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At NEXT Academy, we have always advocated learning coding if you aspire to be a successful entrepreneur, especially if you want to build a tech startup. As an entrepreneur in the digital age, you stand much to gain from knowing to code. Here are a few reasons why you should learn to code:
1) You have more ideas
Being a coder opens up your mind to whats possible to build in your business. Your mind’s creativity is often limited to what you know. But once you start to code, you get an influx of additional ideas just because your “realm of possibilities” has dramatically increased. These new ideas might be what you need to get started as an entrepreneur or even bring your business to the next level.
2) Move fast, fix things
When dealing with technology, it’s inevitable that things will break. Your site might get hacked, or a new plugin you installed messes up your whole site. Having technical coding knowledge helps you quickly identify the source of these problems and so you can fix them. You get to move more quickly in your business and save yourself from unforeseen costs due to delays.
3) Cost savings
Speaking of costs, if you are trying to build a technology-based idea such as a web app, knowing to code opens up many options for you to get your prototype up and running quickly. You could try to build it yourself (Minimum viable product) and get timely, valuable feedback from potential customers before going full on into product development mode. If you were to hire a freelancer or programmer, you know exactly how to communicate your vision and app features so that development costs stay low. You no longer have to worry about potentially being cheated by unscrupulous freelancers, just because you lack the technical know-how.
4) Added Marketing Benefits
Savvy digital marketers utilise an array of technology-driven marketing tools to stay ahead of the competition. For example, tools like Google Analytics, Segment, and KissMetrics lets marketers track the performance of their website traffic sources and optimize their marketing funnels more effectively, leading to more revenue, business leads and profits. A good coding background helps you see where these tools fit into your business and maximizes the return from these tools.
Where to start learning to code?
There are many online resources which teach you the basics of coding, such as Codecademy, W3schools and Code School. If you’d like to take your learning further, NEXT Academy offers 10-week, full-time immersive, hands-on courses in web development.
