When i sit within an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (which has a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I figured it may be fun to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition up to now. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business side starts to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and now into the “normalization” phase of our 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everybody on the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the team helps us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned along with the pace is collecting bigtime. All good things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on developing the site, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this post I wish to target customers and ways to tune in to them.
If we first launched beta and commenced 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 with the?” (DOH!). To prospects with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I first, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when everybody is ready to provide you with their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make smarter lease decisions.
In early stages, I felt compelled to push almost all our developing the site and assumptions from a pure real estate property perspective. I knew we might enhance the current tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of that good stuff but we provide a platform that’s CRE based to users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped inside the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together as a team, we became less and less just a few these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged with the feedback from your users and folks inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real estate property product, we’re a company 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 vital and foundational purpose of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners when they hear our mission, try the woking platform and understand what we’re information on. It’s quite normal for your caboodlers to pay a half-hour on a single review (that the collection part takes about One minute FYI) for the reason that small enterprise community is simply so hungry being heard. This can be a group that is putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, each day, to generate their business grow and 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 within the next month or so (SUPER excited to indicate everybody) but simply flat out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve learned that even though your products or services is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as we grow our team everyone has a role to play 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 who you are being forced. Our team (and particularly the founders) do no matter what to maneuver the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, whenever they take the plunge too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Could you handle the load of this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot much more. When you will decide go for it . and build a thing that matters you in turn become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A powerful culture may be the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. Once you begin a company (from a concept) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually friends and family 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 most 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 guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much arrange it is usually to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the load is off the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think within your mission along with your culture along with your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are just starting to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate a portion of our success. I recognize this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and how we communicate as people…which is something I’m happy with.
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I might never knock people who don’t wish to start their own business, it’s faraway from basic and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. If you do? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They’ll tell you what they want to view and enhance your thinking, in each and every facet of your products or services. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I understand what we’re doing at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional example of my well being, and that’s worth equally from the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring in it each day. It’s funny, whenever we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame this points from the small business owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
We’d a fantastic team building events last weekend in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for your full release within 2-3 weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings of course.
Feel free to comment below or have a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Hit me high on LinkedIn or [email protected]