When i sit throughout an AirBnb I rented for that month of August (which has a failing AC from the Texas Summer) I believed it could be a great time to execute a mental check of start-up life as well as the transition thus far. Advantageous when you’re sweating from sitting 🙂 Having grown we significantly the business aspect starts to feel “normal.” If that’s a chance. My co-founder Marissa would say we’re out of the “storming” phase and today to the “normalization” phase of our fresh. Now i use her Westpoint terminology within my common speech, confusing friends basic terms as Sitrep, bluf and of course MFIC. I’ll allow her to enlighten everybody about the definitions. In my opinion, normalizing they helps us show we’ve got momentum, synergy and our folks (and internal technology) are typical aligned as well as the pace is picking up bigtime. Great things.

In past posts I’ve commented on website, CRE culture, investment and more. In this posting I would like to target customers and the way to hear them.

Once 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 guide button for that?” (DOH!). To the people 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 due to the fact everybody is willing to give you their benefit this mission. What’s the mission again? Help small enterprises make better lease decisions.

In the beginning, I felt compelled to push almost all our website and assumptions coming from a pure property perspective. I knew we might strengthen the current tech in the industry, and we’re a commercial property product, right? Sure, we’re free and anonymous and that good stuff but you can expect a platform that’s CRE based to users. Each of our core assumptions and product architecture/functions were steeped from the property problem-solving mindset. Even as we grew together together, we became less reliant on these assumptions and more and more engaged from the feedback from our users and people from the field. This assumption quickly changed, we’re not just a property product, we’re a company 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 woking platform with real, verified feedback from business decision makers. It’s an important and foundational purpose of ours to gather these experiences. However, I’m amazed at the response we’re getting from retailers, tenants, small enterprises whenever they hear our mission, check out the woking platform and know what we’re information on. It’s not uncommon for caboodlers to shell out a half-hour one review (that this collection part takes about A minute FYI) because the business community is just so hungry being heard. This is the group that’s putting their livelihoods at risk, every 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 paid attention to them.

So that’s what we’ve been doing. Not simply coding/testing/building/caboodling and trending hard towards our full release throughout another month or so (SUPER excited to exhibit everybody) but simply all out interviewing, listening and gaining knowledge from our core customers. I’ve found that just because your product costs nothing doesn’t mean it automatically drops some inherent barrier to entry. Products ought to solve real world trouble for real world people. This full release I do believe encompasses that mantra. We’ll share it soon.

Even as we grow we all of us have a part to play only 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 would be better at exposing who you are under pressure. Our team (especially the founders) do whatever needs doing to go the ball forward. People ask about the way the transition from CRE to Startup in tech is certainly going, if and when they dive right in too making use of their idea? I smile and have this: Could you handle the stress of this deadline, another sprint, sales projections, recruiting, feedback, testing, adjustments, operations, payroll and far more. When you decide to go for it and create something matters you then become much more responsible. How? Well ideas are basically worth nothing, or so I’ve learned 😉 It’s all from the execution as well as the team…as well as the culture. A strong culture may be the foundation to get a strong company.

Turning ideas into reality, together.

When you’ve got an idea, it’s just yours, you’re only in charge of cultivating the thoughts themselves. When you begin a company (from an idea) you’re in charge of the investors, (usually your mates 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 every day…most of most you’re in charge of yourself. There is absolutely no automatic paycheck or salary to obtain up out of bed and hitting that work-day hard, so pick something you have love for. I suppose that’s what I’ve learned most. Never underestimate just how much push the button would be to begin a business, never underestimate how difficult at times could be, the stress is off the charts as well as the stakes couldn’t be higher. Though if you have love for what you’re doing, if you think maybe with your mission plus your culture plus your team? This is actually the best damn thing you’ll do all of your life.

Nobody seriously knows where our path may lead. Startups of their very natures are risky ventures. We’ve made educated assumptions and are beginning to test them out . within a 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 how we work together as people…and that is something I’m pleased with.
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I might never knock people who don’t want to start their particular business, it’s not even close to simple and oftentimes personal considerations don’t take. If you undertake? Speak to your customers, listen and discover. They’re going to inform you what they want to see and enhance your thinking, in each and every area of your product. We have a new mantra now, “Built for Tenants, with Tenants,” and that we rely on that. I understand what we’re doing only at Tenavox is the most rewarding professional connection with my well being, and that’s worth equally in the stress, risk and passion we’re pouring involved with it every day. It’s funny, whenever we began I wasn’t sure the best way to border this points in the small company owner…Now? Could them because we live them. And a wise someone once said, “there’s no replacement for experience.”

We’d an excellent team development last weekend in Austin too! Thanks to #escapegame #Galvanize and #Laketravis for hosting us!

Stay tuned in for full release throughout a couple weeks and appreciate your reading my ramblings remember.

You can comment below or take a run at many of the other articles I’ve written chronicling my transition from broker to co-founder.

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