Startup life…Asking the best questions
When i sit here in an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (using a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I thought it might be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life and also the transition to date. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the organization side is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase and now in the “normalization” phase of our newbie. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten everyone on the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the team helps us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned and also the pace is obtaining bigtime. All good things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and more. In this post I want to focus on customers and ways to pay attention to them.
Once 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 roadmap button for that?” (DOH!). To those with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I first, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when most people are prepared to give you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make better lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions coming from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we could improve on the existing tech in the marketplace, and we’re an industrial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of that good stuff but our company offers a platform that is certainly CRE based to users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became much less reliant on these assumptions and more and more engaged through the feedback from your users and folks from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real estate product, we’re an enterprise product. How did look for 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 system with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational objective of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m pleasantly surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners whenever they hear our mission, try out system and know what we’re information on. It’s not unusual for the caboodlers to spend half an hour on a single review (that the collection part takes about A minute FYI) for the reason that small enterprise community is merely so hungry to get heard. This can be a group that’s putting their livelihoods on the line, 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 heard them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release here in the following few weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found that just because your product or service is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve down to earth damage to down to earth people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.
As we grow we everyone has a task to learn 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 are best at exposing your identiity being forced. We (and particularly the founders) do whatever needs doing to advance the ball forward. People inquire about what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, should they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and ask this: Is it possible to handle the strain with this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much far more. When you elect go for it . and build something which matters you in turn become a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A strong culture is the foundation for the strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
For those who have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only to blame for cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin an enterprise (from a perception) you’re to blame for the investors, (usually your pals 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…but a majority of coming from all you’re to blame for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have desire for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much push the button is usually to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days might be, the strain is from the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think in your mission and your culture and your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do all of your life.
No person seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are just beginning to test them out within a live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate part of our success. I do know this, the west will dictate the way you lead and the way we work together as people…which is something I’m satisfied with.
Hit me on LinkedIn or [email protected]
I might never knock those that don’t desire to start their unique business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. If you do? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They will show you what they really want to find out and improve your thinking, in every single area of your product or service. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I am aware what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is regarded as the rewarding professional connection with my life, and that’s worth equally of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring into it every single day. It’s funny, whenever we started off I wasn’t sure precisely how to border the anguish points of the small business owner…Now? We know them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
There was a fantastic team development last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for the full release here in a couple weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings keep in mind.
Go ahead and comment below or take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to express meantime? Hit me on LinkedIn or [email protected]