Will Learning Software Engineering Help Me Start a Company?

Assuming you understand the market and problem well, being able to build your own product can be a big advantage. This means you have more control over product development and cost, enabling you to move faster in the early stages by reacting quickly to customer feedback.

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People with a business idea but no coding background often try to find a technical cofounder, or outsource development to a software agency. Finding a technical cofounder is ideal, though notoriously difficult. Outsourcing works for some, but carries the risk of producing less-than-ideal results because of misaligned incentives. Given a lack of other options, gritty entrepreneurs tend to attempt to learn coding themselves to get their business off the ground.

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Knowledge of software engineering certainly can help you with the technical skills required in building a product, but, as with the complexities of business, does not ultimately make an overnight formula for success.

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If you are interested in finding out more about how to become a software engineer, or pursue a career in tech, check out our introduction to coding fundamentals course.

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This article was contributed by Rocket Academy’s founder and CEO, Kai Yuan Neo. He completed his Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science at Stanford University. He started Rocket Academy because the world still lacks software engineering talent, and people that had not studied Computer Science but wish to become software engineers have few good ways to do so.