Startup life…Asking the proper questions
While i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for your month of August (having a failing AC within the Texas Summer) I believed it might be fun to do a mental check of start-up life along with the transition thus far. Always good when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business enterprise side of things is beginning to feel “normal.” If that’s a possibility. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and now in the “normalization” phase of our newbie. I now use her Westpoint terminology during my common speech, confusing friends with your terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everybody for the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the team is helping us show we now have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned along with the pace is obtaining bigtime. Great things.
In previous posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and much more. In this article I want to target customers and how to hear them.
If we first launched beta and began 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 for your?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s not new. I for just one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when many people are happy to give you their benefit 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 website and assumptions from a pure real estate property perspective. I knew we will enhance the existing tech in the market, and we’re an advertisement real estate property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of that good stuff but you can expect a platform that is certainly CRE based to the users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped within the real estate property problem-solving mindset. Even as grew together together, we became less dependent on these assumptions and much more and much more engaged through the feedback from our users and people within the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not only a real estate property product, we’re a small business product. How did we find that out?
We asked.
Our caboodling team has gone out daily hand-collecting reviews in Houston and I’m humbled by their efforts. They’re helping us seed system with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s a vital and foundational purpose of ours to collect these experiences. However, I’m impressed by the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, smaller businesses once they hear our mission, test out system and know very well what we’re all about. It’s not uncommon for our caboodlers to pay half an hour using one review (that the collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the business community is definitely so hungry to be heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every single day, to produce their business grow along with their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and listened to them.
So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout the next month or so (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but simply all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve learned that just because your product is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve down to earth damage to down to earth people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’re going to share it soon.
Even as grow we we all have a part 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 would be best at exposing who you are being forced. All of us (and also the founders) do anything to advance the ball forward. People inquire about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, as long as they make the leap too making use of their idea? I smile and get this: Could you handle the stress of the deadline, the next sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and a lot far more. When you elect go for it . and create something which matters you feel a lot more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all within the execution along with the team…along with the culture. A powerful culture could be the foundation to get a strong company.
Turning ideas into reality, together.
When you’ve got a concept, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you begin a small business (from a concept) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your pals 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 many of 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 you have love for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much arrange it would be to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the stress is from the charts along with the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think maybe in your mission along with your culture along with your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.
Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are beginning to test them out in the live environment, time, our efforts along with the market will dictate part of our success. I know this, the west will dictate the way we lead and the way we interact as people…that is certainly something I’m proud of.
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I might never knock people that don’t need to start their own business, it’s far from simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. If you undertake? Talk to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to inform you what they really want to view and increase your thinking, in every single facet of your product. You will find there’s new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and we have confidence in that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional connection with playing, and that’s worth equally of the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it every single day. It’s funny, whenever we began I wasn’t sure exactly how to frame the pain sensation points of the small company owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. As well as a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”
There was an incredible team building a week ago in Austin too! Due to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!
Stay tuned in for our full release throughout a couple weeks and many thanks for reading my ramblings as always.
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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