Monthly Letter #05 - Bento
As a kid, I was always 10 minutes late to school.
Mostly because I was lazy, busy eating Smacks cereals, and because I had not discovered coffee yet. But also a couple times, because my mom wanted to finish watching an episode B&B (known in France as Amour, Gloire et Beauté). You couldn’t hit pause on the TV back in the pre-Netflix era.
So yeah, I’m late for the January update by about 10 days. So what? You’re not the boss of me.
So just a few bullet points, in random order:
general / bento holding
still spending the vast majority of our time working on the small existing portfolio rather than searching for new acquisitions. grinding every day.
various reasons for focusing on farming rather than hunting (thanks Renaud for the analogy!), and it will probably continue to be our focus in the next few months. we’re just not really ready to scale.
met Thomas at Alvo though, which is a recent actor in the space for France. They're onto something ! Just not a lot of SaaS in their listings as they're working with a large diversity of SMBs.
a new addition to the team ! Eléana is working 3 days / week for Bento, and we're taking more shots at various marketing mini-projects! actually using the bullseye framework from Traction to launch multiple experiments.
seasons
we've launched an integration between MyFitnessPal and Seasons, our software for nutrition coaches. it was probably the most requested feature for years, and we finally implemented it using a creative strategy. Coaches love it ! Their clients are now able to import nutrition data without having to copy everything tediously.
we've added more questions to the check-in forms, and additional info that can be collected by coaches.
we're starting to launch an ambassador program to partner with some of our best coaches
we tried doing cold outreach on an email database of nutrition coaches all over the world => it failed
velocity
I've worked with Ben - an amazing dev I've been working with for 12+ years now - on solving a complex syncing issue for our clients. working with Asana API's is not easy, and has a lot of limits you need to work with in a smart way in order to not bloat the system. and finally, we did it ! we have way less problems now that the tech works more smoothly.
we're not doing much marketing-wise at the moment. and we need to unblock a Google Ad campaign that is refused by Google because it uses the trademark Asana. Duh ! It's an app for Asana users, of course we mention it. platform risk I guess...
surveynuts
still continuing the experiment with google ads, which is kinda encouraging, but also pretty expensive.
thinking about doing new experiments on a more social media / branding front. we've never tried that. hello META. also more creative things to engage our existing users.
product wise, we're working hard on significant changes. here is a more detailed list in french if you're interested. still work in progress ! I'm super excited about these.
secret tip
when doing research on product & marketing strategy, I often look for content that's deep and not superficial. when looking at specific case studies from competitors or other companies, I use a secret weapon :
i love this product - basically the best search engine for podcasts. it allows you to search through millions of podcast episodes and their descriptions for keywords. so for example, when I wanted to study a marketing strategy of monday.com, just lookup the names of the company or founders / top managers there, and you'll find dozens of podcasts where they drop some metrics, learnings and more in the episodes
final words
entrepreneurship is haaaard. I knew that, but still :)
it's also really fun, especially when you have freedom and when you can do the things you like the most every day, optimizing for happiness and not just for making your board happy.
i’ll end with an inspiring quote from Theodore Roosevelt, who could have been a great social media influencer or life coach in the instagram world (dubai X usa). but i really like it:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”