Startup life…Asking the best questions
When i sit here in an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (which has a failing AC inside the Texas Summer) I thought it might be a good time to do a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition to date. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown all of us significantly the company side of things is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and now to the “normalization” phase in our newbie. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten you all about the definitions. To me, normalizing they is helping us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned as well as the pace is picking up bigtime. Nothing but good things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this posting I want to concentrate on customers and the way 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 guide button to the?” (DOH!). To prospects 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 due to the fact many people are prepared to offer you their help with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.
Early on, I felt compelled to push most our product development and assumptions coming from a pure real estate perspective. I knew we’re able to enhance the current tech in the industry, and we’re an industrial real estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all so good stuff but you can expect a platform which is CRE based to users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped inside the real estate problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together as a team, we became less reliant on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged through the feedback from your users and other people inside the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real estate product, we’re a 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 an important and foundational goal of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises whenever they hear our mission, test out the woking platform and determine what we’re about. It’s quite normal for caboodlers to invest thirty minutes on one review (that the collection part takes about One minute FYI) because the small company community is simply so hungry being heard. This is the group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every single day, to create their business grow along with 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 simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release here in the next couple of weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but simply plain interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve found out that simply because 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 think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as we grow all of us we all have a job to try out 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 whom you are under time limits. We (and especially the founders) do no matter what to go the ball forward. People ask about how the transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, if and when they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Are you able to handle the strain with this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much a lot more. When you elect go for it . and build something matters you in turn become far more responsible. How? Well ideas are virtually worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all inside the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A solid culture will be the foundation for a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you’ve got a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the minds themselves. When you begin a business (from a perception) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually friends and family and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…but a majority of of all you’re in charge of yourself. There’s no automatic paycheck or salary to acquire up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have love for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount arrange it would be to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times may be, the strain is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have love for what you’re doing, if you believe within your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do your whole life.
No-one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are just starting to test them out in a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate a portion in our success. I do know this, the west will dictate the way you lead and the way we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m happy with.
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I would never knock people who don’t want to start their very own business, it’s faraway from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. If you do? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to tell you what they need to find out and boost your thinking, in every element of your products or services. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we believe in that. I am aware what we’re doing at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience with playing, and that’s worth just with the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, if we started out I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame this points with the small business operator…Now? We know them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”
There was an incredible team development last weekend in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Keep tuned in for full release here in two to three weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings keep in mind.
You can comment below or please take 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 high on LinkedIn or [email protected]