I did the program on weekends and worked remotely on Mondays. My partner, at the time, asked me what the point of having a cushy tech job was if I couldn’t fly to New York every week. But I lived in Seattle and wasn’t sure what to do.

And in 2014, I found out about a side project accelerator program in New York. I was working at Microsoft and I really wanted to be able to create and lead my own projects.

Tara Reed: I fell in love with it by accident. Shani Syphrett: When did you fall in love with entrepreneurship? As transparent as she is knowledgeable, we talked about her experience of testing the waters with side projects, how important it is to not rely on scale to be successful and how vulnerability is a great business asset. The company helps entrepreneurs turn their app ideas into viable businesses. Over one hundred thousand YouTube views later, Tara is now the founder and CEO of Apps Without Code, a startup school that offers webinars, coaching and an intensive boot camp.

After launching a successful personalized art recommendation app (Kollecto) without using code, she garnered the attention of the TEDx selection committee and a growing number of non-technical entrepreneurs who had ideas.

Tara reed apps without code