Sophia Matveeva
Sophia Matveeva
Sophia Matveeva: entrepreneur, speaker, digital innovator

Tech Entrepreneur, Board Member & Keynote Speaker

Sophia Matveeva is the CEO & founder of Tech For Non-Techies, an education company and consultancy. Sophia has contributed to the Financial Times, The Guardian and Forbes on entrepreneurship and technology, and hosts the top rated Tech for Non-Techies podcast.

Tech for Non-Techies teaches non-technical professionals how to Speak Tech and succeed in the Digital Age through corporate & individual training programs.

As a non-technical founder, Sophia has co-created apps and algorithms that have been used by thousands, won App of the Day by Mashable, and were featured by Inc, the BBC and more.

She has also guest lectured at the University of Chicago, London Business School, and Oxford University, and led the Blackstone x Techstars accelerator at the University of Texas at El Paso.

Sophia is a start-up mentor at the Chicago Booth Polsky Center of Entrepreneurship, and has advised leading accelerators including Chicago Booth’s New Venture Challenge and the Microsoft x London College of Fashion incubator.

She holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, and a BSc (Hons) in Politics from Bristol. She speaks English, Russian and French. Sophia also sits on the Board of University of Chicago’s Alumni in the UK.

 As Seen In

Testimonials

“Last November, Sophia Matveeva led a stellar webinar for the UChicago Alumni Career Programs’ Career Month, in which she shared key takeaways from her experience in building an effective startup team. Sophia has not only built a successful startup that has achieved international adoption, but can eloquently speak to the challenges, victories, and lessons that come from doing so. She is down to earth, candid, and has the experience in actually doing the work to back up her advice. We would be excited to work with her again in the future.”
— Linda Pantale | Associate Director, Career Development, The University of Chicago
“I consider myself lucky that I have discovered “Tech for Non-Techies” platform created by Sophia Matveeva (recommended by my friend). Her webinar on Product Management helped me to see some of the mistakes that could have been avoided on my personal journey to creating a tech product. Sophia has a talent to explain complicated tech concepts with simple words. Her own experience gives non-digital native people like me some hope that we can also play roles in the new Digital Era.”
— Irina Klokova, Management Consultant
“Sophia delivered a great webinar on creating and growing a personal brand to our audience of senior executives. Sophia has a wealth of experience in this field as well as being an accomplished and engaging speaker.

The content was on point, clearly delivered, and full of actionable tips that can be implemented straight away.

Thanks, Sophia for a great webinar experience!”
— Yann Le Leyour, Ikiru People
“Sophia’s ‘What non-technical founders really need to know about tech’ is an excellent session that will get you up to speed about the ins and outs of working with a technical team.

Expect lots of actionable insights and useful advice on what you need to know (hint, you won’t need to learn how to code) and how you can learn to work with developers, technical co-founders and the like.

You’ll end up saving years in trial, error and making your own mistakes.”
— Fru Bekefi, Second Home, Community & Innovation Programme Manager
“Sophia was a speaker at our conference Cross Pollination of Thought hosted at Hult International Business School London campus where she shared her story as an enthusiastic entrepreneur and founder of Enty. Sophia’s energy and originality resonated with the audience, and as a result, the conference had received extremely positive feedback both from other speakers and participants.”
— SHIRLEY HSU, HULT CONFERENCE ORGANIZER & MBA

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MY PROMISE

I only share what I have found to be useful in running my business and growing my career from PR, to top tier MBA, to tech entrepreneur and media contributor.

I share what really works in practice, when you are operating in cash and time constrained environments, not what’s supposed to work in theory or with unlimited budgets.

 

Why I do advisory work

Because I know how hard the innovator journey is

When I got the admissions letter from Chicago Booth, I thought this would be my guaranteed entrance into the high flying world of business. This may have been true if I had taken the corporate route, but it was not true for starting a tech platform from scratch.

Technical founders are sought after, but in my case, it was my PR and marketing background that ended up making the biggest difference to my startup. I used my PR skills to get investment, grow a team and create a revenue generating, growing business.

As a non-technical founder, I have had to learn how to build and analyse digital products, lead technical teams and hire & fire developers. I believe it is not only possible but desirable for people without computer science backgrounds to create digital products, so we can all benefit from diversity of thought and have fun, useful new tech.

Creating something new is hard enough (I know!), and I want to make it easier for the people I work with.

Let’s rise together!