Startup life…Asking the right questions
As I sit in an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (with a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I thought it could be a great time to execute a mental check of start-up life and the transition so far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business enterprise aspects is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase and now into the “normalization” phase of our newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten all of you on the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the team is helping us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned and the pace is picking up bigtime. Perfect things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on product, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this post I want to target customers and the way to listen to them.
When we first launched beta and started collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from the initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a atlas button for that?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I first, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when most people are willing to offer you their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our product and assumptions from your pure real estate perspective. I knew we’re able to enhance the present tech in the marketplace, and we’re an industrial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all that good stuff but we offer a platform that is certainly CRE based to our users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together as a team, we became less reliant on these assumptions and much more and much more engaged by the feedback from the users and folks from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real estate product, we’re a business product. How did find 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 vital and foundational objective of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses whenever they hear our mission, try the woking platform and know what we’re all about. It’s normal for caboodlers to invest half an hour using one review (that this collection part takes about One minute FYI) since the business community is definitely so hungry to become heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every single day, to create their business grow and their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and followed them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the next few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but just plain interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve learned that even though your products or services is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products ought to solve real life problems for real life people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as grow our team we all have a part to play only 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 what you are pressurized. All of us (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to go the ball forward. People ask about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, should they dive right in too using their idea? I smile and ask this: Are you able to handle the load on this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far considerably more. When you will decide to take the plunge and create something matters you become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, roughly I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution and the team…and the culture. A strong culture may be the foundation for the strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you’ve got a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you begin a business (from a thought) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually your friends and families hard-earned money), you’re responsible for your people, their efforts and their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…most of most you’re responsible for yourself. There’s no automatic paycheck or salary to get you up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have adoration for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much work it is always to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times may be, the load is off the charts and the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have adoration for what you’re doing, if you believe within your mission along with your culture along with your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and therefore are beginning to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts and the market will dictate part of our success. I understand this, the west will dictate how you lead and just how we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m happy with.
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I would never knock people who don’t wish to start their unique business, it’s faraway from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you undertake? Speak with your customers, listen and discover. They’ll inform you what they desire to determine and enhance your thinking, in each and every facet of your products or services. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I understand what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional connection with my life, and that’s worth just in the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, once we commenced I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame the pain points in the small company owner…Now? We know them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
We’d an excellent team building last weekend in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for full release in a couple weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings of course.
Feel free to comment below or take a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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