While i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (using a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I was thinking it may be fun to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition up to now. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the company aspects is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today into the “normalization” phase individuals newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf as well as MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everyone on the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they is assisting us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are aligned along with the pace is picking up bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I want to target customers and how to listen to them.
When we first launched beta and commenced collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from your initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a map button for that?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for just one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed by how many people are happy to give you their assistance with 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 product development and assumptions coming from a pure property perspective. I knew we will make improvements to the current tech in the industry, and we’re an industrial property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that good stuff but we provide a platform that is certainly CRE based to our users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the property problem-solving mindset. Once we grew together as a team, we became much less dependent upon these assumptions plus more plus more engaged from the feedback from your users and other people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a property product, we’re an enterprise product. How did find 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 working platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a crucial and foundational goal of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises after they hear our mission, check out the working platform and determine what we’re exactly about. It’s not unusual for the caboodlers to spend a half-hour on one review (that the collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) because the small enterprise community is simply so hungry to become heard. This is the group that is putting their livelihoods on the line, every single day, to produce their business grow along with their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and heard them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not merely coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout another couple weeks (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just all out interviewing, listening and studying under our core customers. I’ve found that just because your product or service is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products need to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Once we grow our team you have a job to experience 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 what you are pressurized. We (and particularly the founders) do whatever needs doing to go the ball forward. People enquire about what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech goes, if and when they take the plunge too with their idea? I smile and ask this: Can you handle the worries of this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot more. When you decide go for it . and produce something which matters you then become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, approximately I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A robust culture may be the foundation for any strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
If you have an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only accountable for cultivating the ideas themselves. When you begin an enterprise (from an idea) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually your friends 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 every single day…but many coming from all you’re accountable for yourself. There is no automatic paycheck or salary to acquire off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have adoration for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much work it would be to start a business, never underestimate how difficult some days might be, the worries is off the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have adoration for what you’re doing, if you believe inside your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are beginning to test them in the live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate a portion individuals success. I recognize this, the west will dictate the way you lead and exactly how we communicate as people…and that is something I’m proud of.
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I’d never knock people that don’t want to start their very own business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. Should you choose? Talk to your customers, listen and learn. They will show you what they really want to view and enhance your thinking, in most facet of your product or service. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we trust that. I know what we’re doing at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional experience with playing, and that’s worth just with the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring involved with it every single day. It’s funny, if we started out I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame the anguish points with the small business owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
We’d an excellent team building events last week in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for the full release throughout a month and appreciate your reading my ramblings keep in mind.
Go ahead and comment below or take a run at a number of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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