While i sit in an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I believed it will be fun to do a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition to date. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business enterprise side is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and now in to the “normalization” phase in our 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everybody for the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the c’s is helping us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned as well as the pace is collecting bigtime. Great things.

In the past posts I’ve commented on developing the site, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this article I wish to concentrate on customers and ways to tune in to them.

Once we first launched beta and began collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from my initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a roadmap button to the?” (DOH!). To prospects 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 since many people are happy to present you with their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make smarter lease decisions.

Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our developing the site and assumptions from your pure real estate property perspective. I knew we’re able to strengthen the existing tech in the industry, and we’re a commercial real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that great stuff but we offer a platform which is CRE based to our users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate property problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became much less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged with the feedback from my users and others in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real estate property product, we’re a business product. How did look for 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 critical and foundational purpose of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises after they hear our mission, try the platform and understand what we’re exactly about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to pay a half-hour using one review (that your collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the small business community is merely so hungry to be heard. This can be a group who is putting their livelihoods on the line, daily, to make their business grow in addition to their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and paid attention to them.

So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in another month or so (SUPER excited to show everybody) but flat out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve learned that even though your products costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real life problems for real life people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.

As we grow our company all of us have a task to experience at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, real estate 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 would be better at exposing whom you are pressurized. We (and particularly the founders) do anything to go the ball forward. People enquire about what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, if and when they make the leap too using idea? I smile and get this: Could you handle the stress with this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far a lot more. When you choose go for it . and make something matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A robust culture is the foundation for a strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you’ve got a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the thoughts themselves. Once you begin a business (from a concept) 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 daily…but a majority of of most you’re in charge of yourself. There’s no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get to get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have desire for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much work it is always to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the stress is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you simply have desire for what you’re doing, if you think maybe with your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.

No one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are beginning to test them out within a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate some in our success. I understand this, the west will dictate the way you lead and exactly how we come together as people…which is something I’m satisfied with.
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I would never knock people that don’t desire to start their own business, it’s faraway from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. If you do? Speak to your customers, listen and learn. They’re going to inform you what they really want to see and enhance your thinking, in most part of your products. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we believe in that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional experience with playing, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring in it daily. It’s funny, once we commenced I wasn’t sure the best way to border the pain points of the small business 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 a great team building a week ago in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned in for our full release in a couple weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings as always.

Twenty-four hours a day comment below or require a run at a few of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

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