When i sit within an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I believed it may be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life and also the transition so far. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business side of things is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase and after this in to the “normalization” phase of our own 1st year. I now use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everyone on the definitions. To me, normalizing the team helps us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned and also the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on developing the site, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this posting I want to concentrate on customers and ways to hear them.
Whenever 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 guide button to the?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when most people are prepared to present you with their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make smarter lease decisions.
Ahead of time, I felt compelled to push nearly all our developing the site and assumptions from your pure real estate perspective. I knew we will make improvements to the prevailing tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that great stuff but our company offers a platform which is CRE based to your users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became much less just a few these assumptions and much more and much more engaged by the feedback from our users and other people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a real estate product, we’re a small business product. How did look for 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 crucial and foundational purpose of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners once they hear our mission, try the platform and know what we’re about. It’s normal for our caboodlers to pay 30 mins using one review (that your collection part takes about A minute FYI) for the reason that small enterprise community is simply so hungry to become heard. This is a group that is putting their livelihoods on the line, daily, to produce 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 simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within another couple weeks (SUPER excited to indicate everybody) but simply flat out interviewing, listening and studying under our core customers. I’ve found out that just because your products or services is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve down to earth problems for down to earth people. This full release I do think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
As we grow our team all of us have a task to experience 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 might be best at exposing who you are under time limits. Our company (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to move the ball forward. People ask about how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, if and when they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the stress of this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much far more. When you will decide go for it . and produce something which matters you then become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A powerful culture is the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only accountable for cultivating the minds themselves. Once you begin a small business (from a concept) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re accountable for your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re accountable for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward daily…but most of you’re accountable 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 passion for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount push the button is usually to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times might be, the stress is from the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have passion for what you’re doing, if you think within your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
No one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are just beginning to test them inside a live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate part of our own success. I understand this, our culture will dictate the way you lead and just how we come together as people…that is certainly something I’m pleased with.
Hit me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I might never knock people that don’t desire to start their particular business, it’s not even close to simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. Should you choose? Speak with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll inform you what they desire to view and boost your thinking, in every facet of your products or services. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we believe in that. I understand what we’re doing here at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional connection with my entire life, and that’s worth equally from the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring in it daily. It’s funny, when we started off I wasn’t sure just how to border this points from the small business owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
There was a great team building events last weekend in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for our full release within a couple weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings remember.
Feel free to comment below or have a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to express meantime? Hit me up on LinkedIn or [email protected]