Starting a Tech Startup with No Skills. Which One Do You Learn First?

Someone on Quora asked:

If you were starting a technology startup and you have no skills, would you learn sales, design, or programming first?

If not those 3 avenues, what would you learn first? Then second?

This was my response:

When I was 22, I tried to make my own single founder startup. I failed, horribly.

I learned, from that experience, that in order to make it in life, you can never do things alone. So instead, I picked one skills to put my sole emphasis into to becoming the best I could be at it.

I already had learned sales, so that really wasn’t an issue for me to figure out. I even gradually learned how to train and duplicate sales people, so that was no big deal. What I put my emphasis into learning was marketing.

I know the basics to photoshop, which is all I need to know for design. I don’t know anything at all about coding, which is really bad, since I should at least know the basics.

Instead of learning all three, what I found was the best thing to do was to find and source out partners, or cofounders who have these skills, so we can all leverage off each other’s strengths, instead of trying to handle everything ourselves, which will end up becoming a huge cluster of madness.

I’m still in the process of searching for a programmer who understands that I’m able to penetrate the market efficiently, as I’ve created a pretty decent strategy as it is. It’s tough to find, but eventually someone will send me a message and we’ll be working together.

From there, who knows. Maybe things just may click together!

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Originally posted on Quora.

Leonard Kim consults startups and writes books like The Etiquette of Social Media: How to Connect and Respond to Others in the World of Social Media