Few start-ups’ adventure is just a quiet sail. Tayo is no exception: we are living an exciting, gripping, demanding adventure, but… things are far from quiet.
The challenges are huge: lack of time, lack of resources, lack of connections, unforeseen events, the very conservative nature of the property management market, an underdeveloped digital landscape. This list would be scary if it were exhaustive; indeed, it's the kind of list where we might say, taking a step back: "it's because we didn't have this list that we embarked on the project".
However, when faced with such challenges, Tayo can rely on several advantages. Some are technological: it has been a question of taking advantage of our ease with digital issues and starting from scratch a few years ago, in a world where everything happens very quickly and the weight of an existing system can be significant. However, from our point of view, our real assets have nothing to do with technology.
Our real assets are our diversity and our collective intelligence: a culture based on the exchange of points of view, on debating ideas and listening to each other.
By creating, at our inception, an Advisory Board made up of professionals from different backgrounds, Tayo acquired a skill which revealed itself as fundamental: the ability to present hypotheses, ideas, plans, and to improve them from all points of view thanks to our advisors' great expertise.
Why is this so fundamental? Because you need a balance between focus and the ability to take a step back.
Any start-up hoping to survive must be able to define and keep its focus, sometimes after a little turbulence. However, it's vital to avoid going in all directions, whilst the temptation exists, since there are so many possibilities to explore. In view of the digital challenges faced by property management, we could devote years to modelling everything that needs to be done in the future. Many seasoned entrepreneurs or investors stress the importance of keeping your focus, attention to detail and execution, and we think that this is really good advice.
However, too much focus (think 'nose to the grindstone') can reduce your ability to step back at regular intervals. We think it's important to return as often as possible to the essential questions, those which generally begin with "why?" rather than "when, what, how, who?".
This is what the role of our advisors is, as well as that of our friends, acquaintances, clients and users, with whom dialogue is always a source of inspiration. They help us understand "why". In consideration of the importance of collective intelligence for the survival of the project, we decided to recruit colleagues rather than employees. People who are ready to tell us what to do, rather than receiving long to-do lists that look like the 'job descriptions' of some large groups, which can quickly result in lower creativity, commitment and initiative.
Today, three years after creating the company, we are happy to say that we have more women on board than men. Is this a legal device, due to a quota, to a militant attitude? Absolutely not! Even though they are sometimes necessary, these measures are exactly what, in our opinion, can end up hindering the entrepreneurial spirit. Tayo valued the wording "we encourage female candidates" as a means of better understanding our shortcomings and for investing in a better connection with our customers and users.
We are so keen on diversity that our Scrum Master is a trained chef and every job offer is accompanied by the following text:
"At Tayo, level of education is not the basic criterion, but rather one's passion to learn, values and the ability to evolve in a fast-growing environment with high expectations".
In a world changing at an uncontrollable pace, a company, whether large or small, needs to be agile, and this has become, in our opinion, a major challenge.
We are convinced that a company inclusive of many different perspectives and backgrounds is indeed more agile.
This is what our commitment to diversity means to us, it's the construction of a collective intelligence. Indeed, the application of these principles is what makes us happy to get up in the morning, here at Tayo.
