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Okay, that’s a little bit of wishful thinking, so how about we say that more non-engineers should be tech savvy?

If you’re business and can’t talk tech, can you really expect a technologist to work with you on your startup? It’s hard enough for a business person to recruit a good engineer to build their idea, so if there’s a way to close the gap then it should be pursued.

The Bare Minimum:
A non-engineer should be able to hold a basic technical conversation. If you don’t know the difference between “front-end” and “back-end” development, you have some Googling to do. If you think Python is just a kind of snake, add that to your searches. If you don’t have a smartphone (and don’t plan on getting one), you’re kind of missing the boat.

I’ve been meeting a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs who have experience in business but are much distanced from technology, yet they want to do a tech startup. Something’s missing from this equation.

So what can you do?

The Bottom Line:
There are several tech items that a “business person” can do in the early days of a startup when there’s either no one else to do them, or when there’s someone else who could do them but would spend their time more wisely doing something else. Whether it’s putting together mockups with ideas for a user interface or changing the copy on a webpage, nobody would expect you to do the most polished work in these areas as if they were your specialty — it’s more about your willingness to contribute in areas that are not your specialty.

If you’d like specific recommendations for learning how to do anything in particular, post it in the comments.