While i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (having a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I believed it may be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life and the transition up to now. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business side of things starts to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today in the “normalization” phase of our own newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten all of you around the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing they is assisting us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and the pace is buying bigtime. Great things.
In past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and more. In this posting I would like to concentrate on customers and how to hear them.
Once we first launched beta and commenced collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from the initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a guide button for your?” (DOH!). To prospects 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 by how so many people are ready to offer you their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make smarter lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our website and assumptions from the pure real-estate perspective. I knew we could enhance the existing tech in the industry, and we’re an advertisement real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of a good stuff but we offer a platform that is CRE based to users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real-estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together together, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions and more and more engaged through the feedback from the users and other people from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real-estate product, we’re an enterprise product. How did 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 goal of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses whenever they hear our mission, test out the working platform and know very well what we’re about. It’s not uncommon for the caboodlers to shell out 30 mins using one review (which the collection part takes about One minute FYI) for the reason that small enterprise community is just so hungry to become heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every day, to create their business grow along with 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 throughout another couple weeks (SUPER excited to indicate everybody) but just plain interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found that simply because your products or services is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real life trouble for real life people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as we grow our team you have a task to play 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 might be best at exposing what you are under time limits. Our company (and especially the founders) do no matter what to go the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, should they make the leap too using idea? I smile and have this: Can you handle the strain on this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much much more. When you choose to take the plunge and build a thing that matters you in turn become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution and the team…and the culture. A robust culture could be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you begin an enterprise (from a concept) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually your mates 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 every day…but many of most you’re responsible 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 love for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount push the button is to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days might be, the strain is over charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think maybe within your mission and your culture and your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
No-one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are beginning to test them in the live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate some of our own success. I understand this, our culture will dictate how we lead and how we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m happy with.
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I would never knock those that don’t want to start their very own business, it’s definately not easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. If you undertake? Talk to your customers, listen and learn. They will inform you what they need to view and improve your thinking, in most facet of your products or services. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” so we have confidence in that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional example of my entire life, and that’s worth equally of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring into it every day. It’s funny, when we began I wasn’t sure precisely how to border the pain points of the small company owner…Now? We know them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
There was a fantastic team building events last weekend in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for the full release throughout a month and thank you for reading my ramblings remember.
Twenty-four hours a day comment below or take a run at a few of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to say meantime? Hit me high on LinkedIn or [email protected]