As I sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (with a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I believed it might be a fun time to execute a mental check of start-up life and also the transition to date. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business aspect is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase now into the “normalization” phase of our own fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology during my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everyone for the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the group is helping us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned and also the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on developing the site, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this article I want to target customers and ways to tune in to them.
Once we first launched beta and commenced collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from the initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a roadmap button for that?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for starters, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since many people are happy to offer you their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make smarter lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push nearly all our developing the site and assumptions from a pure real-estate perspective. I knew we’re able to make improvements to the present tech in the industry, and we’re an advert real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of that great stuff but we provide a platform that is certainly CRE based to users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real-estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became less dependent on these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged with the feedback from the users and people from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real-estate product, we’re an enterprise product. How did we find that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is otherwise engaged daily hand-collecting reviews in Houston and I’m humbled by their efforts. They’re helping us seed the working platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a crucial and foundational objective of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses once they hear our mission, test out the working platform and determine what we’re about. It’s normal for the caboodlers to pay a half-hour on a single review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the business community is merely so hungry being heard. It is a group that’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every single day, to make their business grow as well as their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and followed them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout the following couple weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found out that even though your products or services costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products ought to solve real world difficulties for real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
As we grow our company you have a role to experience at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, real-estate and methodology. That doesn’t mean we don’t wear fifty other hats too, from fundraising (which never stops haha) to data science, startups would be best at exposing who you are pressurized. All of us (and particularly the founders) do whatever it takes to go the ball forward. People ask about what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, if and when they dive right in too using their idea? I smile and get this: Is it possible to handle the stress of this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot a lot more. When you elect to take the plunge and create something which matters you feel a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A robust culture is the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
For those who have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the thoughts themselves. Once you begin an enterprise (from a concept) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts as well as their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…most of most you’re in charge of yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to obtain off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have passion for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much push the button is always to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the stress is from the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you simply have passion for what you’re doing, if you think within your mission and your culture and your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
No one seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just beginning to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate part of our own success. I understand this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and exactly how we communicate as people…and that is something I’m happy with.
Struck me on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I’d never knock people who don’t wish to start their own business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. Should you? Speak with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll show you what they really want to view and increase your thinking, in every single area of your products or services. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I realize what we’re doing at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional experience of my entire life, and that’s worth equally of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, whenever we commenced I wasn’t sure the best way to border the pain sensation points of the small company owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
There were an excellent team building last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for the full release throughout 2-3 weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings as always.
Go ahead and comment below or please take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Struck me on LinkedIn or [email protected]
