How to Speak Tech The Non-Techie's Guide to Technology Basics in Business

"A great book everyone can use to understand how tech startups work." —Rene Reinsberg, GM/VP at GoDaddy, CEO and Co-founder at Locu

"Finally a book non-techies can use to understand the web technologies that are changing our lives." —Paul Bottino, Executive Director, Technology and Entrepreneurship Center, Harvard University

"Through the simplicity of his presentation, Vinay shows that the basics of technology can be straightforwardly understood by anyone who puts in the time and effort to learn." —Joseph Lassiter, Professor of Management Science, Harvard Business School and Harvard Innovation Lab

In a way that anyone can understand, How to Speak Tech: The Non-Techie's Guide to Tech Basics in Business spells out the essential technical terms and technologies involved in setting up a company’s website or web application. Nontechnical business readers will find their digital literacy painlessly improved with each ten-minute chapter of this illustrative story of one successful technology startup building its Web-based business from scratch.

Vinay Trivedi—a private equity analyst and startup entrepreneur who works at the intersection of business and tech—employs the startup story line as his frame for explaining in plain language the technology behind our daily user experiences, the successful strategies of social media giants, the bold aspirations of tiny startups, and the competitive adaptations of ordinary businesses of all sizes and sectors. Along the way, he demystifies all those tech buzzwords in our business culture whose precise meanings are so often elusive even to the people using them.

Internet hardware, application software, and business process: the working premise of this book is that none of it is beyond the basic understanding of nontechnical business readers. Trivedi peels back the mystery, explains it all in simplest terms, and gives his readers the wherewithal to listen intelligently and speak intelligibly when the subject turns to technology in business.

What you’ll learn

Website hosts and programming languages for web apps on the backendPerformance and scalabilityAPIs, open-source programs, feeds, and database managementDesign and display on the front endWho this book is for

Primary readership: nontechnical business people who want to firm up their understanding of the technology of the Internet and their fluency with technical terms in widespread use in the business world.

Secondary readership: Digital immigrants in the general-interest mainstream who are looking for a short, accessible, and comprehensive treatment of Internet technology and business to inform their personal experience as consumers and generators of Internet content and value.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. The Internet

Chapter 2. Hosting and the Cloud

Chapter 3. The Back End: Programming Languages

Chapter 4. The Front End: Presentation

Chapter 5. Databases: The Model

Chapter 6. Leveraging Existing Code: APIs, Libraries, Web Services, and Open-Source Projects

Chapter 7. Software Development: Working in Teams

Chapter 8. Software Development: The Process

Chapter 9. Software Development: Debugging and Testing

Chapter 10. Promotion and Tracking: Attracting and Understanding Your Users

Chapter 11. Performance and Scalability

Chapter 12. Security Threats: To Defend and Protect