While i sit here in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (with a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I believed it will be a fun time to execute a mental check of start-up life and the transition to date. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown all of us significantly the company aspect is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and today in the “normalization” phase of our newbie. Now i use her Westpoint terminology during my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten all of you about the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the team is assisting us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and the pace is buying bigtime. Great things.

In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this post I wish to target customers and how to tune in to them.

If we first launched beta and started collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from our initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a map button for your?” (DOH!). To those 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 because when many people are ready to provide you with their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make smarter lease decisions.

In the beginning, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our website and assumptions from the pure real estate property perspective. I knew we will enhance the present tech in the marketplace, and we’re a commercial real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that good stuff but we offer a platform which is CRE based to users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together as a team, we became much less just a few these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged by the feedback from our users and people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate property product, we’re a business 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a crucial and foundational purpose of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners when they hear our mission, try the woking platform and determine what we’re all about. It’s not unusual for the caboodlers to pay thirty minutes on one review (that your collection part takes about A minute FYI) since the small business community is merely so hungry to be heard. This is a group who is putting their livelihoods on the line, each day, to produce 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 here in another couple weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found that even though your product or service is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve down to earth trouble for down to earth people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.

Even as grow all of us everyone has a job to learn 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 might be best at exposing who you are pressurized. Our team (and especially the founders) do anything to move the ball forward. People inquire about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, whenever they take the plunge too making use of their idea? I smile and get this: Can you handle the worries with this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot more. When you choose go for it . and create something matters you become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and the team…and the culture. A solid culture may be the foundation to get a strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you’ve got an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. When you start a business (from an idea) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your mates 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 each day…but many of you’re in charge of yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to get you up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have passion for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much push the button is always to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the worries is over charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think within your mission along with your culture along with your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.

Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are beginning to test them in the live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part of our success. I know this, our culture will dictate the way you lead and just how we come together as people…and that’s something I’m happy with.
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I’d never knock those that don’t need to start their very own business, it’s far from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you do? Speak with your customers, listen and learn. They will tell you what they need to see and enhance your thinking, in every area of your product or service. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we rely on that. I realize what we’re doing at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional experience with playing, and that’s worth just of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring involved with it each day. It’s funny, if we began I wasn’t sure the best way to border the pain points of the private business owner…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”

We had an incredible team development last week in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Keep tuned in for the full release here in two to three weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings of course.

You can comment below or have a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

Have something to say meantime? Struck me on LinkedIn or [email protected]