Because i sit within an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (with a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I figured it could be a good time to do a mental check of start-up life and the transition thus far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business aspect is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today to the “normalization” phase in our fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everybody for the definitions. To me, normalizing they is helping us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned and the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.

In the past posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I wish to concentrate 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 roadmap button for that?” (DOH!). To those 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 ready to present you with their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make better lease decisions.

Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push most our product development and assumptions from the pure real-estate perspective. I knew we will improve on the prevailing tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of that good stuff but our company offers a platform which is CRE based to your users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped inside the real-estate problem-solving mindset. Once we grew together together, we became less and less just a few these assumptions plus more plus more engaged by the feedback from your users and others inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real-estate product, we’re an enterprise 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 working platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational purpose of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses once they hear our mission, test out the working platform and determine what we’re about. It’s not uncommon for our caboodlers to spend 30 mins on a single review (that the collection part takes about A minute FYI) because the business community is simply so hungry to get heard. This can be a group that’s putting their livelihoods on the line, every single day, to generate 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 merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within the following couple of weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but merely plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve learned that simply because your product or service costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real life problems for real life people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.

Once we grow our company everyone has a role to experience 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 who you are under time limits. All of us (and also the founders) do whatever needs doing to move the ball forward. People question what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, whenever they dive right in too with their idea? I smile and have this: Is it possible to handle the stress on this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot far more. When you will decide to take the plunge and build something that matters you then become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution and the team…and the culture. A robust culture is the foundation to get a strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you’ve got a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. Once you start an enterprise (from a concept) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your mates 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…most coming from all you’re in charge of 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 desire for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much arrange it is always to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times might be, the stress is from the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you feel within your mission and your culture and your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.

No person seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just starting to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part in our success. I do know this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and the way we communicate as people…and that’s something I’m proud of.
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I’d personally never knock those that don’t desire to start their unique business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you do? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to tell you what they desire to determine and increase your thinking, in every element of your product or service. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we believe in that. I am aware what we’re doing here at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional connection with my life, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it every single day. It’s funny, once we started out I wasn’t sure just how to frame the pain points of the small business operator…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”

We’d a fantastic team building last week in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned for more for our full release within a couple weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings of course.

Go ahead and comment below or take a run at a few of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

Have something to say meantime? Hit me on LinkedIn or [email protected]