Startup life…Asking the correct questions

Because i sit within an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (which has a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I figured it may be fun to do a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition so far. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our team significantly the business side of things is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and after this in to the “normalization” phase of our own first year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll permit her to enlighten all of you for the definitions. To me, normalizing the group helps us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned as well as the pace is picking up bigtime. Nothing but good things.

Over the posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment and more. In this posting I wish to focus on customers and ways to tune in to them.

If we first launched beta and began collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from my initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a map button with the?” (DOH!). To prospects with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed since most people are ready to present you with their assist with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make smarter lease decisions.

Early on, I felt compelled to push nearly all our product development and assumptions coming from a pure real-estate perspective. I knew we will improve on the present tech on the market, and we’re an industrial real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of a good stuff but we provide a platform which is CRE based to the users. All of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real-estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became less dependent on these assumptions and more and more engaged by the feedback from my users and folks within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just 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 a vital and foundational purpose of ours to gather 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 woking platform and know very well what we’re exactly about. It’s normal for the caboodlers to spend a half-hour on one review (that your collection part takes about 60 seconds FYI) as the small enterprise community is just so hungry to be heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods at stake, 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 followed them.

So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within the following couple weeks (SUPER excited to show everybody) but merely plain interviewing, listening and studying under our core customers. I’ve found that even though your product or service costs nothing 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 do believe encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.

As we grow our team all of us have a task to learn 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 might be best at exposing your identiity under pressure. We (and especially the founders) do no matter what to maneuver the ball forward. People question what sort of transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, should they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Are you able to handle the load of the deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot considerably more. When you will decide to take the plunge and produce something matters you feel far more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A robust culture may be the foundation for any strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

For those who have a perception, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the ideas themselves. When you begin a business (from a perception) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your pals and families hard-earned money), you’re in charge of your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re in charge of your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward each day…but many coming from all you’re in charge of yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to acquire up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have desire for. I guess that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much work it would be to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times might be, the load is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. But if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think inside your mission plus your culture plus your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do the whole life.

No-one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and they are beginning to test them out inside a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate part of our own success. I do know this, the west will dictate the way we lead and just how we work together as people…which is something I’m happy with.
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I might never knock people that don’t need to start their unique business, it’s not even close to basic and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can gain. Should you? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They will let you know what they desire to determine and enhance your thinking, in most part of your product or service. There exists a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and now we trust that. I understand what we’re doing here at Tenavox is among the most rewarding professional experience of my entire life, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it each day. It’s funny, when we began I wasn’t sure exactly how to border the pain points of the small business operator…Now? We know them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement experience.”

We’d an incredible team building a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Keep tuned in for the full release within a couple weeks and thanks for reading my ramblings remember.

Go ahead and 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.

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