An essay by John Melonakos
“I’m Not Technical” is Uncool
Sometimes non-technical people like to roll out the phrase “I’m not technical” as a badge of honor. There are still some that like to imply it is cool if they are so important they can have other people do technical stuff for them, while they handle the more important “business matters.” It’s a pretentious positioning.
Technical skills for early business people in a startup are wonderfully helpful. Here are ways business people with technical skills can add value to an early startup:
- Creating, editing, and revising website content
- Creating, editing, and revising technical documentation
- Managing customer support while minimizing intrusive distractions on product developers and consequently providing faster turnarounds on customer support responses due to fewer handoffs
- Writing accurate technical marketing information (e.g. blog posts and whitepapers) without distracting product developers
- Gaining more credibility with customers and investors
- Being a more respected leader of engineers
- Hacking on graphics, logos, videos, and other Adobe stuff
Fred Wilson had a recent post on this topic entitled, “If you aren’t technical, get technical.”
What are other ways technical skills for business people matter?