As I sit within an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (having a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I thought it may be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life along with the transition up to now. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business side is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase and today in the “normalization” phase of our own 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten all of you on the definitions. To me, normalizing the c’s helps us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned along with the pace is picking up bigtime. All good things.
In past posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I must target customers and how to pay attention to them.
Whenever we first launched beta and commenced 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 with the?” (DOH!). To the 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 due to the fact so many people are happy to offer you their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push nearly all our product and assumptions from your pure real estate perspective. I knew we’re able to strengthen the prevailing tech on the market, and we’re an advertisement 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 certainly CRE based to your users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together as a team, we became much less reliant on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged from the feedback from our users and other people from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real estate product, we’re a company product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is going 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 crucial and foundational purpose of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises after they hear our mission, try out the working platform and know what we’re all about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to spend thirty minutes on one review (that the collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) because the small enterprise community is just so hungry to be heard. This is a group that’s putting their livelihoods at risk, each day, to produce their business grow in addition to their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and paid attention to them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within another month or so (SUPER excited to indicate everybody) but merely flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found out that simply because your product or service is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real world problems for real world people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.
Even as we grow our company everyone has a part to learn 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 your identiity pressurized. We (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to maneuver the ball forward. People enquire about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, should they dive right in too making use of their idea? I smile and get this: Are you able to handle the load of the deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far a lot more. When you elect go for it . and make something that matters you then become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A strong culture is the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only to blame for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you start a company (from a perception) you’re to blame for the investors, (usually your pals and families hard-earned money), you’re to blame for your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re to blame for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…but a majority of of you’re to blame for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have passion for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much arrange it is usually to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times can be, the load is from the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think maybe with your mission and your culture and your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are beginning to test them inside a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate some of our own success. I know this, our culture will dictate how we lead and just how we communicate as people…and that’s something I’m satisfied with.
Hit me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I would never knock those who don’t want to start their very own business, it’s not even close to simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you do? Speak with your customers, listen and discover. They are going to show you what they need to view and boost your thinking, in every single element of your product or service. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” so we rely on that. I understand what we’re doing here at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional connection with my life, and that’s worth just in the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it each day. It’s funny, once we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame the pain points in the small business owner…Now? Could them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
We’d a fantastic team building events last week in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for our full release within 2-3 weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings as always.
Twenty-four hours a day comment below or have a run at some 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]