While i sit within an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I thought it will be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life and also the transition so far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business aspects is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s plausible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase now in the “normalization” phase of our own first year. I now use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everyone for the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the group is assisting us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned and also the pace is obtaining bigtime. Great things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this post I wish to concentrate on customers and ways to tune in to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and began 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 guide button for that?” (DOH!). To those with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I first, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since so many people are happy to provide you with their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make better lease decisions.
In early stages, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions from your pure real-estate perspective. I knew we’re able to strengthen the present tech on the market, and we’re an advertisement real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of so good stuff but we provide a platform that is CRE based to your users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real-estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together together, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions and much more and much more engaged through the feedback from your users and people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real-estate product, we’re an enterprise product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team has gone out daily hand-collecting reviews in Houston and I’m humbled by their efforts. They’re helping us seed system with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a critical and foundational objective of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses once they hear our mission, check out system and determine what we’re about. It’s quite normal for caboodlers to pay thirty minutes on a single review (that the collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) as the small business community is merely so hungry being heard. This is a group that is putting their livelihoods at stake, daily, to create their business grow as well as their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and listened to them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within the subsequent couple of weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but merely plain interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve discovered that because your product or service is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real world damage to real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as we grow our team you have a job to experience only 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 whom you are pressurized. Our company (especially the founders) do whatever needs doing to go the ball forward. People ask about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, if and when they dive right in too with their idea? I smile and get this: Can you handle the load with this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much much more. When you decide go for it . and produce a thing that matters you then become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A robust culture will 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 to blame for cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start an enterprise (from a concept) you’re to blame for the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re to blame for your people, their efforts as well as their goals, you’re to blame for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward daily…but many coming from all you’re to blame for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have desire for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount work it is to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times may be, the load is from the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think maybe inside your mission plus your culture plus your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are beginning to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate a portion of our own success. I understand this, the west will dictate the way we lead and how we come together as people…which is something I’m satisfied with.
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I might never knock those that don’t desire to start their very own business, it’s faraway from simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you undertake? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to inform you what they really want to determine and enhance your thinking, in most part of your product or service. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” so we believe in that. I know what we’re doing only at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional example of my entire life, and that’s worth just with the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring into it daily. It’s funny, when we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to border the pain points with the private business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There was an incredible team building last weekend in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for more for full release within 2-3 weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
Go ahead and comment below or please take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to say meantime? Hit me through to LinkedIn or [email protected]