As I sit in an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (having a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I figured it might be a good time to execute a mental check of start-up life and also the transition so far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business enterprise aspects is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase now into the “normalization” phase in our newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everybody about the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the c’s helps us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and also the pace is picking up bigtime. Nothing but good things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this article I must focus on customers and how to pay attention to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and started 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 atlas button for that?” (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 since most people are willing to provide you with their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make smarter lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions coming from a pure real-estate perspective. I knew we might enhance the existing tech in the marketplace, and we’re a commercial real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that good stuff but you can expect a platform that is CRE based to your users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real-estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged from the feedback from your users and people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real-estate product, we’re a company product. How did we discover 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 system with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a critical and foundational goal of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses when they hear our mission, check out system and understand what we’re information on. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to invest 30 mins using one review (that this collection part takes about One minute FYI) as the business community is just so hungry to become heard. It is a group that is putting their livelihoods on the line, every 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 heard them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the subsequent couple weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but just plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve discovered that just because your products or services is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve down to earth trouble for down to earth people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
As we grow we everyone has a job 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 are best at exposing your identiity being forced. Our company (and particularly the founders) do whatever needs doing to advance the ball forward. People enquire about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, should they dive right in too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Could you handle the worries of the deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far considerably more. When you elect to take the plunge and produce something matters you in turn become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A strong culture may be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you’ve got a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the ideas themselves. When you begin a company (from a thought) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your friends 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 day…most of most you’re in charge of yourself. There’s no automatic paycheck or salary to obtain off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have desire for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount push the button is usually to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times might be, the worries is over charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you feel with your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just beginning to test them in a live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate some in our success. I know this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and how we communicate as people…which is something I’m satisfied with.
Struck me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I might never knock people that don’t want to start their very own business, it’s not even close to basic and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you choose? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They will show you what they really want to see and improve your thinking, in every single area of your products or services. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we have confidence in that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional example of my entire life, and that’s worth equally with the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring with it every day. It’s funny, whenever we started out I wasn’t sure just how to frame the pain sensation points with the small business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
We’d an incredible team development a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for more for our full release in two to three weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings as always.
You can comment below or please take a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to express meantime? Struck me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]