While i sit within an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (which has a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I thought it could be a great time to do a mental check of start-up life and also the transition so far. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the company aspects is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s plausible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and now to the “normalization” phase in our fresh. I now use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everyone about the definitions. To me, normalizing they is helping us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned and also the pace is obtaining bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment and much more. On this page I must concentrate on customers and the ways to pay attention 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 map button for that?” (DOH!). To prospects with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for just one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since everybody is happy to give you their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make smarter lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push almost all our product development and assumptions from the pure real estate perspective. I knew we could make improvements to the present tech in the industry, and we’re a commercial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and so good stuff but our company offers a platform which is CRE based to users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together together, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions and much more and much more engaged by the feedback from my users and other people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real estate product, we’re a company product. How did we find 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 system with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational goal of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses when they hear our mission, test out system and understand what we’re exactly about. It’s quite normal for our caboodlers to spend a half-hour on one review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the small enterprise community is simply so hungry being heard. This is the group that is putting their livelihoods at stake, every single day, to make 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 simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within another few weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found that just because your products costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real-world trouble for real-world people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.
Even as grow we everyone has a job to experience right here 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 what you are under time limits. Our team (and also the founders) do whatever it takes to go the ball forward. People question how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, if and when they make the leap too with their idea? I smile and ask this: Can you handle the stress with this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far much more. When you elect to go for it and produce something matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A strong culture is the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only to blame for cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start a company (from a perception) 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 every single day…but many of all you’re to blame for yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to get you off the 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 simply how much work it would be to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days may be, the stress is off of the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think maybe inside your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do all of your life.
Nobody 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 . in the live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate some in our success. I recognize this, the west will dictate the way you lead and exactly how we come together as people…that is certainly something I’m happy with.
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I might never knock those that don’t desire to start their unique business, it’s faraway from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. Should you choose? Talk to your customers, listen and learn. They’ll let you know what they need to see and enhance your thinking, in every single area of your products. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we trust that. I understand what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional example of my well being, and that’s worth just in the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, if we started out I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame this points in the small business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
We had a fantastic team building a week ago in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for our full release within a month and thank you for reading my ramblings of course.
Feel free to comment below or please take a run at a few of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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