I know someone who is non-technical and does startup Internet businesses. His lack of knowledge concerning software development is a real problem, but he guts through it. The biggest problem is one of trust: if you are not yourself a developer you don't appreciate why on rare occasion it can take a while to track down a bug, and other normal software development scenarios. A friend of mine has a way of explaining this to non-techs: "You are going fishing. Tell me exactly when you will catch a fish." :-)