com/SophiaMatveeva

After about a year of working with developers, a designer and a community manager to build Enty products, I started feeling pretty good about myself. After all, I started out with no idea about how apps or algorithms, and here I was with both. I even had a happy team. Go me!

So I decided that we should all do a review of our progress and team practices. Give me feedback, I said! Don't hold your fire, I encouraged.

Well. Ahem. They didn't.

The result - I wanted to crawl under my bed and quietly drown in my tears, surrounded by pizza crumbs and Twix wrappers.

The problem that everyone, EVERYONE, told me was that they didn't really understand what we were trying to achieve. We were all working hard, producing new features and pushing out new releases, but my team saw no direction. The chaos was further exacerbated by the total lack of documentation, which meant we created new things pretty much at random. Everyone was frustrated.

I realised I had a full blown rebellion on my hands, and...

David Segura is a perfect example of how non-techies can thrive in technology. His first venture, Giant Media, was a native video advertising exchange which David sold for millions to an ad tech company backed by TPG & JMI in 2014. Since then David has invested in almost 50 startups, many of which have technology at their core. 

I met David in the early Naughties, when we studied together at the University of Chicago College. At the time, it is fair to say we both had little knowledge of or interest in technology. Yet, after studying Political Science, David made a successful career in tech entrepreneurship and investing. He has never learnt to code. 

In this interview, David talks about:

• How he worked with his CTO at Giant Media to scale and sell an ad tech platform
• That you don’t actually need a CTO to get started if you are a non-technical founder
• Knowing how to work with the tech team being more important than coding
• Leading a syndicate to invest in a Y...