As I sit in an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (with a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I thought it will be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life along with the transition so far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business enterprise side of things is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and now into the “normalization” phase of our fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten all of you for the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing they is helping us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned along with the pace is obtaining bigtime. Perfect things.
Over the posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. On this page I want to focus on customers and the ways to pay attention to them.
If we first launched beta and began 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 guide button for your?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for starters, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when many people are happy to provide you with their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make smarter lease decisions.
In early stages, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our website and assumptions from the pure real-estate perspective. I knew we’re able to enhance the prevailing tech in the industry, and we’re an industrial real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and a good stuff but we offer a platform that is certainly CRE based to the users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real-estate problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together together, we became less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged by the feedback from my users and other people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real-estate product, we’re a company product. How did find 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational objective of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners when they hear our mission, try out the woking platform and know what we’re about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to shell out half an hour one review (that the collection part takes about One minute FYI) since the small business community is merely so hungry to be heard. This is the group that is putting their livelihoods at risk, every single day, to create their business grow along with 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 in another few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but merely plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found out that just because your product is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve down to earth problems for down to earth people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as grow we you have a part to learn 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 what you are under pressure. We (especially the founders) do no matter what to advance the ball forward. People inquire about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, should they dive right in too with their idea? I smile and have this: Is it possible to handle the stress of the deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot a lot more. When you will decide to take the plunge and build something that matters you in turn become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A robust culture is the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin a company (from a thought) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your pals and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…but a majority of coming from all you’re in charge of yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to acquire to get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have passion for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much work it is to start a business, never underestimate how difficult at times may be, the stress is off the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you simply have passion for what you’re doing, if you think maybe in your mission along with your culture along with your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just starting to test them inside a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate a percentage of our success. I know this, our culture will dictate how you lead and just how we interact as people…and that’s something I’m happy with.
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I would never knock people that don’t need to start their very own business, it’s definately not simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you? Speak to your customers, listen and learn. They will let you know what they desire to find out and improve your thinking, in every area of your product. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we have confidence in that. I realize what we’re doing only at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience with my well being, and that’s worth equally from the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring into it every single day. It’s funny, when we started off I wasn’t sure just how to border the pain sensation points from the small company owner…Now? Could them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
There were a great team development last week in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for our full release in two to three weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings remember.
Feel free to comment below or require a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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