How hard for a non-programmer to code a MVP before hiring a real coder?

If you're really serious about learning to code it's probably worth working out which language you should learn. Seeing as you seem most interested in web technologies I would recommend learning javascript. It's a client-side prototyping language (can also be used server side with node.js!). There's a great free course at this URL http://codeyear.com/ which has been getting loads of press this year. It teaches you an aspect of javascript each week. With even only very average javascript knowledge and the help of a javascript library like jQuery you can create something pretty respectable. Having said that it may take a very long time indeed to reach even the MVP unless you can commit to your project full time, are extremely well-disciplined and have absolute confidence in your product. Things that you may want to spend your time on instead are networking, building a business plane, clearly defining what the MVP is, working on process flows, UX flows etc. There's a hell of a lot to do outside of programming. If you're just trying to do something to help you get that bit closer to realising your dream of creating an awesome app that everyone wants to use, IMO your time would be better spent finding a crack team to surround yourself with. I would recommend coding to anyone as it's such fun but I'm not sure learning to programme will meet your objectives. Hope that helps :)

I'm a founder of a business with no coding skills.  I built an MVP with an open source CMS, several commercial plugins and then dug into the code to figure out how to customize them.  And it works too.  If you are smart, you'll figure out how to do it...

You can learn a lot from youtube and use stack overflow to ask questions if you get stuck, here is a site I have used to learn the basics but you can learn as much you like from this one website. http://thenewboston.org/tutorials.php It is quite hard but it helps to have an understanding of what's going on even if you do hire someone to lead the technical side.

How would you feel if you bought a "smart car" and found out the designer had done the same thing - had a great idea, NOT been a good car designer, and simply slammed something together to get a product to market? Or, if you had a heart attack, and they gave you an artificial heart... but then told you, "well your insurance couldn't afford the good one, so we gave you this one from a guy who, well, had a good idea but doesn't really know how to make an artificial heart"? OK, so maybe it's not life-and-death with most websites, but people DO count on them.  They depend on them working, and depend on them being there whenever they need them.  If you're OK with losing your customer base, and getting a bad reputation whenever the site fails (for the thousands of reasons it WILL fail if it's badly designed and badly coded)... go ahead.

I got the same problem, I'm an economist by degree. I decided to find a technical co-founder for making MPV, the speed is very critical for a startup and you have to make everything to start it asap.

You can buy a mediocre coder for $20 per hour who is probably 10 times as good as you if you start learning now. There is really no need nor compelling argument for you to do this yourself. Instead focus on the following: Use your existing skills to make a couple grand on the side that you use to hire said developer Focus your efforts on the product. There is so much to be learned about this subject that does not require training but really street smarts Be smart about what you want to create. As you are not a tech person you should look more towards finding a good business problem that allows you to quickly generate cashflow that you can use to hire better developers and hopefully a designer as well. Finally, understand that there is really a broad spectrum how you can money on the Internet. A lot of times a smart content business that does not require serious tech skills is a good choice too. Also understand that creating a Twitter or Facebook is not a business you want to be in as it requires the ability to quickly iterate, which in turn requires a tech founding team. Good luck