We're leaving stealth mode!
by Jesse HanleyAfter being in stealth mode for a loooooooooong time, we're now leaving the coding dungeon and starting to tell the world.
Bento has reached ramen-profitability awhile back, but because of the scope of the project we thought it'd be better to stay quiet whilst we got to our vision — also, needed to fix those bugs.
Let's roll!
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Congrats it looks great! Would love to hear more about what made you decide on 'stealth mode' as oppose to building in public/launching an early mvp. What's your plan for next steps now that you're out of stealth mode?
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Thanks @zanzibar!
For a product in this space the competition is kinda fierce — and it's taken a really long time until there was a clear path to show people that the product was more valuable than the alternatives (Klaviyo, Drip, MailChimp, etc).
It's also taken a long time to nail our positioning too — the first MVP was actually a personalisation and analytics tool, think if Mixpanel and RightMessage had a baby, but realised it was a much harder sell to the people I had access too — and less valuable for my own projects. We kept this in Bento, but it's not the core offering now. Just enhances what's already there.
Plans now are simple:
• Make product faster and more stable.
• Sell through talking about the project more openly and direct sales.
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Hey @jesse! Love the sound/looks of Bento so far. Will definitely check it out.
Just FYI it looks like some of the videos aren't working on the site for me.
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Wicked, gotta actually film those (placeholders). Been too focused on product rn!
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@jesse Finally a good Klaviyo competitor!
You might also be interested in learning how ConvertKit grew their business to 6m/year and even taking customers from Drip: https://videofruit.com/blog/webinar/
Good luck!
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Oh, man. Thanks for saying that! Already very aware of ConvertKit and will be applying a similar playbook just in eCommerce where I think we can thrive.
Poor Drip — everyone going after their segments, haha.
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What did you use for website development?
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To get going fast on the core application itself, I used @andrewculver's BulletTrain (built on Rails). Helped me ignore the normal boring work (billing system, auth, etc) and focus on shipping value. Marketing site is just a vanilla Rails app.
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In the next few months I will be shopping/trialing for software that offers what you're offering. Will definitely add you to the top of the list!
Congrats on your work!
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Aww, man. Don't hesitate to reach out, happy to help out fellow Indiehackers with discounted pricing <3
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Congrats Jesse, the site looks great especially the hero.
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Congrats! One detail: pricing page, very important! is looking weird on mobile (iPhone X)
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I'll fix!
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Good job going out of stealth. The real action begins now 🚀
I've submitted Bento on SaaSHub https://www.saashub.com/bento-now-alternatives. You can verify it to improve its listing.
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G'day Stan, cheers for that. Just made a few edits.
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site is down bud
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Someone scrapped it and found a page that took it down, haha. Went back up in 10 minutes. Thx Heroku.
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Awesome! 👏👏👏👏
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Cheers! <3
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well done mate
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Appreciate the comment and support mate.
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Awesome, time to start spending those marketing $$$ somewhere now!
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AdWords + FB <3
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This comment was deleted 4 months ago.
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Man, means a bunch that you bundled us under those competitors — exactly who we are going after. If you want to use Bento earlier, just let me know privately in DMs and I can help you out.
Cheers for the support!
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