When i sit in an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (which has a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I figured it may be a good time to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition to date. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the organization side is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase now into the “normalization” phase individuals 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten all of you about the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they is helping us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned as well as the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.
Over the posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this article I want to focus on customers and the ways to listen to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and started 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 your?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I first, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when everybody is happy to offer you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push most our product and assumptions from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we might enhance the existing tech on the market, and we’re an advert real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of so good stuff but you can expect a platform that is certainly CRE based to users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate problem-solving mindset. Once we grew together together, we became much less just a few these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged with the feedback from the users and folks in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real estate product, we’re a company product. How did we find that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is going daily hand-collecting reviews in Houston and I’m humbled by their efforts. They’re helping us seed the platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a crucial and foundational purpose of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses whenever they hear our mission, test out the platform and know very well what we’re about. It’s not uncommon for caboodlers to shell out 30 mins using one review (that this collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) because the business community is merely so hungry to be heard. This is a group who is putting their livelihoods at stake, each day, to create their business grow along with their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and listened to them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the following few weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve discovered that even though your product costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve down to earth trouble for down to earth people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Once we grow our team you have a part to try out 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 better at exposing whom you are being forced. Our team (and particularly the founders) do no matter what to move the ball forward. People enquire about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, should they dive right in too using idea? I smile and have this: Could you handle the load of the deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot far more. When you elect to take the plunge and build something matters you in turn become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A solid culture could be the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
For those who have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start a company (from a perception) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your pals and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…but a majority of coming from all you’re in charge of yourself. There is no automatic paycheck or salary to get you up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have adoration for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much push the button would be to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the load is off the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have adoration for what you’re doing, if you believe within your mission and your culture and your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just starting to test them out inside a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate a portion individuals success. I do know this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and just how we interact as people…and that’s something I’m happy with.
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I might never knock people that don’t desire to start their particular business, it’s faraway from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They are going to show you what they desire to see and increase your thinking, in most facet of your product. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we trust that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional example of playing, and that’s worth just of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring into it each day. It’s funny, if we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to border the pain points of the small company owner…Now? We know them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”
We had an excellent team building events last weekend in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for full release in two to three weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings as always.
Go ahead and comment below or have a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to convey meantime? Hit me through to LinkedIn or [email protected]