If you’re a non-technical founder…

Go Learn HTML/CSS at the bare minimum. Software is eating the world and being a non-technical role player is going to become harder and harder as time goes on. There’s no room for excuses here. Everything that is required from a non-technical cofounder requires some sort of technical knowledge at some point along the line.

As a founder, you have to wear many hats, and many of those will require knowing a little bit of programming, whether you like it our not.

This summer, I’ve seen this with:

• Using Google Chrome’s Inspect Element tool to test web design concepts on the fly
• Using my HTML/CSS skills to edit HTML email templates so that ResumeRuby can have effective email marketing
• Even with our pricing experiments, I needed to know HTML/CSS to effectively set up a Pricing Survey with Amazon Turk
• Some growth strategies that depend completely on technical ability. In fact the term (despite it turning into a buzzword) Growthhacker spawned from the very need for marketers who also have a growing technical skill-set

Successful first time startups have tough accountability systems set up

You need one too - because it’s never been easier to lie to yourself. The first thing I realized is adding a cofounder makes the whole accountability thing much, much easier.

For us at ResumeRuby, the formula for ruthlessly consistent work this summer has been:

• Using ToDoIst for Business to track action items that need to get done during very specific dates
• Designating a Directly Responsible Individual (DRI, thanks Steve Jobs) for everything that needs to get done. Even if they choose to delegate the task, using this terminology still helps exemplifies who’s responsibility it is to make sure it gets done on time (and right)
• Anytime you can avoid putting things off, take advantage right away for two big reasons. First, the longer you wait to start something, the average duration it takes you to finish increases exponentially. Second, you’ll gain anytime you would have used procrastinating.
• Balancing the maker, visionary, and maker within yourself. Know where you want to go, know the step to take right now, with which tool.

“Most people are fast to stop you before you get started but hesitate to get in the way if you’re moving.” ― Timothy Ferriss

You Know Nothing.

This is because with entrepreneurship, all ideas are worthless. In fact, they’re not ideas at all, they’re hypotheses. Being smart definitely helps, but they key is being able to swallow your pride each time and begin asking customers what they think as soon as possible.

The key is to be ruthlessly consistent when it comes to building a product, and talking to customers about what they’ll pay you for (and they having them actually pay you).

This is a lot harder than meets the eye, because people tend to sabotage ourselves from the truth.

How?

When surveying customers, startups tend to ask leading questions, and ignore survey biases to see the result that they want to hear. This especially applies to first-time founders and can prevent you from getting any sort of product-market fit.

With searching for data, some then tend to look for data that backs up our original idea for some good old-fashioned confirmation bias. It’s never been easier to find data points that can fit within a given narrative.

If all else fails, some might even ignore the facts right in front of them.

As a first time founder, I think tends to be the biggest risk of them all.

Apple started by asking people to pre-pay for computers before they’d go build them. What’s your excuse?

-Hiten Shah