I can’t code

Starting a technology company and saying your biggest obstacle is you have 0 ability to code is not acceptable.

If you are trying to start a company and the only competitive advantage you will have is your technology, you can’t use that excuse anymore. You will have to just spend the time and learn at least a little of it.

There are 10s of thousands of free material online now to help you. There are 10s of thousands of drag and drop websites and apps to get what you want coded up.

If you don’t understand code, no one who can code will want to work with you. The hardest part of coding is understanding exactly what you are trying to do all the way down to the level a computer can understand it. It forces you to logically and concretely define what it is you are trying to do.

I saw a company with 50 million in revenue just fire their only tech person from their management team and slowly kill their entire business. They didn’t understand technology and thought of it as a cost center. They looked at their senior developers and wondered they were paying them so much when they could hire a new developer for 1/3 the cost. Without the tech person defending their technology decisions, their current developers got fed up. Within a month their lead developer found a better job run by tech people. A junior developer then quit as she felt the company was going nowhere. Last I checked, the second most senior developer is interviewing with a new company and the last developer is stressing out and considering his next move.

If you can’t concretely define what it is you are trying to do, then the person who is coding has to do that for you. If the person doing that for you is figuring that out and coding it up – then what exactly is your contribution? They can do it without you.

I had a startup I was helping ask if they could put me on their pitchdeck since no one in their real team could actually code. If you are at the point where you are just lying on your pitchdeck to move forward, you already know what it is you need to do.

You won’t code.