Because i sit in an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I was thinking it could be a great time to do a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition so far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the company aspects starts to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase now to the “normalization” phase in our fresh. I now use her Westpoint terminology during my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everybody about the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they helps us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned as well as the pace is picking up bigtime. All good things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. On this page I want to concentrate on customers and the way to hear them.
Whenever we first launched beta and started 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 roadmap button to the?” (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 ready to give you their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make better lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push nearly all our website and assumptions coming from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we will improve on the prevailing tech in the industry, and we’re an advert real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all a good stuff but we provide a platform that’s CRE based to users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together together, we became less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged by the feedback from our users and folks in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real estate product, we’re a business product. How did we 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 a critical and foundational objective of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners after they hear our mission, try out the working platform and know what we’re information on. It’s not uncommon for our caboodlers to invest thirty minutes using one review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) because the business community is merely so hungry being heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods at risk, every single 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 listened to 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 few weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but all out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve learned that just because your product is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real life problems for real life people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as grow our team you have a role to play 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 what you are under time limits. Our team (and also the founders) do anything to go the ball forward. People question how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, should they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Is it possible to handle the stress with this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot more. When you will decide to take the plunge and create something that matters you feel far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A solid culture could 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. Once you start a business (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 every single day…but most of all you’re accountable for 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 passion for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount arrange it is usually to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times can be, the stress is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think within your mission along with your culture along with your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do all of your life.
No one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just starting to test them out . in a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate some in our success. I recognize this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and exactly how we communicate as people…that is certainly something I’m pleased with.
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I might never knock people that don’t desire to start their particular business, it’s not even close to simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. If you undertake? Speak to your customers, listen and learn. They’ll inform you what they desire to see and enhance your thinking, in every single area of your product. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we believe in that. I know what we’re doing only at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional example of my life, and that’s worth every bit from the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring involved with it every single day. It’s funny, when we started out I wasn’t sure the best way to border the pain sensation points from the small company owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
We’d an excellent team building events last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for our full release in a month and thank you for reading my ramblings remember.
Twenty-four hours a day comment below or require a run at a number 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]
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