As I sit within an AirBnb I rented to the month of August (having a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I thought it may be fun to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition up to now. Always advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown our company significantly the business side is starting to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out from the “storming” phase and after this to the “normalization” phase of our first year. Now i use her Westpoint terminology inside my common speech, confusing friends by using these terms as Sitrep, bluf and naturally MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everybody about the definitions. In my experience, normalizing they helps us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are all aligned as well as the pace is collecting bigtime. Nothing but good things.

In the past posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment plus much more. In this post I would like to focus on customers and how to hear them.

Whenever 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 atlas button to the?” (DOH!). To people with tech startup experience I’m sure that’s nothing new. I for just one, having just a humble CRE broker’s background, was quite surprised/impressed because when many people are ready to give you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small businesses make smarter lease decisions.

In early stages, I felt compelled to push the vast majority of our product development and assumptions from the pure property perspective. I knew we’re able to make improvements to the prevailing tech in the marketplace, and we’re an advertisement property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and all sorts of that good stuff but we offer a platform that is CRE based to the users. Our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the property problem-solving mindset. As we grew together together, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions plus much more plus much more engaged through the feedback from your users and folks in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not simply a property product, we’re an enterprise product. How did we find 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 platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational purpose of ours to get these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small businesses after they hear our mission, check out the platform and know what we’re information on. It’s normal for the caboodlers to pay a half-hour on one review (that your collection part takes about One minute FYI) as the small company community is just so hungry to be heard. This is a group who’s putting their livelihoods exactly in danger, every day, to generate their business grow along with their personal lives more enriched through their dreams. It’s about damn time someone sat down and heard them.

So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not just coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release within another month or so (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but just flat out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found that even though your products or services is free doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve down to earth trouble for down to earth people. This full release I believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.

As we grow our company all of us have a part to experience right here at Tenavox. Mine is heavily steeped in product, 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 your identiity pressurized. We (especially the founders) do no matter what to advance the ball forward. People question how a transition from CRE to Startup in tech will go, as long as they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and enquire of this: Can you handle the stress on this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far a lot more. When you choose to go for it and create something matters you become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are pretty much worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all in the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A robust culture will be the foundation for a strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you have an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only accountable for cultivating the thoughts themselves. Once you begin an enterprise (from an idea) you’re accountable for the investors, (usually friends and family and families hard-earned money), you’re accountable for your people, their efforts along with their goals, you’re accountable for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every day…but many of most you’re accountable for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have adoration for. I reckon that that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate how much arrange it is usually to start a business, never underestimate how difficult some days can be, the stress is from the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you simply have adoration for what you’re doing, if you feel in your mission as well as your culture as well as your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.

No one seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups inside 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 as well as the market will dictate part of our success. I understand this, our culture will dictate the way we lead and just how we interact as people…which is something I’m happy with.
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I’d personally never knock people that don’t need to start their unique business, it’s not even close to easy and oftentimes personal considerations don’t so it can have. Should you choose? Confer with your customers, listen and discover. They are going to let you know what they really want to see and improve your thinking, in each and every element of your products or services. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we believe in that. I know what we’re doing right here at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional experience of my well being, and that’s worth just from the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring with it every day. It’s funny, once we started out I wasn’t sure the best way to border this points from the small business operator…Now? We know them because we live them. Plus a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”

We had an excellent team development a week ago in Austin too! As a result of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned for more for the full release within a couple weeks and appreciate your reading my ramblings remember.

Go ahead and comment below or take a run at some of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

Have something to state meantime? Hit me high on LinkedIn or [email protected]