Startup life…Asking the right questions
As I sit in an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (which has a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I was thinking it will be a good time to do a mental check of start-up life and also the transition thus far. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business side is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase now to the “normalization” phase of our 1st year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology in my common speech, confusing friends with such terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten all of you around the definitions. To me, normalizing the c’s helps us show we’ve momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned and also the pace is buying bigtime. Nothing but good things.
In the past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I must focus on customers and the way to tune in to them.
If we first launched beta and started collecting feedback, the response was overwhelming from our initial users. “Change this,” “I don’t under this wording here,” “consider adding X,” “is there a roadmap button with the?” (DOH!). To the people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for one, having only a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when everybody is happy to offer you their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help smaller businesses make smarter lease decisions.
In the beginning, I felt compelled to push nearly all our website and assumptions from a pure real estate property perspective. I knew we might strengthen the prevailing tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and a good stuff but our company offers a platform that is CRE based to your users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together as a team, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged with the feedback from our users and folks within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a real estate property product, we’re a company product. How did we discover that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team is out 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 crucial and foundational objective of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses whenever they hear our mission, try the woking platform and know very well what we’re information on. It’s not unusual for caboodlers to shell out 30 mins on one review (which the collection part takes about One minute FYI) for the reason that business community is definitely so hungry to be heard. This can be a group that’s putting their livelihoods on the line, every day, to generate 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 only coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release in the subsequent couple of weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but simply all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge through our core customers. I’ve found that just because your product is provided for free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products must solve real world damage to real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We will share it soon.
Even as grow we we all have a job to learn 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 are best at exposing what you are being forced. We (and particularly the founders) do anything to maneuver the ball forward. People question the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, whenever they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and get this: Is it possible to handle the load of this deadline, the subsequent sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot a lot more. When you decide to take the plunge and produce something matters you in turn become a great deal more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, possibly even I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution and also the team…and also the culture. A powerful culture could be the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
For those who have a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you start a company (from a thought) you’re responsible for the investors, (usually friends and family and families hard-earned money), you’re responsible for your people, their efforts in addition to their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every day…but a majority of of you’re responsible for yourself. There isn’t any automatic paycheck or salary to obtain off the bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something have passion for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate simply how much arrange it would be to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days might be, the load is off the charts and also the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you simply have passion 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 all of your life.
No one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups within their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are just starting to test them in the live environment, time, our efforts and also the market will dictate part of our success. I understand this, our culture will dictate how we lead and how we come together as people…and that’s something I’m pleased with.
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I’d personally never knock people who don’t want to start their very own business, it’s definately not easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. If you undertake? Confer with your customers, listen and learn. They are going to inform you what they desire to view and enhance your thinking, in each and every area of your product. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we believe in that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is easily the most rewarding professional connection with my life, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and fervour we’re pouring in it every day. It’s funny, once we began I wasn’t sure the best way to border this points of the small business operator…Now? Problems in later life them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no substitute for experience.”
We had a fantastic team development last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned for full release in 2-3 weeks and appreciate your reading my ramblings keep in mind.
Go ahead and comment below or have a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.
Have something to convey meantime? Hit me on LinkedIn or [email protected]