[mnavada]

I attended the conference. Being "non-technical" doesn't mean you're doing less important or less challenging work. You're part of a team, and you should be proud of it.

My husband and I have a startup. Yes, he is the technical side of the team. As the CEO, I mainly shape the vision for the product, strategize on how we grow, and am in charge of marketing. When we discuss our technical strategies, learning how to code is not enough. The vision for the company guides the technical decisions.

Just because I don't sit and code our product also doesn't mean that I'm clueless about the major tech decisions we make. For example, in choosing whether or not to build our products with PHP or Python, I had to learn the pros and cons of each language, and then we made the decisions together. BTW, Python it is :)

During the talk, there was a push to have more girls who code. And rightly so, since women are grossly underrepresented. But for now, I actually think that it's great to have women who have the confidence to found companies without being technical. As Kathryn from The Muse explained, Alex, her co-founder learned how to code. Necessity is the mother of invention.

As for what I got out of the conference, in brief, I learned that the talks I loved were the ones where the founder was humble and matter-of-fact.