Because i sit here in an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I thought it may be a great time to do a mental check of start-up life and the transition to date. Always good 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 from the “storming” phase and today into the “normalization” phase of our own fresh. I now use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten all of you for the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they helps us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned and the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on developing the site, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this article I would like to target customers and how to listen to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and commenced collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from the initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a guide button to the?” (DOH!). To those with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for just one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since many people are willing to give you their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push almost all our developing the site and assumptions coming from a pure real estate property perspective. I knew we will make improvements to the current tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all a good stuff but our company offers a platform that is CRE based to your users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate property problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became less and less reliant on these assumptions and much more and much more engaged from the feedback from the users and folks in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real estate property product, we’re a company product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is out 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 recover these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises whenever they hear our mission, test out the platform and understand what we’re all about. It’s not unusual for caboodlers to shell out half an hour on one review (that this collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) as the small enterprise community is merely so hungry to become heard. This can be a group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, daily, to generate their business grow and 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 only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release here in another few weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but simply plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found out that simply because your product costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
As we grow all of us everyone has a role to play only 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 what you are under time limits. All of us (and also the founders) do no matter what to advance the ball forward. People enquire about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, if and when they dive right in too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the stress of this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far more. When you choose go for it . and build something which matters you become a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and the team…and the culture. A strong culture will be the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start a company (from a perception) 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 daily…but many 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 have passion for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much arrange it is usually to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days may be, the stress is over charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think maybe with your mission plus your culture plus your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No-one seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just beginning to test them in a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part of our own success. I do know this, our culture will dictate how you lead and the way we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m happy with.
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I would never knock people who don’t need to start their very own business, it’s definately not easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. If you do? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll show you what they desire to determine and increase your thinking, in every single facet of your product. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we trust that. I realize what we’re doing only at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience of my life, and that’s worth every bit in the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring with it daily. It’s funny, if we began I wasn’t sure just how to frame this points in the small 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 a fantastic team building last week in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for full release here in a couple weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
You can comment below or take a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to convey meantime? Hit me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]