If you're not a developer, designer or a salesperson, can you still start a business? You have to be good at one thing to build off of. By Chris Ronzio
programming, coding, agile, frameworks, debugging, algorithms, testing, version control, web development, mobile apps, data structures, software engineering, backend, frontend, full-stack
So I got a message on Instagram from someone that wants to start a SaaS company and they said I'm not a developer, I'm not a designer, and I don't really like being front stage like sales and marketing. Can I still be successful in this business? And my response was well you should be good at something. You've got to be good at one of those things and if it's not marketing and sales, it's not development or design, are you the money person? Do you have the ability to finance this business? If so, maybe you're or you're a silent partner. Or maybe you've got the management skills and you've got the money that you can put to work and you can build the team and really rally the team around you because you're just amazing with people. But if you don't have the money and you don't have the management skills, most people start out as some kind of technician in the business where maybe you're a brilliant developer that can code some piece of software that the whole company is built on. Or you're a designer that can make the prototype to hand off and be sold to people because you can just impress them with your vision for where the product is going. Or you're the sales and marketing person and you can inspire people and you can put out content and you can write and speak and network and get people excited about your idea. But when you're starting a business, you don't have to be all of those things. You don't even have to be a couple of those things, but you do have to be one of those things. You've got to either be putting the money into the company, the management skills, the sales and marketing, the development, the design or some other area of the company that you own. And if you don't think you can own one of those crucial areas for a business, then you shouldn't start the business. I would recommend you join another business and start to build those skills because then if you build the skills, you can parlay that into your own company later in your career. But think about what skills you have as you're getting started and how you can build on them to grow your business.