When i sit in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (having a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I thought it may be a great time to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition up to now. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business enterprise side of things is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and after this in the “normalization” phase of our own newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten you all on the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they is assisting us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned as well as the pace is collecting bigtime. All good things.

In the past posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment plus more. On this page I wish to give attention to customers and the ways to listen to them.

If we first launched beta and commenced 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 atlas button for that?” (DOH!). To prospects with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for starters, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed due to the fact most people are willing to present you with their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make better lease decisions.

In early stages, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our product and assumptions from a pure property perspective. I knew we could make improvements to the prevailing tech in the industry, and we’re a commercial property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that great stuff but we offer a platform that’s CRE based to the users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the property problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together together, we became less dependent on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged from the feedback from my users and people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a 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 vital and foundational goal of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners once they hear our mission, try out the platform and determine what we’re all about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to invest 30 mins on one review (that the collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) since the small enterprise community is just so hungry to get heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods at stake, every single day, to create 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 merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the next few weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but just plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found out that just because your product or service costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real-world difficulties for real-world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.

Even as grow we we all have a role to experience right here 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 who you are pressurized. Our company (and particularly the founders) do no matter what to advance the ball forward. People question what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, as long as they take the plunge too using their idea? I smile and ask this: Could you handle the strain on this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much much more. When you elect to take the plunge and make something that matters you then become a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A strong culture may be the foundation for the strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you’ve got a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the minds themselves. Once you begin a business (from a concept) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re responsible for your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…but a majority of of you’re responsible for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to get you up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have love for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount work it is usually to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times could be, the strain is from the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think inside your mission plus your culture plus your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.

No person seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups inside 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 a portion of our own success. I know this, our culture will dictate the way you lead and just how we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m pleased with.
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I’d never knock those that don’t need to start their particular business, it’s definately not basic and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. If you do? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll inform you what they really want to determine and boost your thinking, in every single facet of your product or service. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we have confidence in that. I know what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional experience with my entire life, and that’s worth equally from the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, whenever we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame the anguish points from the small business operator…Now? Could them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”

We’d a great team development last weekend in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned in for our full release in 2-3 weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings remember.

Go ahead and comment below or please take a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

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