How Jesse from Bento succeeds in a highly competitive market

Jesse Hanley is the founder of the bootstrapped company Bento. Bento is a marketing automation & email marketing software → As you can imagine this is a very red ocean market → Lots of competition 🎯

How do you run such a business? We talked with Jesse in our weekly live space on X and I thought I share my five key lessons from the talk with you:

1) Treat every customer the same no matter the deal size

Jesse says that it doesn't matter if he talks to a $30/month customer or a $1000/month. Why? Smaller customers can grow into large ones and there's a high chance the smaller one might bring in a larger whale via word of mouth.

2) Show your face during the onboarding flow

Jesse's product requires trust. When users sign up they will be presented with a lot of personally recorded videos that will help them find their way in the product. He even has a video when you get asked to add your credit card for the trial to eliminate any possible doubts.

3) When you hire think about your timezone

Might seem obvious to some but pay attention in what timezone your contractors will be operating as it might create much more hassle for you than it helps.

4) Be the local specialty coffee shop instead of Starbucks

I love this analogy. Like a local café that thrives on its unique blend and personal touch, let your SaaS business stand out by offering a more unique solution and a customer experience that can't be found in the one-size-fits-all approach of industry giants.

5) It takes time to build a great business

Jesse talked a lot about the idea of building a "calm business". Ignore the mostly anxiety driven mentality of other founders on social media and acknowledge that it takes time and will likely work out if you play the game long enough. Don't stress too much. Build calmly.

💫 Bonus Takeaway: Discord as a support channel works wonders

It's a bit more work but makes things feel way more personal. It comes with the added benefit that customers can help each other out. At my doubts about it being a synchronous channel and customers demanding immediate answers you might not have the time for as a founder, Jesse argued: Just make sure to quickly let folks know you've seen their message and you'll get back to them. It's all about making them feel heard.

Hopefully this thread gave you some valuable insights.

If you are curious for more tune in next week for another episode of our live space via BootstrFM and perhaps even ask a question or two to our guest speaker 🚀

🎧 Replay the entire interview here.