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Happy 4th of July!

This is the first post in what will become a monthly update on all things Trova and my life as a bootstrapping founder. For those of you that don't want to read another sentence and were auto-subscribed against your will, I apologize...

As a quick update for those of you who plan on taking a peak each month, Trova provides users in an apartment community with friend suggestions based on mutual interests, activities and background. Our mission is to foster meaningful relationships where tenants live, work, and play. Leading to a better overall living experience and increased retention for the complex.

The blog posts will be broken down into three segments:

Monthly Update

Knowledge Share

Next steps/asks

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Update from last month.

June was a very exciting month for me as an entrepreneur. For the first time in my life, I was able to take my idea (now a beta product) and put it in front of a potential customer. Though I am proud of what has been built thus far, I was prepared to take a beating and get laughed out of the room.

What happened, I actually could not have anticipated. The customer not only loved our presentation, they expressed interest in launching as soon as we are ready. This was great news, however I now have a decision to make. How feature-rich and bug-free does my platform have to be before I am ready?

Fortunately every 1st-time entrepreneurs"start-up" package includes $10,000 in unusable AWS Credits, $100,000 in unusable Google Cloud Platform Credits and a copy of the book "The Lean Start-up" by Eric Reis, so I was fully prepared to make decision. In a few hundred sleep worthy pages, Eric portrays the message; launch early and often. So that is our strategy going forward and we are excited for our plans to do so in mid July!

Towards the end of June, I was able to secure another 150 Unit complex to be an early adopter and agree to testing. I asked that we move the launch to August to ensure we spend as much time learning from our first deployment. No sense in making the same mistakes twice. It has been an exciting month for Trova, I hope to have some great user testimonials to share in our next update.

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Here is what hit my radar this month.

• Need fonts for your website. This site has it all: https://www.fontsquirrel.com/

• Admin panel your engineer will love with a dashboard designed for everyday users: https://www.forestadmin.com/

• Podcast Episode of the month includes Arnold Schwarzenegger on the Tim Ferris show. https://tim.blog/2017/01/18/arnold-schwarzenegger-part-2-bodybuilding-investing-and-online-battles/

• Book of the Month- The Social Animal by David Brooks https://www.amazon.com/Social-Animal-Sources-Character-Achievement/dp/0812979370? You can hear David's Ted Talk @ https://www.ted.com/talks/david_brooks_the_social_animal

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Next Steps | Asks

1. We are looking forward to our beta launch in July and August. I am looking for cheap/fun swag ideas. I was thinking coasters or koozies

2. I am looking for help with trademarking Trova. Any referrals/references are appreciated. Keep in mind I am bootstrapping! I have done most of the work, I just need an educated second set of eyes.

3. I am just starting to get into the PropTech community in terms of events and organizations, any suggestions on events to attend are greatly appreciated.

Recurring Asks:

1. I am still actively looking for beta customers. I am targeting large (50+ unit) apartment buildings but open to out of scope implementations for testing purposes. Minimum is 50 users.

2. I plan on raising a round late 2019 early 2020. I am starting to have early conversations about what that will look like. Please reach out if you or someone may be intersted in a more formal discussion.

3. I am actively looking for people to join the team. At this time sweat equity is more inline with what I can offer but happy to have a conversation. All fields; Sales, UI/UX, Engineering, Branding, Marketing, Social...everything.