Because i sit in an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (with a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I thought it might be a fun time to do a mental check of start-up life and the transition thus far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the company side of things is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today in the “normalization” phase of our 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten you all for the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing the group helps us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and the pace is obtaining bigtime. Perfect things.
Over the posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this posting I must concentrate on customers and ways to hear them.
Whenever we first launched beta and began 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 guide button for your?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed due to the fact many people are willing to present you with their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions from a pure property perspective. I knew we’re able to make improvements to the prevailing tech in the industry, and we’re an advertisement property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that great stuff but you can expect a platform that is certainly CRE based to our users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the property problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became much less just a few these assumptions plus more plus more engaged by the feedback from our users and others in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a property product, we’re a small business product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is otherwise engaged 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 crucial and foundational objective of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses once they hear our mission, check out the woking platform and understand what we’re about. It’s normal for our caboodlers to invest half an hour on one review (that your collection part takes about One minute FYI) because the small enterprise community is just so hungry to get heard. This can be a group who’s putting their livelihoods at risk, every single day, to generate their business grow and 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 merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the following few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve learned that just because your products or services is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products ought to solve down to earth problems for down to earth people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.
As we grow our company we all have a role to learn only at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, 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 would be best at exposing whom you are pressurized. Our company (especially the founders) do whatever needs doing to maneuver the ball forward. People enquire about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, whenever they take the plunge too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the load of the deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far much more. When you choose go for it . and build a thing that matters you in turn become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and the team…and the culture. A solid culture could be the foundation for the strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only to blame for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you start a small business (from a concept) you’re to blame for the investors, (usually friends and family and families hard-earned money), you’re to blame for your people, their efforts and their goals, you’re to blame for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…most of all you’re to blame for yourself. There is no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something 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 up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days may be, the load is off the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think inside your mission plus your culture plus your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are just beginning to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part of our success. I do know this, our culture will dictate how you lead and how we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m proud of.
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I’d personally never knock those that don’t wish to start their own business, it’s definately not simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you do? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll inform you what they desire to find out and increase 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 realize what we’re doing only at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional experience of my well being, and that’s worth just from the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring with it every single day. It’s funny, if we commenced I wasn’t sure just how to frame the pain sensation points from the private business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There were a fantastic team building events a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for our full release in a couple weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings remember.
You can comment below or require a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to state meantime? Hit me high on LinkedIn or [email protected]