As I sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I believed it may be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life and the transition up to now. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown all of us significantly the business enterprise side is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s plausible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase and now into the “normalization” phase individuals newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everybody around the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the c’s is helping us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned and the pace is obtaining bigtime. Great things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I would like to concentrate on customers and ways to hear them.
Once we first launched beta and started 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 atlas button with the?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed by how everybody is ready to give you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push most our website and assumptions from a pure property perspective. I knew we might improve on the prevailing tech in the industry, and we’re an industrial property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that great stuff but our company offers a platform which is CRE based to users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the property problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became much less reliant on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged by the feedback from your users and folks in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a property product, we’re a small business 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 platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational purpose of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises when they hear our mission, try out the platform and understand what we’re about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to invest half an hour one review (that your collection part takes about A minute FYI) since the business community is definitely so hungry to get heard. This is the group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every day, to create their business grow and 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 throughout the subsequent few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve discovered that 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 trouble for down to earth people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
As we grow all of us everyone has a part to learn at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, property and methodology. That doesn’t mean we don’t wear fifty other hats too, from fundraising (which never stops haha) to data science, startups might be best at exposing your identiity being forced. Our company (and particularly the founders) do anything to maneuver the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, as long as they take the plunge too making use of their idea? I smile and get this: Is it possible to handle the strain of this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot more. When you choose go for it . and make something matters you feel a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and the team…and the culture. A powerful culture could be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. Once you start a small business (from an idea) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts and their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every day…most of you’re in charge of yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to get you off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have love for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much work it is to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times could be, the strain is off the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have love for what you’re doing, if you feel inside your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are just starting to test them inside a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate some individuals success. I know this, the west will dictate the way you lead and just how we interact as people…which is something I’m pleased with.
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I might never knock people that don’t want to start their unique business, it’s definately not simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They are going to tell you what they need to find out and increase your thinking, in each and every element of your products or services. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” so we have confidence in that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional connection with playing, and that’s worth every bit from the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring in it every day. It’s funny, once we started off I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame the pain sensation points from the private business owner…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There was an incredible team building a week ago in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for our full release throughout a month and many thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
You can comment below or require a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Struck me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]