The plight of the non-technical startup founder

Tech startups are hard.

You need all kinds of people to make a startup successful.

Depending on the type of product you're building. who your customer is (consumer vs. enterprise), what stage you're in, and other factors, you'll need product leaders, software developers, sales reps, marketers, designers, operators, recruiters, administrators, and many other roles.

But in the very early days of your startup, if you're a non-technical founder, by far the most important member of your team is the software developer. If you can find one.

No matter how much you know about the industry, the user, the product features, and everything else, the software developer will be the one who can actually ship a product.

You can do all the research in the world. You can talk to scores of potential customers to learn their pain points. You can create mockups and wireframes.

But all of that doesn't mean much if you can't ship a product.

That's why software developers are the rock stars in the tech startup world. They can bring ideas to fruition.

As a non-technical founder, I know that I'm at a disadvantage. My coding skills, while improving little by little, are not even close to the point where I can build an app.

I need to be able to recruit software developers to help me build my product, and I'm competing against every other non-technical founder to do so. Not easy.

Once I successfully recruit them, I need to be able to communicate my vision of the app so they can build it. And a lot can get lost in translation.

Such is the plight of the non-technical founder.

Startups are hard. And if you're a non-technical founder, they can be damn near impossible.

Rant over.