Welcome to the Tech for Non-Techies podcast

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, and Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of VC fund A16Z, both started their careers as Product Managers (PMs).

PMs rise to leadership positions in the tech sector, because the job combines user perspectives, business needs and technological capabilities.  Whatever you want to do in the tech sector, learning how product managers think will help you succeed.

Learning notes:

• A product is a solution to a problem somebody is experiencing. Good product managers always focus on the user and the problem.
• Product Managers lead developers, marketers and designers, but rarely know how to do all those jobs themselves. 
• To lead the team successfully, product managers set product goals. This means telling the team where to go, not how to get there.
• To get into product management, learn a bit, do a bit. Taking courses is useful, but make sure to also participate in making a product.
• You can get involved in product management by...

You’ve probably heard the term cloud computing, but like most non-techies, you’re not sure what it means. In this episode, you’ll learn what it is and how businesses use it to solve problems.

You’ll learn from DJ Johnson, who works at Microsoft Azure. DJ started his career as an NBA player and transitioned into a career in tech.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Cloud computing allows businesses to rent space to store data. Previously, companies had to store data on their own servers, which was much more expensive.
• The two biggest players in cloud computing are Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
• As a non-techie, first identify business problems and then see if technology can fix them.
• For example, during Covid when suddenly many people ended up working from home, one of DJ’s clients suffered from major time lags in their communications. Their internal messenger service was taking 3 days to deliver a message! This was making customers...

Many investors view non-technical founders as more risky. Sometimes this is plain silly, but there are legitimate investor concerns that non-techie founders will make costly mistakes that technical founders will not.

The answer is not to learn to build the product with your bare hands, but to know enough about tech to have a product strategy and relate it to business goals. 

Learning notes from this episode:

• “You can be the ripest juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches,” - Dita von Teese. Some investors don't invest in non-technical founders and they never will. There are plenty of those who do. Spend your time on them.
• Learn how to connect product metrics to business metrics, for example how does user engagement relate to revenue or fundraising goals?
• Understand key tech concepts to make the right hires and set the right goals, but you do not have to retrain to become a...

Product managers combine user perspectives, business needs and technology capabilities in one job. But, what they do day to day varies widely. In this episode, you’ll hear how what PMs do differs between Apple and Amazon from Souvik Bhattacharya, who has worked at both.

This episode is for product managers, founders, investors and those who want to understand tech companies from the inside.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Founders play the product management role in their start-ups, and venture capital funds often employ former PMs as investors.
• What Product Managers do day to day depends on the life cycle of the product. For example, in the launch phase the PM role also includes product marketing.
• Software vs. Hardware Product Management is incredibly different.  Hardware products, like those at Apple, take years to develop and incremental updates are typically not an easy option Software Product Management is much faster as changes can be made virtually and...

Every app and site is made up of lots of different tech tools and languages. Like a house, one part is built on top of another and they need each other to function. If one part of the structure breaks, the rest can fall down too. 

These are called dependencies. To keep a product working, all the dependencies need to work together. This is part of the invisible work that software engineers do.

Learning notes from this episode:

• A tech stack describes all the tools and programming languages used to build an app or a site. Some of those tools are custom made, some are rented as licences and others plug you into a bigger ecosystem.
• Examples of bigger eco-systems that many products depend on are the Apple App Store, Google Play and Amazon Web Services. If one of these ecosystems has a problem, the apps and sites they support will have issues too. An app on the Apple App Store depends on Apple, hence the term dependency.
• Product teams have to update...

Andi Govindia has gone through three accelerators on her start-up journey. This helped her build a business model, find co-founders and get her first major clients.

Andi leads Riviter, a visual search company that uses AI to predict fashion and beauty trends, and counts L'Oreal amongst its clients.  

If you’re interested in entrepreneurship and how non-technical founders can succeed in tech, this one is for you.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Use Effectual Logic: ask yourself what the simplest and laziest way is for you to solve a problem. The simplest way is often imperfect, but results matter more than perfection.
• If you are applying for accelerators, link their speciality to your current needs. Andi participated in Chicago Booth's New Venture Challenge, Plug & Play and Founders Factory. Each accelerator has different strengths, and Andi used them for different purposes.
• Andi collaborated with her co-founders for a year before they...

Hiring developers and designers to build your tech product is always risky, because as a non-techie, you're hiring people to do things you don't know how to do.

Is outsourcing more risky because you're far away from the team? Or is in-house more risky, simply because it usually costs more? Listen to this episode to find out.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Always get employees and contractors working on your products to sign over the Intellectual Property to the company. If a person or a firm is refusing to sign an IP Agreement, this is a bright red flag.
• In the early stages of product development, your job is to test ideas, get an MVP out there and get initial traction. The focus should be on doing this as quickly and cheaply as possible, which often means working with an outsourced product studio in a cheaper geography.
• After you've proven market need, you can hire in-house to scale the product.
• Right at the start of product development, you don't know what tech...

More money is entering venture capital today than ever before. This means more career opportunities for investors, and funding options for founders.

In this episode, you'll hear from Check Warner, parter at Ada's Ventures, and co-Founder of Diversity VC. Check talks about her career transition from advertising to VC, how the venture industry is changing and how that affects founders.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Networking is a key part of a VC's job. If this is a career you want, build your network with founders, other VCs and larger funds that invest in venture.
• To be a successful tech VC, you do need to learn how to speak tech, but you definitely don't need to be a coder yourself.
• More money is entering the VC market and more funds are being set up. VC funds are often small, unlike other firms in the financing market. 
• The widening VC market and the growth of no code tools means more opportunities for non-technical founders to succeed. 

Say hi to Check...

Why do some products go viral and others die a quiet death? The answer lies in growth hacking. 

Growth hacking is a type of marketing that combines working on the product, which is an inside job, and working on promotion, which is an outside job. It is a new discipline born with the tech sector, and growing in popularity today.

Learning notes from this episode:

• The Dropbox growth hacking case study is still seen as the Holy Grail in the sector. The team created a double referral program to grow 3900% in just 15 months.

• A growth hacking effort is always done by a multi-disciplinary team, and will often involve a product manager, a designer, a community manager, engineers, someone with a marketing or PR background, and maybe a data scientist.

• Traditional marketing is outside facing: billboards, TV ads and articles in the press.  Growth hacking is different because it looks at the inside of the product, and adjusts it to grow users and revenue.

• PR...

Neither life nor business are linear. Startups often pivot their business models several times to find product market fit, just as we try out different careers.

In this episode, you’ll hear from Hannah Feldman, the CEO and co-founder of Kidadl, which helps families do fun and useful things with their kids.

Hannah is a non-technical founder of a digital business. She began her career as a corporate lawyer, then worked in banking, and then with Dragon Den’s James Caan before transitioning into tech entrepreneurship.

Her company, Kidadl also went through pivots before it found product market fit during the Covid shutdowns. Whether you want to build a business or transition into a career in tech, this is a great episode to learn from.

Learning notes from this episode: 

• “The business strategies employed by highly successful start-ups and the career strategies employed by highly successful individuals are strikingly similar," Reid Hoffman.
• Most startups have...