I am a non-technical co-founder CEO with a good understanding of technical lingo. I know a little bit of code (I could code super simple apps myself before GPT :)). I understand how stuff works. I can have a decent conversation with our developers, I can identify the flaws in the specifications and understand restrictions with certain ways of doing things.

As a co-founder of a tech startup, this was an extremely useful skill to have, because we never had a technical co-founder and did most of our development with an outsourced agency. (Yes, I’d change that, if I could find a good partner at the time.) This helped us move faster and give suggestions on what things to test, how to shorten dev time (making MVPs of features), which was crucial with an outsourced team.

But what helped the most were my sales and business development skills. You can always find a great developer (cofounder or an employee). It’s much harder to find a great sales person when you’re very early stage. You don’t know who your true customer is, you don’t know what your product is going to look like in couple of months, you’re sometimes not even sure if you’re solving the right problem.

You can always hire development. But nothing beats founder sales in the beginning.

So if you’re doing some preliminary research right now and trying to set yourself up with the best chances of success, I’d work on understanding the basics of product development and user experience design (even just learning the basics of what’s frontend, backend, how databases work, what languages can do what, can help you have a much better conversations with your potential partners).

But mostly I’d work on:

- learning how to test ideas quickly & iterate (read Lean Startup)
- learning how to talk to customers (read The Mom Test)- learning how to sell & negotiate (read Never split the difference)
- learning how to manage your time (just practice)
- learning how to manage people (Extreme ownership, radical candor)
- learning how to price products/bizdev (monetizing innovation is a good book for that)