When i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (having a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I figured it might be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition thus far. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business enterprise aspects is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase now into the “normalization” phase of our fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten you all around the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the group helps us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned as well as the pace is collecting bigtime. Great things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus more. On this page I wish to focus on customers and ways to hear them.
When we first launched beta and started 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 atlas button with the?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I first, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when everybody is willing to provide you with their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make smarter lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our website and assumptions from a pure real-estate perspective. I knew we might improve on the current tech on the market, and we’re an advertisement real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of so good stuff but we provide a platform that is certainly CRE based to the users. The whole 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 dependent on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged by the feedback from my users and people inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real-estate product, we’re a small business product. How did we discover 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 collect these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses when they hear our mission, test out the working platform and know very well what we’re all about. It’s quite normal for our caboodlers to shell out thirty minutes on one review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the small company community is simply so hungry to be heard. It is a group that’s putting their livelihoods at risk, each day, to generate their business grow and 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 merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout the next few weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but merely all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found out that even though your product or service is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real world problems for real world people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as grow our team you have a task to try out right 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 what you are under time limits. Our company (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to maneuver the ball forward. People enquire about what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, as long as they take the plunge too with their idea? I smile and ask this: Are you able to handle the strain of this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much far more. When you decide go for it . and make something that matters you in turn become a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A robust culture will be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin a small business (from a perception) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually your pals 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 each day…but many of you’re responsible for yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to acquire to 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 how much arrange it would be to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times may be, the strain is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you believe within your mission and your culture and your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are beginning to test them out . in the live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate a percentage of our success. I understand this, the west will dictate how you lead and exactly how we work together as people…that is certainly something I’m satisfied with.
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I’d never knock people who don’t desire to start their own business, it’s definately not easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. If you do? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to let you know what they really want to determine and improve your thinking, in each and every part of your product or service. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we believe in that. I realize what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional experience with my well being, and that’s worth equally from the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring with it each day. It’s funny, once we commenced I wasn’t sure the best way to frame the pain sensation points from the small business operator…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There was a fantastic team development a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for our full release throughout two to three weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
Feel free to comment below or have a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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