While i sit here in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (with a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I believed it may be fun to do a mental check of start-up life and the transition thus far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the organization aspect is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and after this in the “normalization” phase in our 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten all of you on the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the team is assisting us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and the pace is buying bigtime. All good things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this article I wish to target customers and how to pay attention to them.
Once we first launched beta and began 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 guide button for your?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for just one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since most people are prepared to give you their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make better lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push nearly all our website and assumptions coming from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we’re able to make improvements to the present tech on the market, and we’re a commercial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all so good stuff but we offer a platform that is CRE based to your users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped inside the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together as a team, we became much less reliant on these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged from the feedback from my users and people inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real estate product, we’re a small 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational goal of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses when they hear our mission, try the woking platform and know very well what we’re about. It’s not unusual for your caboodlers to spend a half-hour on one review (that this collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) for the reason that small company community is just so hungry to be heard. This is the group who’s putting their livelihoods at stake, daily, to create their business grow and 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 here in another few weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but just all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found out that even though your product is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.
Even as grow we we all have a job to experience 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 who you are under time limits. All of us (and particularly the founders) do anything to advance the ball forward. People question what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, whenever they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Is it possible to handle the worries of the deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much far more. When you decide to go for it and build something matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution and the team…and the culture. A solid culture could be the foundation for the strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the minds themselves. When you begin a small business (from a concept) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re responsible for your people, their efforts and their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward daily…but most of you’re responsible for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have passion for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much work it is usually to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times could be, the worries is off the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think in your mission plus your culture plus your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No-one 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 within a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part in our success. I do know this, the west will dictate how you lead and how we interact as people…and that’s something I’m proud of.
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I would never knock people who don’t wish to start their unique business, it’s far from simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. Should you choose? Speak with your customers, listen and learn. They’ll show you what they really want to determine and boost your thinking, in most area of your product. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we trust that. I understand what we’re doing at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional example of my entire life, and that’s worth equally in the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it daily. It’s funny, when we started out I wasn’t sure exactly how to border the pain points in the small company owner…Now? Could them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There were a great team building events a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for your full release here in two to three weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings remember.
Twenty-four hours a day 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 up on LinkedIn or [email protected]