While i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (which has a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I figured it could be a good time to execute a mental check of start-up life along with the transition so far. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business aspect is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and after this into the “normalization” phase of our own 1st year. I now use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten you all on the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the team is assisting us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned along with the pace is picking up bigtime. Great things.
In past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this posting I want to give attention to customers and ways to tune in to 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 to the?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for starters, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed due to the fact many people are ready to present you with their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make smarter lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push nearly all our website and assumptions from a pure real estate property perspective. I knew we’re able to enhance the present tech on the market, and we’re a commercial real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of that great stuff but we provide a platform which is CRE based to our users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together as a team, we became much less dependent upon these assumptions and much more and much more engaged with the feedback from my users and folks from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate property product, we’re a small business 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational goal of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises when they hear our mission, check out the woking platform and know what we’re exactly about. It’s not unusual for our caboodlers to pay a half-hour on a single review (that your collection part takes about One minute FYI) as the small enterprise community is just so hungry being heard. This is a group who is putting their livelihoods at risk, every day, to make their business grow as well as their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and listened to them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout the subsequent couple of weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just all out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve learned that just because your product is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real life trouble for real life people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as we grow our team you have a job to experience only at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, real estate property 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 what you are under pressure. We (and especially the founders) do anything to advance the ball forward. People enquire about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, should they dive right in too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Is it possible to handle the stress on this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much more. When you elect to go for it and build something which matters you then become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A powerful culture will be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you’ve got a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. Once you start a small business (from a thought) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts as well as their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every day…but a majority of of you’re in charge of yourself. There is 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 how much work it is to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times can be, the stress is over charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you believe within 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 inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are beginning to test them out . in a live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate a percentage of our own success. I know this, our culture will dictate the way you lead and exactly how we communicate as people…which is something I’m pleased with.
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I would never knock those that don’t desire to start their own business, it’s not even close to simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. Should you? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’ll tell you what they desire to view and boost your thinking, in each and every part of your product. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience with my well being, and that’s worth every bit from the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring with it every day. It’s funny, once we began I wasn’t sure just how to border this points from the private business owner…Now? Could them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
There were a great team development last week in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for our full release throughout a month and appreciate your reading my ramblings keep in mind.
Feel free to comment below or take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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