As I sit within an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (using a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I thought it may be a fun time to execute a mental check of start-up life and also the transition thus far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business enterprise aspect is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase and today to the “normalization” phase of our fresh. I now use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten you all around the definitions. To me, normalizing the team is assisting us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned and also the pace is collecting bigtime. All good things.

In past posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this post I must target customers and the way to listen to them.

Once we first launched beta and began 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 guide button for your?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I first, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since many people are willing to offer you their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make smarter lease decisions.

Early on, I felt compelled to push most our product and assumptions from the pure real estate perspective. I knew we could improve on the prevailing tech on the market, and we’re an industrial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that great stuff but we provide a platform that’s CRE based to the users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped inside the real estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became less dependent on these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged through the feedback from our users and people inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real estate product, we’re a business product. How did 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 platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational purpose of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises once they hear our mission, try the platform and determine what we’re about. It’s not uncommon for your caboodlers to invest half an hour one review (that your collection part takes about One minute FYI) because the small company community is just so hungry to become heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every single day, to make their business grow in addition to 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 within the following few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but just plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve learned that just because your products or services costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve down to earth damage to down to earth people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.

As we grow we everyone has a task to try out 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 (and especially the founders) do no matter what to go the ball forward. People question how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, whenever they make the leap too with their idea? I smile and have this: Could you handle the stress of this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far a lot more. When you elect go for it . and produce something which matters you in turn become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A powerful 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 accountable for cultivating the ideas themselves. When you start a business (from a thought) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re accountable for your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re accountable for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…most of most you’re accountable for yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have desire for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much work it would be to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the stress is off the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think maybe with your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.

No-one seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups within 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 and also the market will dictate some of our success. I understand this, the west will dictate how you lead and the way we come together as people…and that’s something I’m happy with.
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I’d never knock those who don’t want to start their very own business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you undertake? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They’ll inform you what they want to see and increase your thinking, in every area of your products or services. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we trust that. I realize what we’re doing at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional example of my life, and that’s worth every bit with the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring involved with it every single day. It’s funny, when we started off I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame this points with the private business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”

We’d a great team development a week ago in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned in for your full release within two to three weeks and thank you for reading my ramblings of course.

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

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