At the forefront of technology for over 20 years, Nelly Yusupova has established herself as a transformative figure in the tech industry. As the founder and CTO of Wellbeing, Inc., creator of TechSpeak for Entrepreneurs, and a fractional CTO and startup tech advisor, Yusupova brings invaluable expertise to entrepreneurs navigating the complex tech landscape. Her impressive career includes mentoring for organizations like Techstars and DigitalUndivided, and recognition from Fast Company’s “League of Extraordinary Women” and Wall Street Journal’s “Women on the IT Fast Track.”
At the Roadmap To Billions New York Conference, Yusupova will lead a panel discussion on “AI Agents – Your Business on Autopilot,” where she plans to share her insights on leveraging artificial intelligence to transform business operations. Ahead of this event, she shared her journey, the common pitfalls startups face, and how AI is revolutionizing entrepreneurship.
What sparked your journey from developer to CTO and ultimately to startup advisor for non-technical founders?
I got my break by accidentally ending up in a startup space, and what’s amazing about working in startups is if you say yes, and you’re enthusiastic, and you’re willing to learn, you get exposure into lots and lots of different opportunities. I got to work at a company called Web Girls, which was a startup company back in early 90s, and very quickly was able to learn everything there was to learn about their tech department, because they were a small company, and I learned so much.
I had a very short stint to go to work at a big company, but I totally didn’t vibe with that. After coming from a startup environment where I got to do so many things, somebody at a big company tried to put me in a box and tell me this is what you need to be doing now. So I went back to Web Girls. I got an opportunity of a lifetime that really created the career path that I was on. They told me that I can come and join them, and I can become a CTO, and I was in my early twenties.
I learned everything on the job. I learned how to manage teams, how to work with teams, how to build products, how to do sales, how to do business development and marketing. I became a well-rounded person and not just a tech person, which, as a fractional CTO or CTO in general, you have to understand both business and technology.
Eventually I decided to go on the speaking circuit, and that’s where I got into the next phase of my life where I started meeting entrepreneurs, a lot of them happened to be non-technical. That’s when I started TechSpeak, and TechSpeak is a 10 step process that I use. I started teaching it to non technical entrepreneurs to allow them to become better leaders, to be able to manage their teams, to prevent themselves from wasting a lot of time and money on mistakes.
What are three signs that a startup is wasting money on product development?
The first thing is that almost every startup that I end up working with, they over-build too much technology. Instead, what I teach is building with customers. They usually build the product first and then they go find a market that wants it, and that’s a backwards way of doing it. The biggest waste, essentially, that you can make is actually assuming that the solution needs to exist rather than find the customers first, find demand first, pre-sell your solution, if possible, and then build the solution.
The second is them not being technically literate and understanding the process. So oftentimes they don’t know what trade-offs to make, how to have those conversations with technical people, and they default to whatever the technical person suggests. They just trust completely and blindly, and they discover that something didn’t work out only 6 months into the project, and that’s already waste of not only 6 months, but thousands of dollars.
The third thing is not knowing how to manage developers because of this god complex with technical people. They’re afraid to say anything. They’re afraid to put a structure into what should be done, how to set the expectations. What I teach is maximum it should be 2 weeks, and you should be able to know every day what’s happening, and if you’re there every day, you can actually spot those red flags.
How do non-technical people become fluent enough to have conversations with technical team members?
There is no shortage of information online now. I think the number one thing that I see a lot of non technical people do is just say I’m not a techie, and they just give up on that. And so if you say that you’re never going to become technically literate.
I don’t want you to become a developer. You don’t need to know how to program, but you do need to understand how the web works. What all the terminologies mean? It’s like speaking different languages with your technical people, oftentimes because it is an entire different vocabulary.
Some of the resources are podcasts. Follow the people that you know are technical. Just start talking to people, and I think the first step is just not being afraid to ask for help, to ask someone to explain a term that you don’t understand. Technology moves and changes at the speed of light. We now have AI, it’s another set of vocabulary that you have to learn. So it’s just an ongoing thing, and tomorrow we’re going to have something else. So it’s just keeping up with the pace.
Why is finding product market fit such a critical step for early stage startups?
Finding product market fit is, when you, in my opinion, go from a concept, which is just an idea to an actual business. When you have found the formula for really creating and generating revenue from the right customer, from the right product, and you found yourself in the market. The faster you can find product market fit, the faster you can actually start to scale. That’s why I teach founders how to find product market fit as quickly as possible, because the faster you get there, the faster you can start making money. And that is the iterative process that you need to learn. And get there as quickly as possible.
Tell us about your panel discussion at Roadmap to Billions.
The panel that I’m doing at the Roadmap to Billions is called AI Agents – Putting your Business on Autopilot. AI is touching every part of your business now, and what we’re going to be talking about is what I call the AI ladder. I’m going to take people from the basics of “this is prompting and AI tools” to “how do you build a GPT?” And then what are some ways that you can use and leverage AI agents.
I think in the next few years there’s going to be hyper personalized software for every business, for every person. You need to be able to learn and understand how to solve your own problems. The superpowers that everybody is going to have, if you know how to leverage these tools.
People who are not jumping on this bandwagon and learning the skills, they’re going to be left behind. So you’re not competing with AI. I think you’re always going to have a job. You’re always going to have an opportunity if you know how to use and leverage these skills. People who don’t, are the people who are going to be out of the job.
What is your message to first-time Black women founders attending Roadmap to Billions?
The reason why I’m so excited about AI and no-code tools and low code tools is because underrepresented founders are traditionally non-technical. They don’t have tech degrees, they’re generally more non-technical, and if you don’t have the skill set of being able to build the startup of your dreams, you’re already at a disadvantage.
Every single one of us has domain expertise. Every single one of our experiences brought us the knowledge and the experience and the insight that we need to be able to solve problems for our communities, for ourselves, for our families, for the world. And now, with the tool set that is available that is accessible to people. If you can take your domain expertise and learn the other part of it which is so much easier now, you can build your minimal viable product.
One of the hardest things to find for non-technical people is to find a CTO. If you’re pitching your CTO with, “Hey, I have an idea. Can you come help me build this?” The answer almost always is going to be no. Right now, if you can get your startup to be not just an idea, but this is now an idea with some traction. Any single step that you can show towards traction is going to help you get those yeses from both potential partners like CTOs and investors as well.
With AI, even if the problem is small, it doesn’t have a zillion customers. You can still solve the problem. You can still create revenue, and I think, you could, with all the efficiency, if you really know how to run your businesses, you could have 2 or 3 different software companies. There’s no one stopping you from that.
