As I sit within an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (having a failing AC in the Texas Summer) I believed it might be a good time to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition to date. Always beneficial when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business side of things starts to feel “normal.” If that’s possible. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of your “storming” phase and now to the “normalization” phase in our fresh. I now use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf not to mention MFIC. I’ll let her enlighten everybody around the definitions. In my experience, normalizing the team helps us show we have momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are common aligned as well as the pace is buying bigtime. Perfect things.

Over the posts I’ve commented on product development, CRE culture, investment plus more. In this post I would like to target customers and how to listen to them.

Whenever we first launched beta and started 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 roadmap button for that?” (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 by how many people are willing to present you with their assistance with this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small business owners make better lease decisions.

Early on, I felt compelled to push almost all our product development and assumptions from a pure real-estate perspective. I knew we could enhance the present tech in the industry, and we’re an advertisement real-estate product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and many types of so good stuff but you can expect a platform which is CRE based to your users. The whole core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped in the real-estate problem-solving mindset. As we grew together as a team, we became less and less dependent on these assumptions plus more plus more engaged through the feedback from my users and people in the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not really a real-estate product, we’re a company product. How did we find 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 crucial and foundational purpose of ours to recover these experiences. However, I’m surprised about the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small business owners once they hear our mission, try out the platform and know very well what we’re all about. It’s normal for our caboodlers to shell out 30 mins on one review (which the collection part takes about A minute FYI) as the small enterprise community is simply so hungry to get heard. This is the group that is putting their livelihoods at stake, every single day, to make their business grow and 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 few weeks (SUPER excited to demonstrate everybody) but just flat out interviewing, listening and learning from our core customers. I’ve found out that because your product or service is free of charge doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products have to solve real life problems for real life people. This full release I think encompasses that mantra. We are going to share it soon.

As we grow we you have a part to play only 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 are best at exposing who you are being forced. Our company (especially the founders) do no matter what to move the ball forward. People enquire about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is going, as long as they make the leap too using their idea? I smile and have this: Are you able to handle the stress of this deadline, the following sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and much considerably more. When you elect to go for it and build a thing that matters you become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are just about 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.

For those who have a thought, it’s just yours, you’re only responsible for cultivating the ideas themselves. Once you begin 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 and their goals, you’re responsible for your business’s growth, and moving the vision forward every single day…but a majority of of you’re responsible for yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to help you get up and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have desire for. I assume that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate the amount push the button is usually to take up a business, never underestimate how difficult at times can be, the stress is off of the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. However if you have desire for what you’re doing, if you think inside your mission and your culture and your team? This can be the best damn thing you’ll do your entire life.

No-one seriously knows where our path will lead. Startups in their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and so are just starting to test them out . inside a live environment, time, our efforts as well as the market will dictate a portion in our success. I recognize this, the west will dictate the way you lead and exactly how we interact as people…and that’s something I’m pleased with.
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I might never knock those who don’t want to start their particular business, it’s definately not simple and easy , oftentimes personal considerations don’t allow it. Should you? Confer with your customers, listen and learn. They are going to inform you what they desire to view and enhance your thinking, in every single area of your product or service. You will find a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we trust that. I am aware what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional experience with my life, and that’s worth every bit of the stress, risk and keenness we’re pouring in it every single day. It’s funny, once we commenced I wasn’t sure precisely how to frame the pain sensation points of the private business owner…Now? We understand them because we live them. Along with a wise someone once said, “there’s no alternative to experience.”

There was an excellent team building last weekend in Austin too! Because of #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Keep tuned in for our full release within a month and thank you for reading my ramblings keep in mind.

Feel free to comment below or please 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 through to LinkedIn or [email protected]