How To Manage A Tech Company As a Non-Technical Founder

About this video

Martell, who says he taught himself to code at 17, hired 200 engineers across his companies and has coached over 700 non-technical SaaS founders, lays out four strategies for running a tech company without being technical. First, find talent abroad: most early products he knows were built by developers in other countries, and he says full-time developers can still be found for roughly $1,200-$2,000 a month, which matters because the first version is rarely the right one and cheap iteration buys time — though he tells viewers to Google which countries are cheapest now, as salaries shift quickly. Second, manage the talent by learning three things (not coding itself): source code management (know where the code lives, e.g. Git/GitHub, and get admin access so you are never held hostage), the CI/CD pipeline (continuous integration and deployment, ideally deploying daily or weekly rather than every two-week sprint), and agile development (customer stories driving the work, not developer-designed product). Third, verify talent by hiring a technical advisor — an expert you could not hire full-time — for about an hour a week to review code and infrastructure, join final interviews and report back to you, like a secret shopper. Fourth, protect yourself with errors-and-omissions insurance, bug bounty services, documented architecture diagrams, and all logins kept in a shared password manager such as 1Password or LastPass.

Key takeaways

• Keep early development low-cost with overseas developers so you can afford to iterate when the first build is wrong
• Never be held hostage: know where your source code is managed and hold admin access yourself
• Insist on a CI/CD pipeline with frequent deployment and an agile, story-driven process instead of developer-designed product
• Hire a technical advisor for roughly an hour a week to audit code, infrastructure and hiring — a Rosetta Stone for a non-technical founder
• Protect the asset with errors-and-omissions insurance, bug bounties, architecture documentation and a shared password manager for all logins

Episode details: published May 16, 2022 · 13:13 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dan Martell’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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