If You Want To Be The Donald Trump Of Startups, Learn To Code]
The Donald built an empire because he knew what every piece and process cost him. If you can't say the same for your software, you won't.
Programming is a practical application of abstract math combining esoteric theory with experiential practice. And learning it can be every bit as brain-scramblingly incomprehensible and front-row-seat-for-Celine-Dion tedious as the previous sentence suggests.
But, if you want to start a technology company, you should learn to code. And the reason is Donald Trump.
Say whatever you want about the man (and, as a New Yorker, I can say plenty), Donald Trump achieved no small level of success in the real estate business. His real estate portfolio stretches from sea to shining sea, including a good-sized chunk of Manhattan, skyline causing Forbes to estimate his worth at $2.9 billion. He sits at #134 of that publication's list of wealthiest people in the United States, fomenting a serious bit of celebrity and funding a less serious flirtation with the White House. All this without the ability to get through a press conference with a single complete sentence or eat a New York slice correctly. How is a man whose public image is punctuated by obtuseness able to out-earn quite nearly anybody who reads this article by orders of magnitude?
If you were to ask him the secret to his success, he would point to a competitive edge handed down to him by his father: He knew what everything cost. Meaning he could look at a foundation and given its size, the type of concrete used, the techniques involved and a few other factors, Trump's old man had a rough sense of how much he should pay. His son often says that knowledge--the knowledge of what everything costs--is the linchpin of the Trump empire’s success. When looking at that ability across all that goes into real estate development, it is little wonder.
Demolition, architecture, plumbing, electrical work, heating, air conditioning, permits, labor, interior design, lumber, dry wall, 12-foot-tall golden letters spelling your own last name--Trump's big edge is he knows the going rate for all of it. There are hundreds of details that go into turning a hunk of capital into a building; Donald Trump wins because he knows what all those details cost. And his competitors don't.
Reconsider, then, why you should learn to program as a non-technical founder. In our current environment, your most precious resource is not money--it is time. With a macroeconomy still allocating capital to angel and venture at a rate disproportionate with the risk those asset classes represent, a wealth of cloud services that bring down the capital expenditure needed to build a software company to near zero, and a market for developer talent hotter than the surface of the Sun, days of developer time have eclipsed American dollars as the most valuable commodity in the startup game.
Why learn how to program? Because you'll learn how much time everything should take. Will sharing content on Facebook take more time than authenticating with Twitter? Is it more development effort to implement a recommendation engine or add full-text search? If a developer hands you a login page written in an afternoon, is it quality work? Will rewriting the site in Ruby really only take three months?
It is true what they say about learning to code--it is easier or cheaper than ever before. But for the born hustler well removed from college whose recollection of algebra is as fuzzy as the name of the junior high cafeteria lady, programming is still a damn difficult thing to get a handle on. The difficulty curve from understanding programming fundamentals like variables and conditional logic to producing your first web page is steeper than the hockey stick growth you're expecting with your company. Scaling this mountain is further complicated by the realities of coding for a modern web where--bare minimum--you'll need comprehension of four different languages to do anything and five if you want to do anything important. And this is to say nothing of the hundred odd operational obstacles you'll also need to hurdle to get the code from your laptop to a domain name where anyone on the Internet can pay you with a credit card....MORE
