While i sit here in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (having a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I was thinking it will be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition up to now. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business enterprise aspects is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and after this in the “normalization” phase individuals first year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everybody for the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the c’s is assisting us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned as well as the pace is buying bigtime. Nothing but good things.
Over the posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and more. On this page I want to focus on customers and ways to hear them.
Whenever we first launched beta and started collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from our initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a map button for your?” (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 by how everybody is ready to offer you their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make smarter lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our website and assumptions from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we will enhance the current tech in the marketplace, and we’re a commercial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of a good stuff but we provide a platform that is certainly CRE based to our users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together together, we became much less reliant on these assumptions and more and more engaged with the feedback from our users and others from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real estate product, we’re a small business product. How did find 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 the platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational purpose of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners when they hear our mission, check out the platform and know what we’re about. It’s normal for our caboodlers to spend 30 mins one review (which the collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) as the small business community is just so hungry to become heard. This is a group who is putting their livelihoods at stake, every single day, to produce their business grow along with their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and followed 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 couple of weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but simply flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found out that even though your product is free of charge 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 believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as we grow our company we all have a task to learn 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 under time limits. We (especially the founders) do anything to go the ball forward. People inquire about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, whenever they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and get this: Is it possible to handle the load on this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot far more. When you elect go for it . and produce something that matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A powerful culture could 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 to blame for cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start a small business (from a perception) you’re to blame for the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re to blame for your people, their efforts along with 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 obtain to get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have adoration for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much push the button is always to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the load is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have adoration for what you’re doing, if you think with your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path will 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 as well as the market will dictate some individuals success. I understand this, the west will dictate how you lead and how we interact as people…and that’s something I’m pleased with.
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I’d never knock people that don’t wish to start their very own business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. Should you choose? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to show you what they want to determine and enhance your thinking, in every area of your product. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” so we have confidence in that. I realize what we’re doing at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional example of my life, and that’s worth every bit in the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring with it every single day. It’s funny, if we started out I wasn’t sure just how to frame the anguish points in the small company owner…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
There was an excellent team development last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for our full release here in 2-3 weeks and appreciate your reading my ramblings remember.
Go ahead and comment below or require a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Hit me through to LinkedIn or [email protected]