The question that popped into almost every Tech startup founder’s mind: “Should I learn to code ?”. Paul Graham once wrote in one of his essays: “The very best startup ideas tend to have three things in common: they’re something the founders themselves want, that they themselves can build, and that few others realize are worth doing. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way.” However, there is no rule that says you need to be technical to launch a startup, in fact there are plenty of success stories about non-technical founders who built great companies, Airbnb, Amazon, Dell, LinkedIn were all started by non-technical founders.
Zineb Fakihani is here with us to talk about the subject, Zineb is the general manager of Le Wagon Morocco. Le Wagon is a coding bootcamp that teaches students to develop applications from scratch.
Le Wagon has campuses in 45 different cities in all 6 continents. Their alumni gave birth to 167 startups, 75 of them raised a total amount of 292 million dollars.
Let’s see what zineb has to say:
Should non-technical founders learn to code ? Why?
In this tech-driven world, Coding has become a must-have skill. For both technical and non- technical people whether it’s for career advancement, personal growth, or improving digital literacy.
Non-technical founders need to understand technology workflows, learn how to ask the right questions and collaborate with designers and developers. As a founder, you need to have a good understanding of your clients’ problems and the possible solutions they need. If you know how to code, you can test out these different ideas and solutions quickly.
What are the best ways for entrepreneurs to learn to code ?
For a coding newbie, it is hard to know what to focus your studies on, in what sequence and at what frequency. You can start your journey learning online but you need a well-structured curriculum in a proper and challenging environment with guidance throughout the learning process. If you keep learning on your own you might quickly be overwhelmed by the amount of content. And you realize that it is almost more difficult to know how to learn and where to start than to learn programming itself.
At Le Wagon every module in the syllabus is optimized to maximize your learning, and strongly focuses on repetition.
Le Wagon is a very product-driven program teaching the core concepts of programming and web development. During the course, our students learn how to build robust and beautiful web applications by themselves. They collaborate within a team of developers and adopt the technical workflow followed by successful startups.
Aside from technical skills, our students also learn how to think and solve problems like a developer by breaking complex problems into smaller ones. By the end of the course, they are able to learn a new programming language or framework by themselves, which is extremely important in the fast-paced environment of web-development.
Tell us more about Le wagon’s learning methodology?
At Le Wagon, our students spend a lot of time coding, over 400 hours to be exact. Our whole curriculum revolves around a “learning by doing” approach, and we keep theoretical knowledge to a minimum. From lectures, to daily challenges and live code sessions, Sublime Text (or any text editor you prefer) is the main window open on their computer all day long.
With a goal to train the developers, entrepreneurs and product managers of tomorrow, we don’t only learn to code at Le Wagon. We also focus on all the soft skills our graduates will need when it comes to finding a job or launching their startup. Teamwork & collaboration, UX/UI design, pitching or product-driven development.
How does Le wagon help entrepreneurs during and after the bootcamp?
We do follow the newest industry standards, and our students bring these skills into their daily jobs or their startups.
After the bootcamp, a new life starts. Our alumni keep a lifetime access to our online learning platform. With up-to-date videos and tutorials about the latest tools and best practices of software development. But most importantly, they belong to a community and network of people who help each other. Also using our internal chat and alumni database to share tips and business opportunities.
Tell us as many success stories as possible. And what role did Le wagon play in each one of them?
Le Wagon now has an international community of over 12,000 alumni in 45 cities around the world. Le Wagon is a community focused on technology and education. More importantly, it is a community focused on its people. We have one of the largest technology communities in the world who share the same passion, determination and motivation to learn.
Discover their stories through our website lewagon.com/fr/graduates.
Learning to code turns some of our alumni into entrepreneurs! We are proud to see their 169 startups grow after our bootcamp. 77 of them have already raised
€244,229,300 all together. We are honored to be part of their young history! Discover the startups founded by our alumni lewagon.com/fr/startups.
Any final thoughts?
Whether you want to communicate better with developers, drastically change your career path or complete your education, a coding bootcamp is probably the right choice.
Registrations are open to join our full or part time web development or data science bootcamps in Casablanca. Visit our site to learn more. lewagon.com/fr/casablanca
As for our final thoughts, learning to code is not necessary for launching a startup. It can be a great asset. As stated before by Zineb, founders need to understand technology workflows. Also learn how to ask the right questions and collaborate with designers and developers. If you already have a technical co-founder, then you should focus on your strengths. There are lots of things that need your time and energy that can add value to your company.