Startup life…Asking the proper questions
While i sit in an AirBnb I rented for the month of August (which has a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I figured it may be a great time to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition up to now. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business side is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re from the “storming” phase and now into the “normalization” phase individuals newbie. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everyone around the definitions. If you ask me, normalizing the team is assisting us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned along with the pace is buying bigtime. All good things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus much more. On this page I would like to target customers and the way to listen to them.
When we first launched beta and began 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 to the?” (DOH!). To those with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I first, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed by how many people are happy to give you their help 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 website and assumptions from your pure real estate property perspective. I knew we will improve on the existing tech in the industry, and we’re an advertisement real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that great stuff but our company offers a platform that’s CRE based to the users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together as a team, we became less just a few these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged from the feedback from your users and people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate property product, we’re an enterprise product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is going 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 critical and foundational purpose of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises after they hear our mission, try out the platform and know what we’re all about. It’s normal for your caboodlers to spend 30 mins on a single review (that this collection part takes about A minute FYI) because the small enterprise community is merely so hungry to be heard. It is a group who’s putting their livelihoods on the line, each day, to produce their business grow in addition to 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 just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the next couple weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but just flat out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve discovered that just because your products is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.
Even as grow our team all of us have a part to experience only at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, real estate 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 whom you are under pressure. Our team (and especially the founders) do whatever it takes to move the ball forward. People question what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, should they take the plunge too making use of their idea? I smile and get this: Can you handle the load on this deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far far more. When you decide to go for it and produce something matters you 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 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 accountable for cultivating the thoughts themselves. Once you start an enterprise (from a perception) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually your mates and families hard-earned money), you’re accountable for your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re accountable for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…most of all you’re accountable for yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to obtain up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have love for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much work it is always to start up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the load is from the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think maybe inside your mission and your culture and your team? Here is the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.
No person seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups inside their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are beginning to test them in the live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate some individuals success. I do know this, the west will dictate the way you lead and the way we come together as people…that is certainly something I’m pleased with.
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I’d personally never knock those that don’t want to start their very own business, it’s far from simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. Should you choose? Confer with your customers, listen and learn. They are going to tell you what they really want to see and increase your thinking, in every single element of your products. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we rely on that. I know 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 with it each day. It’s funny, whenever we commenced I wasn’t sure exactly how to border the pain points in the private business owner…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”
We had an excellent team building last week in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for your full release in a month and many thanks for reading my ramblings keep in mind.
Go ahead and comment below or require a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
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