While i sit in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (with a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I thought it will be a great time to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition thus far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the organization side starts to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase now to the “normalization” phase of our own fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everyone about the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the c’s helps us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned as well as the pace is obtaining bigtime. Perfect things.
In past posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment and more. In this article I must target customers and how to pay attention to them.
Once 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 for that?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed due to the fact most people are ready to offer you their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make smarter lease decisions.
In early stages, I felt compelled to push nearly all our product and assumptions from the pure real estate perspective. I knew we will enhance the prevailing tech in the marketplace, and we’re a commercial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of that great stuff but we provide a platform which is CRE based to our users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became less dependent on these assumptions and more and more engaged with the feedback from our users and people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate product, we’re a small business product. How did we find that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team has gone out 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 a vital and foundational objective of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses after they hear our mission, try out the platform and understand what we’re about. It’s normal for caboodlers to invest thirty minutes using one review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) since the small company community is merely so hungry to become heard. This is the group that is putting their livelihoods at stake, daily, to generate their business grow along with 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 in the following couple weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but simply flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve discovered that even though your products is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve down to earth difficulties for down to earth people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.
As we grow our company everyone has a part to try out 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 who you are pressurized. Our company (especially the founders) do whatever it takes to go the ball forward. People inquire about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, as long as they make the leap too using idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the load on this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot far more. When you decide to go for it and build something that matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A robust culture could be the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you begin a small business (from a perception) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually friends and family and families hard-earned money), you’re responsible for your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward daily…most of most you’re responsible for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get to get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have passion for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much push the button would be to start a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the load is from the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you believe inside your mission and your culture and your team? This is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just beginning to test them out in a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate a percentage of our own success. I recognize this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and how we work together as people…and that is something I’m proud of.
Struck me on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I’d personally never knock people who don’t desire to start their particular business, it’s definately not simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you? Talk to your customers, listen and learn. They are going to show you what they need to find out and improve your thinking, in most facet of your products. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we rely on that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional experience of playing, and that’s worth just of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring in it daily. It’s funny, when we started out I wasn’t sure exactly how to border the anguish points of the small company owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
We had an incredible team building events a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for more for full release in a couple weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
Feel free to comment below or require a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Struck me on LinkedIn or [email protected]