Because i sit within an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (which has a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I was thinking it may be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition thus far. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the organization side is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s plausible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase now in the “normalization” phase of our first year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology during my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten you all around the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing they helps us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned along with the pace is buying bigtime. All good things.
In past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this posting I would like to focus on customers and how to listen to them.
When we first launched beta and started 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 roadmap button with the?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed by how most people are ready to give you their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make smarter lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push most our website and assumptions coming from a pure property perspective. I knew we will make improvements to the present tech in the industry, and we’re an industrial property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of that good stuff but our company offers a platform that’s CRE based to our users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the property problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together together, we became much less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged with the feedback from my users and other people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a property 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 the woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational purpose of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses after they hear our mission, check out the woking platform and know very well what we’re information on. It’s quite normal for our caboodlers to invest a half-hour on a single review (that your collection part takes about One minute FYI) as the small business community is just so hungry to become heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods at stake, each 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 heard them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within the following month or so (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found that even though your products is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real world difficulties for real world people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.
Even as we grow our team everyone has a job to try out right here at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, property 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 best at exposing whom you are being forced. Our team (especially the founders) do whatever it takes to advance the ball forward. People question how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, whenever they take the plunge too using idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the stress on this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far much more. When you will decide to take the plunge and produce something matters you feel a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A solid culture may be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only accountable for cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin a company (from an idea) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re accountable for your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re accountable for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…but many coming from all you’re accountable for yourself. There’s no automatic paycheck or salary to obtain up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have love for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much push the button is usually to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the stress is off of the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have love for what you’re doing, if you believe with your mission along with your culture along with your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No-one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just starting to test them out inside a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate part of our success. I do know this, the west will dictate the way you lead and the way we come together as people…which is something I’m proud of.
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I would never knock those who don’t wish to start their particular business, it’s definately not basic and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you do? Confer with your customers, listen and learn. They will inform you what they desire to view and enhance your thinking, in every single part of your products. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we trust that. I know what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional example of playing, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring involved with it each day. It’s funny, once we began I wasn’t sure just how to border the pain points of the small business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”
There were a fantastic team development last week in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for our full release within a month and thanks for reading my ramblings as always.
Feel free to comment below or please take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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