As I sit here in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (which has a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I believed it could be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition so far. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown all of us significantly the company side starts to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and now to the “normalization” phase in our newbie. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everyone about the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the group helps us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned along with the pace is collecting bigtime. Great things.
Over the posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment and more. In this article I wish to focus on customers and ways to tune in to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and commenced 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 for that?” (DOH!). To those with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed due to the fact most people are willing to present you with their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push nearly all our product development and assumptions from your pure real estate perspective. I knew we will make improvements to the prevailing tech in the marketplace, and we’re an industrial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of a good stuff but our company offers a platform that is CRE based to our users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real estate problem-solving mindset. Once we grew together as a team, we became less and less just a few these assumptions and more and more engaged with the feedback from my users and folks within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate product, we’re a small business product. How did look for 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a critical and foundational goal of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises once they hear our mission, try out the woking platform and determine what we’re information on. It’s not uncommon for the caboodlers to invest half an hour one review (that this collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) for the reason that small enterprise community is simply so hungry being heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods on the line, each 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 only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release here in the subsequent few weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but simply all out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve found that simply because your product or service is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real life trouble for real life people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Once we grow all of us we all have a part to learn right 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 best at exposing whom you are being forced. Our team (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to move the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, as long as they take the plunge too with their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the load on this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much considerably more. When you choose to go for it and make something which matters you feel far more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A powerful culture may be the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
For those who have a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only to blame for cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin a small business (from a thought) 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 each day…most coming from all you’re to blame for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to get you up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have love for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount arrange it is to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days could be, the load is from the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think inside your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do all of your life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just beginning to test them out . in a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate a portion in our success. I recognize this, our culture will dictate how you lead and just how we work together as people…and that is something I’m satisfied with.
Hit me through to LinkedIn or [email protected]
I might never knock those who don’t desire to start their particular business, it’s not even close to simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. If you do? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to let you know what they desire to determine and increase your thinking, in each and every area of your product or service. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we believe in that. I know what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience of my life, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring with it each day. It’s funny, whenever we began I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame this points of the private business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
We’d a great team development a week ago in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for more for the full release here in a couple weeks and appreciate your reading my ramblings keep in mind.
You can comment below or please take a run at a few of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to express meantime? Hit me through to LinkedIn or [email protected]