I'm broke and non-technical, trying to develop tech startup

I don’t think non-technical people should build tech startups. It can work, but it’s harder. Have you considered getting some technical skills?

How did you decide on the current business? Do you have sales? Pre-orders? Why high school graduates? Do they have the money to buy what you’re selling?

Do not attempt a software business unless you are a programmer. Period. Full stop. It will just be an endless money pit and you won't know how to stop it or fix it. Instead, partner with someone who is a developer and needs your skills.

I'm 38 and 10x more productive than when I was 22. You'll be fine.

Do the hard work and seek headaches. Don't quit learning and practicing until the headache resolves. That builds your value.

If you don't have one, get a job to pay off the debt and get stable. Build out your business project as side hustle if you must.

If you can get a job that helps your career. Career means anything not necessary working in a job forever. But if you pick up a skill like web dev that'll help you as a founder and as a worker.

You're 22, get any technical adjacent job you can whether in sales or devops or whatever, then learn to code over the next 2 years, and build your startup from there. Without technical skills, you cant build your product and you cant properly direct a developer to build it either. Until you have that knowledge you're just another daydreamer wasting people's time.

With more urgency comes haste. And with haste comes waste. Slow down to speed up. Make reasonable goals with milestones to checkin progress.

Of these goals, learn to program. Choose a backend, it doesn't matter much which one. Flask to Rails. Build a web app (HTML template stuff) and an API with that. Then choose a front end, from HTMX jazzing up that HTML template to React.

Spend 3 months on the back end part time 2 hours per week. Spend 3 months on the front end.

During this, delve into stuff like basic keeping a VPS/Linux secure. CSS. Database should take care of itself so long as you use something like SQLAlchemy (Flask) or similar but by all means figure out 'why' and 'how' indexing etc work.

Be patient. Six months later you'll be 22½.

This reminds me of when I had a conversation with my parents about going full in on my sideproject and dropping out of uni when I was 21 ; insisted if not now then never because i'm almost 25 and that was it then; old age, misery, brain gone etc etc. I am in my 50s now and more productive than ever. I made most money end 20s (my sideproject of my begin 20s failed) and begin 30s selling 2 companies for (then) fairly large amounts. But I did many more since then. Just continue; fail, go again etc.

I'd suggest either learning to code before, or partnering with a technical co-founder–even split. Don't hire developers until you have PMF and strong revenue.

If you wanna learn to code, there's a few good udemy courses (get a project based one). Start with JavaScript. Just so you know this will take a long time, but you'll understand your product better and it will benefit you more in the long run.

Start with clarifying the product details. You mentioned a product to help find PMF (Product - Market Fit) and FMF (By the way, could you elaborate on what exactly FMF means? I'm not sure about its specific definition). How will the product achieve this? For example, will it provide data research tools or integrate industry case analyses?

> I'm 22 now and the most productive age is slipping out of hand

I'm 50 and WTF does that mean? You were still a teenager a few years ago.

Do sales, build client network.

Don't focus on your limitations, if you're not technical, get someone who is to join you, it could be a friend, colleague, etc. Since you don't know how to code, try using no-code tools, they're tons of them out there. If you have a good enough idea and know how to communicate it effectively, there's no limit on what you can achieve and since your cash strapped, maybe consider applying to accelerators, there some that consider founders at an ideation stage, just remember that the only person who can make your startup work is you, Goodluck.

Learn to code.