Why I may never go to another "Entrepreneur Talk"

First, wow! It's been awhile since I've blogged on this site. (I have a few shopping related posts on here though.) Sorry!

Last night, I attend an event entitled "Best Practices: Creating and Propelling a Fast-Growing Company." Given that I have just launched shopperseeks, I was hoping to walk away with some great insights on what to do to make it the "next big thing." Instead, I realized that no one really knows anything more than anyone else when it comes to building a business. There are no right or wrong answers. The only thing people can speak on are their own experiences. I learned not because the entrepreneurs said so, but from my own experiences.

I am not trying to take anything away from these entrepreneurs who are successful in their own right, Marc Cenedella, theLadders.com & Vinicius Vacanti, Yipit. Don't get me wrong, they were great speakers with interesting stories. However, the #1 Best Practice was that all non-technical people with ideas should teach themselves to code. Otherwise, they waste time, don't know how to make decisions, won't get the product they want, etc.

WHAT?!?! I am not technical and I am a founder and I have a product close to what I want. While I did take a C programming class in undergrad, I do not consider myself technical. I have learned some HTML and CSS through a great organization, Girl Develop It. However, through my past experiences, including managing the apparel store-front at Walmart.com and over seeing product development at Globalgrind.com, I understand what can and cannot be done. While the product isn't exactly what I want, I was able to work with my developers from Protovore and we got there fairly quickly. I knew what I could and could not ask of them, I gave them wire frames and we worked together to set the goals and features at the start of the project.

And yes, this is just my story and I am not saying my way is the "right" way or that teaching yourself to code is the "wrong" way. All I am saying is this worked for me and it may or may not work for you. You may not need to spend hours teaching yourself php, ruby, html, css 5, etc. (I think they neglected to consider how long it takes to teach yourself to code in the cost/ benefit analysis.)