As I sit in an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (having a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I was thinking it may be a great time to execute a mental check of start-up life and the transition so far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown all of us significantly the business side of things is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today to the “normalization” phase individuals 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everyone about the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing they is helping us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned and the pace is collecting bigtime. All good things.
In past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and more. In this article I want to give attention to customers and ways to tune in to them.
When we first launched beta and commenced collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from your initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a map button for your?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for just one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when everybody is happy to give you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make better lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions from your pure real-estate perspective. I knew we’re able to enhance the existing tech in the market, and we’re an advert real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that good stuff but we offer a platform that’s CRE based to our users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real-estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together as a team, we became much less reliant on these assumptions and more and more engaged through the feedback from your users and people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real-estate product, we’re a business product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is out 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 an important and foundational goal of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses once they hear our mission, check out the working platform and know very well what we’re information on. It’s not unusual for the caboodlers to spend a half-hour using one review (that this collection part takes about A minute FYI) for the reason that small business community is simply so hungry to become heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods at stake, each day, to produce their business grow in addition to their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and heard them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in another couple of weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but merely flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve discovered that simply because your products or services is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve down to earth difficulties for down to earth people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.
Even as we grow all of us you have a task to learn 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 what you are being forced. We (and especially the founders) do no matter what to move the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, as long as they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Can you handle the worries of this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far more. When you elect to take the plunge and build something which matters you in turn become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution and the team…and the culture. A robust culture is the foundation for any 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 thoughts themselves. Once you start a business (from a perception) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…but most of all you’re in charge of yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to obtain up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have love for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much push the button is to start a business, never underestimate how difficult at times could be, the worries is from the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think in your mission and your culture and your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just starting to test them inside a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate a percentage individuals success. I recognize this, the west will dictate the way we lead and the way we communicate as people…and that’s something I’m proud of.
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I would never knock those who don’t desire to start their unique business, it’s not even close to simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They will inform you what they really want to determine and improve your thinking, in every part of your products or services. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we believe in that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional connection with my entire life, and that’s worth equally in the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring involved with it each day. It’s funny, if we began I wasn’t sure just how to border the pain sensation points in the small business operator…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
We had an excellent team building events last week in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for the full release in two to three weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
You can 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 state meantime? Hit me high on LinkedIn or [email protected]