What does the business guy do before the big launch?
I have seen this question come up from time to time in tech startup circles. Typically, tech startups are very engineering focused. Many of them don’t have a dedicated ‘business guy’, and the culture of tech startups (at least in the Valley) is engineering first. In other words, grow engineers into business guys, not the other way around. Nonetheless, many startups start with a business guy on board and there are sometimes questions about what this person should be doing if they don’t know how to code.
Typically the answer is ‘Learn how to code.’ There are lots of resources around to help non technical people learn how to code, I will cover some ways that non-technical people can add value outside of the code.
1. Customer Discovery
2. Customer Validation
3. Market Research
4. Creative (Or Creative Management)
5. Competitive Advantage Assertion
