techfornontechies

Welcome to AI Decodes the System, the podcast where we decode the complex systems of data, tech, law, and public policy for everyone to understand. I am your host, Amber Ivey, also known as AI. In today's episode, we're excited to have Sophia Matveeva, the CEO & founder of Tech For Non-Techies, an education company and consultancy that helps non-technical innovators bring their ideas to life and equips corporates with the skills needed for digital transformation.

Sophia has an impressive background, having contributed to renowned publications like the Financial Times, The Guardian, and Forbes on entrepreneurship and technology. She hosts the top-rated Tech for Non-Techies podcast and has guest lectured at prestigious institutions like the University of Chicago, London Business School, and Oxford University. She holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, a BSc (Hons) in Politics from Bristol, and is multilingual, speaking English, Russian, and French.

During our conversation, we dive into Sophia's journey as a non-technical founder in the tech space and learn about her transition from a media background to co-creating award-winning apps and algorithms. Sophia shares her experiences and advice on finding the intersection between one's field and technology.

We also explore the story behind Tech for Non-Techies and the need Sophia aims to fulfill by creating the company. She provides guidance to those looking to enter the tech world without a technical background and recommends where to start.

Lastly, we discuss the importance of understanding and participating in the tech space, even for non-coders, and why it's crucial for our listeners to be aware of the opportunities available to them.

Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform and leave us a review. Stay tuned for more insightful episodes.

If you like the content, feel free to support the show by donating to my Patreon account at this link: https://www.patreon.com/Aidecodes

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If you like the content, feel free to support the show by donating to my Patreon account at the link below: https://www.patreon.com/Aidecodes

If you are not a developer or a data scientist, you don’t know what you don’t know about  tech.

This is a very uncomfortable feeling, especially for high achievers, who were trained to believe that success meant knowing everything.

Listen to this episode for five tips on how to make the right decisions about tech as a business leader in a world of digital unknown unknowns.

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If you like learning about how tech products and profits get made, you'll like our newsletter.

It's funny too. Sign up here.

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Tech for Non-Techies clients 

• Reach senior leadership positions in Big Tech firms
• Lead digital transformation in established businesses
• Create tech businesses as non-technical founders
• Pivot into careers in venture capital

If you want to have a great career in the Digital Age, then APPLY FOR A CONSULTATION CALL.

 

What happens when you apply for a consultation call:

1. Sophia and her team will look through your application. If they genuinely think Sophia could help you, you will get a link to her calendar..
2. You will have a 20 – 30 minute call to discuss your goals and see if you are a good fit for each other. 
3. If we establish that Tech for Non-Techies courses + coaching could help you and believe we would enjoy working together, we will discuss a relevant approach to suit you.
4. The aim of the call is not to sell you on anything that is not right for you. We both win if you get results, but we both lose if you don’t.

We love hearing from our readers and listeners. So if you have questions about the content or working with us, just get in touch on info@techfornontechies.co

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter and follow her on LinkedIn & Instagram.

Following us on YouTube and TikTok will make you smarter. 

 

To succeed in today’s economy, you simply have to speak tech. But, if nobody knows about your new digital skills, you won’t become a digital leader.

This is why, to go from traditional business manager to digital leader, you need to actively work on changing your professional image.

Here are three hacks to help you change perceptions today:

 

1) Update your LinkedIn profile

For senior level opportunities, candidates are not expected to apply – they need to be found. Executive recruiters use LinkedIn to find candidates, so make sure that your profile positions you for digital leadership.

This is also a must do for entrepreneurs and those not looking for their next job. Professional opportunities like new clients and employees come to us via LinkedIn, so make sure your profile portrays you as a digital leader.

The most important part of your LinkedIn profile is the tagline under your name. Put key words relevant to your experience and the digital roles you aspire to.

For tagline format, see Sophia Matveeva’s LinkedIn profile here.

 

2) Share content on digital disruption

Sharing content about how digital technologies are changing your industry is a simple way to  upgrade your professional image.

For the quickest way to do this, share an article you have already read on digital technologies and add a couple of sentences on why you found it interesting. Make sure to share content from prestigious professional publications, like the Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.

You could start by sharing Sophia’s Harvard Business Review article: Coding Isn’t a Necessary Leadership Skill — But Digital Literacy Is.

 

3) Host events

Host events on how digital technologies are impacting your industry.

As a panel moderator, you get to ask the questions, but you don’t have to know the answers. This is a great way to build your knowledge, network and go from being seen as a traditional business manager to a digital leader.

For example, if you work in real estate investing, host a session how technology has changed the industry. Ask a VC, a founder and a digital expert to join your panel.

If you want Sophia to join your panels, contact her on LinkedIn or email info@techfornontechies.co

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If you like learning about how tech products and profits get made, you'll like our newsletter.

It's funny too. Sign up here.

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Why Tech for Non-Techies isn't for everyone

To hear what Liz Jin, a lawyer at Google, has to say about working with Sophia, watch this video.

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Tech for Non-Techies clients 

• Reach senior leadership positions in Big Tech firms
• Lead digital transformation in established businesses
• Create tech businesses as non-technical founders
• Pivot into careers in venture capital

If you want to have a great career in the Digital Age, then APPLY FOR A CONSULTATION CALL.

 

What happens when you apply for a consultation call:

1. Sophia and her team will look through your application. If they genuinely think Sophia could help you, you will get a link to her calendar..
2. You will have a 20 – 30 minute call to discuss your goals and see if you are a good fit for each other. 
3. If we establish that Tech for Non-Techies courses + coaching could help you and believe we would enjoy working together, we will discuss a relevant approach to suit you.
4. The aim of the call is not to sell you on anything that is not right for you. We both win if you get results, but we both lose if you don’t.

We love hearing from our readers and listeners. So if you have questions about the content or working with us, just get in touch on info@techfornontechies.co

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter and follow her on LinkedIn.

Following us on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will make you smarter. 

“The business strategies employed by highly successful start-ups and the career strategies employed by highly successful individuals are strikingly similar," says Reid Hoffman in his book The Startup of You.

If you want to have a great career in tech as non-techie, but don’t know how to get started, this episode is for you.

Learning notes from this episode:

• Hoffman says we all have 3 puzzle pieces in our careers: our assets, our aspirations & values and market realities.
• Plan your career 2 steps ahead. For example, if you work in finance and your aim is to get into product management, it’s unlikely you’ll just leap from one to the other. This is going to require an interim step, like volunteering with a start-up on weekends.
• Invest in learning transferable digital skills. If you learn the basics of how apps, sites and algorithms get made, and when tech decisions overlap with business decisions, so many opportunities will open up to you.

 

Join our free masterclass on How To Transition Into A Career In Tech on 4 August 2021. 

 

Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here.

To go deeper, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• Library of masterclasses
• Monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, tech entrepreneur & Chicago Booth MBA
• Exclusive Resources & Perks

Learn more and sign up at https://www.techfornontechies.co/membership

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter.

Following us on Facebook and Instagram will make you smarter. 

Storing stuff costs money, this is why it’s good to look in the back of the cupboard and decide whether you really need all those spices you bought 5 years ago.

This is the same with data stored by tech companies. Companies have to pay to store data on servers. Google pays to keep all of those cat videos on YouTube. 

Learning notes from this episode:

• Storing data costs money and most companies rent server storage space from Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure.
• If you’re going to store data, you need to know how you’re going to make money out of it.
• Advertising isn’t the only way to make money out of data. You could aggregate the data into reports and sell them as industry insights.
• Storing data on how people use your product can help you improve your product.
• If you don’t have a plan for how to use the data you pay to store, you’re a hoarder and that’s not a good strategy.

 

To get Sophia’s monthly business update sign up here.

You’ll get a monthly update on how TFNT is growing, insights on eLearning, innovation and podcasting.

... 

Do you have a brilliant app idea and no tech knowledge to build it? Get your FREE guide here.

To go deeper, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• Library of masterclasses
• Monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, tech entrepreneur & Chicago Booth MBA
• Exclusive Resources & Perks

Learn more and sign up at https://www.techfornontechies.co/membership

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter.

Following us on Facebook and Instagram will make you smarter. 

Learning notes from this episode:

• Technical debt is the mess that gets left over from writing code and should be regularly cleaned up in order for the engineering team to work properly.

 

• Alexandre suggests thinking of the tech development process like a restaurant kitchen. Having spillage and potato peels dropping on the floor is a normal part of the cooking process. But if you do not have a regimen to clean up, you will end up with a filthy kitchen that will affect your food (i.e. your product) and your customers will get sick.

 

• Non-techies need to know that technical debt exists and that time needs to be buffered in to the development team’s work to run this clean-up effort regularly. This has an implication on cost because product development cost isn’t just about releasing new features, it is also cleaning up technical debt.

Learn more about Stepsize here and say hi to Alexandre on Twitter.

If you want to transition into tech, but you are not sure how, join Sophia's FREE masterclass on How To Transition Into A Career In Tech on 26 April 2021.

You will see five different case studies of successful career transitions and get the chance to ask your questions live. 

To go deeper, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• Library of masterclasses
• Monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, tech entrepreneur & Chicago Booth MBA
• Exclusive Resources & Perks

Learn more and sign up at https://www.techfornontechies.co/membership

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter.

Following us on Facebook and Instagram will make you smarter. 

Learning notes from this episode:

 

• Always work with designers before hiring developers. 
• Come to UX designers with a problem you want to solve, rather than a feature list
• When you're thinking of target users for your product, think about their behaviour, not just demographics. 

 

If you want to get more practical advice on how to hire designers and developers to make your idea come to life, get our ebook: How To Hire Your Product Team And Go From Idea To App: a guide for non-technical founders. 

 

You can learn more about Intergalactic here and about Eventbase here.

 

To join our weekly expert masterclasses, access learning notes and our unique professional community, join the Tech for Non-Techies membership community. As a community member, you'll get:

• Weekly live masterclasses with global experts
• Mini-course on how to go from idea to live app
• Supportive Online Community
• Library of masterclasses
• Monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, tech entrepreneur & Chicago Booth MBA
• Exclusive Resources & Perks

Learn more and sign up at https://www.techfornontechies.co/membership

Learning notes from this episode:

 

• There is a difference between technology enabled businesses and deep tech businesses. Technology enabled businesses use tech to deliver a product or service cheaper or at scale, but their business is not selling the technology itself. Those businesses do not require a technical co-founder from the start.
• Having a technical advisor to help you in the early stages is a much lower barrier to entry than convincing a developer to leave their well-paid job at Google and join your startup.
• This is contrary to what most VCs say, but most VCs do not have experience in building companies or products. Non-technical founders, like those interviewed on this podcast, use this path because it is the cheapest, fastest and lowest risk.

 

If you want to get access to the TFNT book club, our masterclasses, community and monthly live coaching with Sophia Matveeva, join us as a Tech for Non-Techies member.  

 

Get your free guide on how to go from idea to live app here.

 

Say hi to Sophia Matveeva on Twitter. 

Learning notes from this episode:

 

• Non-technical founders are the interface between the product team and the users. They focus on making the right product, not getting the product right.
• Setting the big vision and working out the steps to get there is another responsibility for non-technical founders.
• Once you've found a real problem to solve and set the vision, you have to hire and lead the team. 

 

To learn more about what non-technical founders need to know to build a successful tech venture, join Tech for Non-Techies. You'll get access to this full masterclass, learning notes, a library of content and a unique professional community. Check out our membership here.

 

Get your FREE guide on how to go from idea to live app here.

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter.

 

Learning notes from this episode:

 

• Networking is key to making a career transition. Meet people who are doing the job you are interested in and learn from them.
• To transition into a PM role, start by working on digital initiatives first. This will be your stepping stone to get to PM.
• Take courses to understand what developers are working with. Amber recommends AWS certification.

 

Say hi to Amber on Twitter 

 

To participate in TFNT live events, get all of our sessions on demand and get access to office hours with Sophia, join TFNT membership here.

 

Say hi to host Sophia Matveeva on Twitter.

Learning notes from this episode:

 

• Product managers define "the what, the when and the why of the product," - what the product is, what the priorities are within the product and why it needs to exist.
• Product managers do not need to code, but taking some basic coding courses can help product managers work better with developers.
• Constant learning is a feature of a good product manager's job: learn via industry newsletters, online courses and books.
• To make a career transition, don't only do courses, but also get some practical experience. For example, do volunteer user research for a startup.

 

If you are interested in the Tech for Non-Technical Founders course Juliet mentioned, sign up to the TFNT newsletter and we will let you know about the next enrolment.

To participate in TFNT live events, join TFNT membership here.

Say hi to host Sophia Matveeva on Twitter.

Key learning points from this episode:

 

• The tech sector is growing exponentially, so the time to invest in tech is now.
• A decade ago only 1 company out of the top 10 companies in the world by market capitalisation was a tech company. Today, 7 out of the top 10 are tech companies.
• The Techquisition process Paul describes consists of 12 steps.
• The first step to making the right acquisition is clarity of vision of what the corporate needs. 
• Red flags in startups include under-prepared financials and conflict between founders.
• Startups can prepare themselves for acquisition by working with potential acquirers years before acquisition is on the horizon, e.g. as customers or partners.

 

Read Go Tech, or Go Extinct: How Acquiring Tech Disruptors Is the Key to Survival and Growth for Established Companies to get the full 12 step process.

 

If you want to access the rest of the session and learning notes, become a Tech for Non-Techies member. 

 

To participate in future live events and ask your questions, sign up to the Tech for Non-Techies mailing list.

 

Say hi to your host Sophia Matveeva on Twitter.

 

Key learning points:

 

• AI is already changing industries and the economy by making simple operations run faster
• A business model is how a company aims to create and capture value
• An operating model is how the company delivers that value to the customer. Prof Iansiti calls this “the hard part”
• AI is already being used by companies like Ant Financial to take humans and cost out of their operating model, by putting an AI factory in the core of their business
• COVID has accelerated the adoption of AI across industries

 

For more insights, get the book Prof Iansiti co-authored Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World  

To hear the rest of the session and access all Tech for Non-Techies live events, office hours and recordings, sign up to TFNT membership 

Get your free guide on how to go from idea to live product for non-techies here

Say hi to Sophia Matveeva on Twitter

Key Learning Points:

 

• The International Standardisation Organisation defines user experience as “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use and anticipated use of a product, system or service.” 
• UX is so important that you shouldn’t put it on the shoulders of just the designer
• The main thing about UX design is that it’s USER experience, NOT YOUR experience
• A good UX designer considers the technical feasibility of a design and understands engineering concepts
• UX designers question founders and Product Managers and conduct usability studies and user interviews

 

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Forbes: What User Experience Designers Do And How To Become One 
• Tech for Non-Techies membership
• The Design of Every Day Things by Donald Norman
• A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making
• Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines 
• Google Developer Guidelines: Design for Android

 

Say hi to Sophia on Twitter

The key learning points from this episode are:

• Algorithms are just sets of rules for computers to follow
• Algorithms need data to be useful
• Data is by definition historic because it is information on what has already happened
• A combination of AI and algorithms can create better user experiences, which can result in more usage, which then results in even more data and happy customers
• Algorithms amplify the data. If there are biases in the data, they will grow as a result of the algorithm. Rubbish data = rubbish algorithms = useless product

If you want to learn more and ask your questions, then join the Business of AI session with Harvard Business School Professor Marco Iansiti on 1 July 2020.

The full recording and session notes will be available in Tech for Non-Techies membership. 

Prof Iansiti’s book Competing in the Age of AI: Strategy and Leadership When Algorithms and Networks Run the World is one of the most comprehensive books on AI for non-techies available today.

If you want to understand how rubbish data or the absence of relevant data creates rubbish algorithms Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez is an excellent resource.

Share your ideas for future episodes with Sophia on Twitter 

In this episode Sophia Matveeva covers the top five mistakes non-technical founders make, most of which she made herself. 

The main five mistakes to avoid are:

• Don’t make developers your first hires. Your first hire should be a User Experience designer
• Don’t confuse product metrics with business metrics
• Set your team tangible product aims with metrics and time frames
• Co-create with your users, rather than being rigid in your thinking
• At the start focus on product improvement, not on growth

If you want to understand the cyclical production process of how apps, sites and algorithms get made, listen to Episode 3: The Most Important Thing About Tech

If you want to learn more, then check out the Tech for Non-Technical Founders Course. You can also get access to more expert resources, interviews and join the Tech for Non-Techies community with TFNT membership.

If you have suggestions for future episodes, tell Sophia on Twitter

Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates eclipse the imagination as founders of tech behemoths. But being a computer science major isn't the only way to succeed in tech, either as a founder or an executive.

Host Sophia Matveeva was initially embarrassed of her status as a non-technical founder when she was building her first business. Now, Tech for Non-Techies is a thriving business. No one expected that, least of all its founder.

Robyn is the CEO & Founder of HER, the world’s largest brand for LGBTQ women & queer people. Their app is home to 5 million people across the world, with dating and community connections, and their events run in 15 cities, hosting 50,000 people per year.

Robyn is an alumna of Y Combinator, the prestigious Silicon Valley accelerator, and has raised $2.5 million from investors. Despite Robyn's Silicon Valley successes, she is not a technical founder. Her background is in branding.

Listen to hear how Robyn:

• built a global technology company without a tech background
• made her first technical hires & hear her advice for non
• technical founders and non-techies working in tech

For the full interview, join techfornontechies.co

About Tech for Non-Techies: Tech for Non-Techies is your guide in the jargon-filled world of tech. TFNT is open to anyone who wants to learn about how technology companies and their products work.

TFNT courses have been taught at London Business School, presented at Chicago Booth and featured in Forbes. We host regular events online and offline on how tech products are made, and introductory sessions on topics including product management, user experience design, analytics and machine learning.