The Anti-Tech Special

Author

Matt Jonns
October 16, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

It’s funny… I’m the Founder of a company that invests in tech businesses and builds tech products/startups, but I often think tech isn’t that important. It’s often secondary to a lot of things we do at Founder + Lightning and I have some real gripes with technology in our modern society.

So I thought I’d write an anti-tech special. Not to be negative but because I think people focus far too much on what tech they are going to build (what platform, what code-base, app or no app?) rather than the problem they are solving.

I’m not a coder myself so I am a bit biassed, but I also think this is the real power of non-technical people building tech businesses– by nature they focus on the problem rather than the tech.

Tech is of course essential, but in general (unless you’re building something deep tech) it shouldn’t be the central focus when building a tech business in the early stages.

So here’s what I think about tech in tech startups and tech in our society:

TECH
Why tech isn’t that important !

We all know one of the key reasons startups fail is because they don’t solve a critical problem.

From experience, this is due to founders focusing on the wrong things and getting far too bogged down with the wrong details– like what tech stack they need, what to build it on and how to build it perfectly. I’ve seen founders spend so much money thinking they’ll have millions of users on day one - and they forgot to get their first 100 !

Really that’s ultimately not the most important thing. I’ve seen multi-million pound exits by companies with spaghetti software behind the scenes.

Focusing too much on how to build something, rather than what users want you to build leads you away from what really matters:

  1. Finding users

  2. Listening to them

  3. Testing your solution with them

  4. Iterating on their feedback (until you build a product they want and need)

In reality, you can build a proof of concept/MVP offline and with tech products that already exist. I’ve seen MVPs that were built with Airtables, Google Forms, founders were manually inputting data and things were strapped together with Zapier.

If a founder is spending all their time focusing on which tech stack to use or whether they build an app or not (or worse whether to add dark mode), they’re definitely not out there speaking to users enough.

FOUNDER LIFE
Why non-tech founders make great tech founders.

Because too many people focus on tech, the non-technical founder has a super power.

I’ve worked with and spoken to hundreds of non-tech founders and because they aren’t tech experts, they don’t tend to get bogged down trying to build the best tech possible from the very start.

And because they aren’t building a tech startup because of their tech expertise, they are building it because they have the passion to solve a specific problem. They:

  1. Are often experts in their field, and have a deep understanding of what their typical customer needs, wants, and (sometimes most importantly) doesn’t want.

  2. Have a strong network within their chosen industry, friends, former colleagues, potential clients and early adopters.

  3. Can be really good at not overthinking the product or overloading it with features. They focus just on the users.

  4. Are more likely to have commercial understanding which means they often achieve profitability faster than their tech counterparts (I.e they can sell and sell well)

Plus…

👉 Only 66% of Unicorn startups have a technical founder/co-founder.

👉 Only 57.2% of VC-backed startups (2023) have a technical founder.

There’s something counterintuitive and ironic about some of the best tech startups being built by non-technical people but they see past the less important thing.

The key is understanding the user and once you’ve done that, the tech follows.

INVESTMENT
Why tech can be really crap.

I’ll admit I have a lot of contradictions in what I say.

I tell people to digitise their offline business but also say that tech isn’t the most important thing. I also run a company that builds tech but I find social media terrifying.

It really worries me hearing about the mental, social and physical health of children these days. I constantly see stats showing how these things are dramatically declining.

Kids spend hours and hours a day looking at screens and shooting each other in video games, I’m not surprised they are seriously struggling. And unfortunately, I think COVID made things a lot worse and got kids in the habit of being fixed to their screens and not outside/reading/doing a hobby instead.

I think it would be a huge move if the new government did something about this. It’s encouraging to see the potential move towards removing phones from school, but I think more could be done.

YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN

AI Resources I Use As A Non-Techie

As a non-techie building a tech company, it is vital to still understand where tech is going, how it is adopted, and where the opportunities are. You don't need to know how to code but you do need to understand the principles. With the rise of AI the opportunities are greater than ever, but it can be daunting !

Here are two great resources that I think you will find very useful !

Despite this being an anti-tech newsletter, I of course think tech is great ! I just think the focus needs to be on how it’s implemented, at what stages, who it’s used by and what for.

Rather than “I want to build something. I must use tech”, it could be “I want to build something. How can I get going without tech to save money and focus on my customer first.”

I’ve seen tons of companies who have started finding and onboarding customers with barely any tech. I’ve seen even more get weighed down spending hundreds of thousands trying to perfect tech completely forgetting about the reason they were there in the first place.

It’s not “how can I use tech?” but “how can I scale to the point when I then NEED tech?”.

Again, thank you for signing up to my newsletter ! I’ll be sending it out every month.

Always open to feedback, content suggestions or collaborations. Tell me your thoughts.

All the best,

Matt Jonns