Essential Technology Books For Non-Technical Founders - Forbes

Learning technology concepts rather than specific programming skills is the best use of time for non-technical founders

Getty

Technical skills are revered in today’s economy, where developers seem to turn into billionaires in their garages. This startup tale is usually not as simple as it seems, but it often drives non-technical founders or senior employees in technology companies to feverishly learn to code. While I would never discourage learning and curiosity, time is your only non-renewable resource, and learning a programming language is not very useful if you do not know why you are doing it.

My suggestion for non-technical founders is to always learn the processes first, in order to get a holistic view of how different technologies fit into a business. Here are the books I recommend to get started.

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries

The Lean Startup is required reading for entrepreneurs because it describes a methodology for testing demand and creating products that people actually want to buy. Ries says that many entrepreneurs fail because they waste time and money making products they think people want.

Instead of asking “Can we build this?” entrepreneurs should ask “Should we build this?” To answer this question, Ries says startups should work in a build-measure-learn feedback loop. This begins with building a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and then releasing it to real customers and getting feedback on how it can be improved.

Adapting the build-measure-learn feedback loop should be the first step in an entrepreneur’s action plan. This will help you work with a technical team because you will understand why tech companies are constantly releasing new versions of their products.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky

Now that you have decided to dive into Ries’s build-measure-learn feedback loop, you need to build a Minimum Viable Product and Sprint is the best book to help you do that. Google Ventures partners Knapp and Zerasky argue that you need to test and improve your product before you even write any code.

How can you test an app or a website that does not yet exist? Their answer is to create something that looks and feels like a functioning product, but is instead a prototype. Sprint is an instruction manual for an intense five-day workshop, the result of which will be a realistic prototype of your product with real customer feedback.

We have used Sprints at my company right from the start and our first prototype is still the core of our product today. It also helped us get our first angel check, because investors could see and feel what we were planning to build.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, by Nir Eyal

Whether you are building a shopping app or a trading platform, the end users of your product will be human, and the product needs to be pleasant and exciting to use. Eyal’s book is full of behavioral insights and case studies from the likes of Twitter and Pinterest which can help you build something people keep coming back to use.

A combination of psychology and technology, this is the book to help you generate new ideas for your product, whether your company is a new born startup or a maturing business.

Swipe to Unlock: The Primer on Technology and Business Strategy, by Parth Detroja, Neel Mehta, Aditya Agashe

Swipe to Unlock is a good beginner’s guide to the world of technology. The book is a series of questions about technology products we all use, such as, “How does Facebook decide what shows up in your newsfeed?” The answers that follow are comprehensive and jargon free explanations of the underlying technologies and the logic involved.

While there are plenty of explanations of technologies online, many are written for those who already have a basic understanding of servers, algorithms and operating systems. This book is a refreshing change because it assumes no prior knowledge other than common sense.

Product Leadership, by Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw

A product manager is often referred to as the CEO of a product, so if you run a company with technology at its core, product management is a skill you have to master. This book gives an introduction to product management as a discipline and then explains how the job differs at startups and large organizations.

I found this particularly useful, because there are so many parallels with leading a company. For example, the authors argue that “being a product leader means being in the middle of the sandwich, squashed between senior stakeholders (investors…etc) and your product team (designers, developers, marketers etc.).” Advice on the processes and skills you need to navigate this tricky balance is useful whether you are creating your first MVP or already have a product and a team in place.

Learning concepts rather than specific skills is the best investment of your time if you do not have a technical background, but are building a company with a technology product. Even if you learn to code, there will always be better programmers than you, so it is your responsibility to focus on why the product exists, who uses it and set the company’s ultimate vision.

If you have any suggestions for must read books for non-technical founders who want to learn about technology, I would love to hear from you. Please tweet your suggestions to @sophiamatveeva

https://ift.tt/2NnQ7fS