September 9, 2024 • 49 mins
In this episode of Things Have Changed Podcast, we sit down with Sélim Benayat, co-founder of Bento and now Director of Product at Linktree, to explore the shifting landscape of the creator economy and how Bento is helping creators showcase their work in a whole new way. Sélim shares the story behind Bento’s creation, their journey through Sequoia’s Arc program, and how they scaled their vision into a platform now empowering creators worldwide to curate their digital identities effortlessly.
Creators, from engineers and designers to artists, have always had a hard time trying to visually showcase their work when it's scattered across different platforms. Sélim and his co-founder, Mugeeb recognized this problem and built Bento, a slick and visually stunning platform that lets you pull in all your creative projects into one central hub, making it easier to keep your work & portfolio organized and presentable.
Tune in as we dive deep into Bento’s acquisition by Linktree, the lessons learned from building a startup, and where Sélim sees the future of the creator economy headed.
If you're a creator, entrepreneur, or just curious about the evolving digital space, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss!
Be sure to subscribe to Things Have Changed Podcast and share this episode with fellow creators and visionaries.
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Episode Transcript
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Sélim Benayat (00:00):
if you are an engineer, a designer, an artist.
(00:04):
Like this type of creative, weidentify so much with our output
of work that it's a goodreflection of who we are.
Jed Tabernero (00:13):
The creator economy has redefined how
individuals express themselves.
People have turned platformsinto stages for showcasing
talent.
But as these tools evolved.
One problem.
Persisted.
Content was scattered.
There wasn't really a centralplace to easily display all your
(00:33):
work.
Selim Benayat and hisco-founder.
recognize this gap.
And set out to build bento.
Uh, platform designedspecifically for creators to
organize and present theirportfolios beautifully.
Sélim Benayat (00:50):
by asking the question, how can we make it as
easy as possible for people toshowcase their work?
We started to understand thatmost of that work probably lives
online somewhere
Jed Tabernero (01:03):
so through bento, creators were able to merge
their creative projects.
Into a single stunning digitalspace.
Sélim Benayat (01:11):
our sort of challenge became, how do we make
linking as sexy as possible?
Jed Tabernero (01:16):
In today's episode, we dive deep with Selim
Benayat co-founder of bento andnow director of product at link
tree, following theiracquisition.
We're going to explore theorigin story of bento.
How Selim his team scaled theirvision?
And how bento fits into thefuture of the creator economy.
(01:37):
Join us on things have changedpodcast.
As we talked to Selim about whatit takes to scale a startup in
today's world.
Tune-in.
(02:23):
So over the last few years, thisconcept of the creator economy
has come to light where itseemed like anyone anywhere can
make it just by building theirown brand, right?
Digital platforms like socialmedia were used to enable
creators, artists, writers,musicians, influencers, to build
(02:44):
direct relationships with ouraudiences.
It just shows how much we valueauthentic content, driven by
individuals, not companiesnecessarily.
But one problem still persistedwith the growth of different
digital platforms.
Creator's work was scattered andthere wasn't really a central
(03:06):
hub to easily showcase, Theircontent to even just friends and
peers, right?
became challenging to shareideas and progress and
ultimately even getting feedbackfor the cool work that you've
been doing.
This is a problem that, SalimBinet and his co founder Mujeeba
(03:27):
San has been thinking about andin early 2022 led them to build
Bento, a platform that allowedcreators to showcase their work,
including the tech stack theyused.
Showing proof of skill andultimately your portfolio,
right?
(03:48):
So they've recently combinedforces with link tree.
We all saw that on the newsrecently, and, now they're able
to provide even more value tocreators who are at the heart of
this product.
So today we're super excited towelcome Salim Binayat.
To Things Have Changed podcast,a three time founder, two
awesome exits, and now directorof product at Linktree.
(04:11):
Selim, welcome to Things HaveChanged podcast.
Sélim Benayat (04:14):
Thanks for having me guys.
Shikher Bhandary (04:15):
Salim, you come from a pretty technical
background, like mechatronics,robotics, biophysics.
How did it click in your mind toactually going and creating a
business, creating a company?
During my master's and this isacross the board, across my
postdoc colleagues and PhDcolleagues is they're more or
less like they have the blinderson for their product.
(04:38):
They are research, and it's hardto really just take off the
blinders and see what's outthere, what else they can do.
So it feels like there's such adiversity in your work where you
were able to take off theblinders.
Like, how did that come about?
Sélim Benayat (04:55):
I think this goes back to, my time spent studying
biophysics.
Or let's just call it science,which is, I don't know, you
develop a way to look atproblems.
I remember at the time, like alot of students, which was the
master's sort of time, they werecomplaining that, we weren't
(05:15):
really doing too much math ordoing too much physics.
Like I want to go into the laband stuff.
But I think what I came torealize.
The time spent doing math andphysics and chemistry really was
a time where you started todevelop problem solving and I
think helped you become curiousbecause you were able to look at
(05:38):
many different things in lifeand try to understand like, how
does that actually work?
To the point where some people Ithink sometimes are not with me
when they walk through, I don'tknow, when we're on a walk and
talk and I just sometimes justhave these random questions and,
about nature or life, or I thinkabout proteins and I go like,
how does that work?
Like why does a protein knowwhere it has to go in your cell?
(06:00):
And then I go down these rabbitholes, right?
And so I think it's just thisway of looking at problems that
Did you learn or you acquire,that's I think the acquired
skill in your studies that thenled me to, yeah, just be curious
and then look at differentproblems and then try to solve
them in different ways.
Shikher Bhandary (06:18):
Curiosity is such a key trait for so many of
the conversations that we've hadon DHC.
Sélim Benayat (06:24):
Just the ability to ask questions and to ask
different questions.
I think this theme will come upover and over, probably that
discussion, because forinstance, yeah, Bento would just
ask, I think, a differentquestion and thereby we're able
to.
Build a differentiated product,right?
So I think that if you have tosummarize it, yeah, I think the
ability to look at certainaspects of life and have the
(06:47):
ability to ask differentquestions than the majority, I
think can give you a leg up,when you want to build
something,
Shikher Bhandary (06:57):
good point asking a different question when
I first came across bento Thiswas even prior to the waitlist.
It felt so different compared toany other way of showcasing your
work Throughout either when Iwas in undergrad or doing my
master's or even the work afterthat.
I've always had a portfoliowebsite I used that a lot for a
(07:22):
long time, and I just like thatvisual representation of what
your work is.
Because, as you might know, whenI was doing mechanical
engineering, a lot of things isphysical.
It's showing a design.
So I was into product design,but on the hardware side, so I
needed something to showcase,okay, what I can build with CAD,
(07:44):
what can I build with 3dprinting, so on and so forth.
I've always liked having avisual medium, but it always
felt like I had to create a Wixwebsite, a Squarespace website
to actually have a certain levelof aesthetic to it.
About.
me was just, you put somepictures and text and that's
(08:06):
about it.
It's just a blurb.
It's not interactive.
So to your question of askingdifferent questions, how did
this thought process even arise?
Were you in a pain point thatyou suddenly realized, hey, hang
on my does not reflect a bunchof text on the screen.
(08:28):
It needs to be visual.
Sélim Benayat (08:30):
if you are an engineer, a designer, an artist.
Like this type of creative, weidentify so much with our output
of work that it's a goodreflection of who we are.
Let me say, I think the pinnacleof that obviously, painters,
really bringing their self ontothat canvas.
engineers or digital artists,very similar.
(08:51):
And so bento started actually asa product called creator space
and creator.
The word for us meant much morethe creative rather than the
influencer.
When we started working oncreative space was much more a
product like medium.
(09:11):
It basically was a blog esqueproduct that would empower users
to bring their work onto aalmost blank canvas where they
could write about it.
They could upload images andvideos and even container the
demos about their work and thenpresent that to the world, but
(09:35):
much more in a medium esqueformat.
What we saw there that Is thatthe initial thought of having
such a space you can call yourown, and showcase your work was
enticing to people.
However, we ran, into thelimitation that is.
laziness, right?
(09:55):
A core human trait.
I think we're all lazy.
And I don't mean this in anegative or whatever light.
No, I truly believe like humansare just lazy in the sense that
we try to do, and even ourbrains biologically just try to
use the least amount of energyfor anything we were doing.
And so if you think about this,Tropic state, I think you, you
(10:18):
have to build consumer products,that don't run head first into
that core trade.
And so we ask ourselves thequestion at the time, how can we
help people showcase their workas easily as possible?
And this was in November, 2020.
(10:40):
we started to notice, okaythat's the key issue here.
Like we're not seeing an uptickin the market because we
believe, yeah, there is thiswhite space problem.
It's difficult for people tofill that white space.
by asking the question, how canwe make it as easy as possible
for people to showcase theirwork?
We started to understand thatmost of that work probably lives
(11:01):
online somewhere.
In the worst case, it lives in aG drive.
Like Mujib and my side projects,they live in a G drive or maybe
on the margin, like on GitHub,in the best case, that stuff
lives, somewhere dockered on awebpage that is easy to access
accessible, or it lives on artstation, dribble, any of the
(11:24):
easily accessible sort of veryvisual sites.
And so we believed.
You can just link to your workmost probably.
And so then all of a sudden oursort of challenge became, how do
we make linking as sexy aspossible?
How do we make this as visuallyappealing as possible?
Because if our thesis turns outto be true and you want to have
(11:49):
link to your work to representyourself.
That sort of end result needs tobe visually appealing because
you have to be proud about itbecause it's the culmination of
your digital identity in thatsense, because you have this
fractured landscapes ofdifferent digital identities and
we hope to unify it in a veryaccessible, delightful sort of
(12:11):
way.
Plane, which then we startedcalling Bento
Jed Tabernero (12:14):
and just to clarify, it is definitely sexy.
I put together my Bento websitelast night, very impressed.
Shikher Bhandary (12:23):
was like, Jed, we got to do this.
Because Jed is amazing with hisdrone.
He travels to different placesjust for his drone.
Sélim Benayat (12:33):
I appreciate good drone shots.
Jed Tabernero (12:35):
does.
It does take a while to load bythe way.
Cause there's such a big,especially if they're 4k.
Oh my gosh.
They are super huge files, butthanks shaker.
I appreciate that.
Not.
This problem that you focused onand really the questions that
you've started to ask, for thisspecific community of folks,
right?
I think from my end, we werereading one post that your co
(12:57):
founder Mujib had posted, and hewas talking about lucky us.
We fell in love with the problemrather than the solution.
And this is something wherebeing customer focused, that's
what's, that's what it's allabout.
Falling in love with the problemessentially is being also
customer focused, right?
(13:18):
It's to understand what thatproblem is.
So I guess what influenced yourapproach to be really customer
focused and specifically,
Sélim Benayat (13:29):
one of our core values at Bento was to be a user
advocate or call it customerobsession.
And often these values are a bitcorny and not really authentic.
however, for us, I thinkcustomer centricity and
obsession really was a thingthat we noticed later on, And I
think it came from, us buildinga product for ourselves.
(13:54):
Mujib and I had this problem.
We had all of these coolprojects that we were building
and we were frustrated thatnobody would see it.
we had it on G drive and we werelike, we're not the best at
launching stuff and producthunt.
And we're also quite honestly,we're not like these flashy
social media people that like topost it on social media and be
loud about it.
(14:15):
And so I think we were slightlyfrustrated also that we weren't
getting the recognition that wethought some of these products
deserved, because we couldn'tshow it anywhere.
And since this was the way.
We started to build the productby just asking ourselves what
would we need?
And then we start to ask ourcreator friends, our engineer
and designer friends, what theythink about the product.
(14:37):
It just became a ritual.
And at first, yeah, we didn'tarticulate it.
It just was the way we worked.
we would reach out to people onTwitter, reach out on people on
this score, just people we knew.
And then we started to expandthe pie because we needed more
opinion on stuff that we weredoing.
And since it was our DNA whenbuilding Bento, I think, yeah,
(14:59):
we just kept it, throughout, Theentire time we were building
Bento halfway through when westarted to I think, articulate
our values, we noticed that,this for sure was, or is a value
of Bento.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (15:13):
In startup life, we've had so many
companies, and startups on, and,It's tough.
It's a struggle.
It's hard.
Things don't move as fast asexpected to get traction and
virality.
It feels like y'all got thatvirality very early on with just
moved things a lot faster.
(15:34):
I feel like I just set up mybento.
Walk us through how thatvirality was achieved.
Was it some ambassadors thatpushed Bento that helped you get
that initial surge, which thenkept it going.
And also looking back, does itfeel like it just all happened
in a flash?
Because it did feel like it wasprobably under 12 months, from
(15:59):
official release to acquisitionor was it in and around that
ballpark?
Sélim Benayat (16:04):
It was about five months, to take on the broader
question of virality and let'sjust say product growth.
I think there's tons to unpackAnd I try to be exhaustive in
the answer.
So bring me back if I rear offtrack.
Bento being a pure consumerproduct, and understanding the
fact that Mujib and I.
(16:26):
We're not the loudest on socialmedia or on product hunt or any
sort of outward facing sort ofactivity.
I started to realize very earlyon that.
To compliment the team, we wouldnot only need design because
consumer products needdelightful and elegant design,
at least in my mind.
And we would also needcommunity.
(16:49):
We would need that social mediaslash outreach piece that we
were really missing between thetwo of us.
And so against allrecommendations from VCs and
friends and then, yeah, andfounders and everyone around me,
basically even against Mujeeb'srecommendation, it was a
(17:10):
discussion.
We hired a specific person, todo community Social media.
And the idea was that if youthink about Bento as a product,
it's inherently a networkproduct because basically you
create your Bento for twothings.
(17:32):
One, you just want to see yourdigital identities converge on
one surface and you want to seeyourself represented in a good
light.
You want to see your dronefootage.
You want to see your products.
You want to see your podcast.
You want to see whateverrepresents you on a beautiful
day.
I believe that to be true for alot of people.
(17:54):
And once you see it, it makesyou feel good.
However, what makes you feeleven better is if actually all
the people that you care aboutsee it.
If my friends see my coolprofile or if a recruiter sees
my profile or a customer isgoing to see my profile, that
makes me feel even better.
(18:15):
And so at its core, bento is anetwork product.
And because of that, we believedwe had to foster a network
around the product.
Not just for defensibility,which is another topic we can
talk about later on, because itwould help us grow because
achieving the first five to 10views would make you rave about
(18:38):
the product much more than ifyou would not get it And so we
started to lean into that factone from a product perspective.
So we would build specificfeatures that would make it
easier for you to share yourbento.
One, or that would make iteasier for you to build a good
bento, be it on desktop or onmobile, such as the little
(19:00):
physics that we have in there,like these delight features that
just make it nicer to build, orthe mobile editor that just
makes it very easy to build amobile,
Shikher Bhandary (19:08):
plane flying over a map.
Sélim Benayat (19:10):
there you go, or the little music notes that come
out of the podcast player andstuff like this.
And all of this, these delightfeatures and the ease of use
obviously helps from a productperspective.
The product to grow because itmakes it easier to build
beautiful things, which iseasier to then consume.
Now from a community let growside, we started to notice that,
(19:32):
creatives inherently are insearch of inspiration and this
comes often through their peers.
For instance, for Majip and me,we love to go on product hunt or
just chat to friends andunderstand what they are
building, same for artists,ArtStation, Dribbble, all of
these places.
And so it was a natural sort ofextension of that group's
(19:57):
behavior to start buildingcommunity.
And then obviously community initself helped the growth of the
company and the product, becausebasically people were referring
each other and ultimately wantedto be part of that very positive
community that was fostered.
Shikher Bhandary (20:13):
From outside in, it feels Oh, just the right
notes were hit and they wereable to get that success.
But, thanks for peeling theonion.
and giving us a showcase ofwhat, instrumental steps and
very mindful steps have to betaken internally for the world
(20:34):
to then see that virality.
Sélim Benayat (20:36):
Yeah, it was definitely orchestrated.
So it was not just happenstance.
one of my regrets is that wedidn't start with community
advocates earlier.
I remember I spoke a lot to theFigma guys at the time and their
advocacy team to understand howthey do it, how they think
about, the advocacy programs andtheir community around Figma.
I believe one of the bigmistakes we did at Bento was.
(21:00):
To realize too late that weshould have leaned into creating
an actual ambassador program,because we had people that call
themselves bento ambassadors,by, their own volition
basically.
And that took a lead in thecommunity, but I think we should
have been more deliberate, moreconcrete about these actions
earlier, which goes back to thefact that, yeah, we tried to
(21:23):
orchestrate it, but this basicwas a miss.
Yeah.
Jed Tabernero (21:28):
Thanks for sharing that.
I think one of the things that,was also really fascinating.
What was bento was part of thefirst cohort of startups in
Sequoia arc.
And, we're talking about growthnow and how you've led to this
community led growth.
How was the experience atSequoia arc?
(21:49):
What kind of things did youlearn from that experience?
That program that helped youbuild this company,
Sélim Benayat (21:57):
Yeah.
So Bento was in the inauguralbatch of the Sequoia art
program, which was anilluminating.
Sort of journey, I think, mostlypersonally as a founder rather
than the product.
And this has something to dowith the fact that we basically
(22:22):
applied to ARC without reallyknowing what we're going to do.
To be honest, creative spaceonly existed in a Figma at that
time.
And so we were by far.
The earliest sort of productteam or company in that program.
And we basically, one of ourmilestones together with George,
(22:42):
one of the partners at Sequoiawas that we're going to launch
creator space within the eightweeks of the program.
At the end of the program, we'regoing to use that demo day to
launch greater space.
So that's how early we were, andso for us, I think the main
benefit was the ambition thatSequoia gave you as founders
(23:06):
because they have a programcalled, basically company
building the Sequoia way.
And one of the main takeaways asfounders, as a founder is that
you as a founder have to grow sothat your company can grow.
And so they really focus on thefact that you need to have huge
(23:28):
ambitions as a founder.
And at the same time, you needto work on your skills to
actually reach those ambitions.
And by doing that, you will pullthe company behind you up to
these heights as well.
exercises, being in the roomwith another 30 tremendously
skilled founders, being shownwhat world class looks like,
(23:51):
being able to talk to worldclass.
Being all of these huge Sequoiafounders that they brought in.
You name the company, they'regoing to have the founders going
to come in to talk to you.
So being exposed to world classgave you an ambition, gave you a
good sort of understanding whatworld class actually looks like
and how it behaves.
And helped you to find communitywithin those other 30 founders.
(24:12):
which was transformational, Ithink for us as a team with Jeep
and myself.
And then this basically was thentranslated into how we approach
Company and product building.
Jed Tabernero (24:22):
cohort is telling to what kind of founders you
guys were already.
So getting to that level aftermeeting with these like super
successful people that'sawesome.
Is there any like favorite storyyou have on your journey and
Sequoia arc, which really led toa lot of this stuff that you're
building today?
didn't know what you were goingto deliver, right?
(24:43):
You had said it yourself.
Like you started with an idea,they taught you how to grow.
And then now you have builtsomething, way past that.
Sélim Benayat (24:53):
think it was just, I would say the community
that we built, around thecohort, Sequoia was really
intentional in helping founderscreate lasting memories and grow
closer as a team.
I don't want to say familybecause it's still a team.
It was still competition in thatsense, but not competition for
(25:15):
the money, but more like healthycompetition amongst ambitious
people because we all knew it'snot a zero sum game.
There's enough money fromSequoia that, they could feed a
hundred thousand teams.
So that was not what we werecompeting about.
It was more like healthycompetition amongst friends.
And then at the same time,because we grew so close as
(25:35):
friends, Due to these activitiesthat Sequoia hosted, we were
also very supportive of eachother And I think that was the,
yeah, the biggest sort of, Ithink, value add to us.
I think to also be realisticabout it all and not just only
mention the tremendouslypositives, I think where Sequoia
could put in, some reflection ison specifically product.
(26:00):
Help.
'cause I think Sequoia thinks sobig all the time and has all of
these huge founders that theiradvice tends to be much later
stage, rather than super earlystage.
Jed Tabernero (26:12):
it's really fascinating that throughout this
call, you are vocally, not onlyself critical, but you're also
critical of those things thatyou've learned from, through
your entire journey, and that'squite unique, to be honest, when
we're on the show, a lot of whatwe hear from founders are like,
these are the cool things thathappened, and this is what's
(26:34):
awesome about it.
So really appreciate thebackdrop and saying, look, I'm
going to remember from this callthat, we should have leaned in
further into creating thiscommunity.
And getting ambassadors, so Ithink really appreciate you
going back and like being selfcritical about that.
You think that's reallyimportant trait to have being a
(26:54):
founder?
Sélim Benayat (26:55):
Yeah.
I thinks self-awareness is, Ithink is key.
I self-awareness because ithelps you understand, where you
need help, right?
And at the end of the day, Ithink this goes back to having
no ego at the end of the day,it's all about winning as a team
because then the company wins.
and creates shareholder valueand societal value.
(27:17):
So yeah, throw that ego out ofthe window and be self aware to
create also an environment oftrust, right?
Because no one of us is crushingit all the time.
That's not true.
Jed Tabernero (27:27):
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (27:27):
So fast forward from your Sequoia Arc
experience.
Now we have gained thatvirality.
You find yourselves five monthsinto the product.
In conversations with, thebiggest player in the space,
which is Linktree.
So how was that process looklike?
Because firstly, as part of theproduct lead and, the founding
(27:51):
team, you were still gettingyour stride in trying to
balance, not just your internalcosts, hosting, and all of that,
but also the creator side of itThe, your revenue side versus
the creator monetization side.
It feels like at odds and thecreators win and you win as part
(28:12):
of that as well.
Sélim Benayat (28:13):
Yeah.
Multi layered sort of question.
First of all, I want to say Ilove your engineering mindset of
you thinking about the hostingcosts, and research that it
takes.
That, that little map, by theway, that shows you the little
clouds and the planes, thatfeature is way too expensive if
we talk about, but it's worthit.
Shikher Bhandary (28:31):
is the first thing that came to my mind when
I put that map.
I was like, Jed, stop whatyou're doing.
Sélim Benayat (28:37):
Yeah, there you go.
Sometimes you can put a pricetag on delight on user delight.
Sometimes.
Okay.
Let me go back to that question.
You talked about the acquisitionand how that went and how we
were thinking about balancingcosts and possible sort of
revenue streams and how thatsort of intertwined with the
(28:59):
acquisition.
I think first of all, ourthinking and frameworks around
revenue creation and cost hadnothing to do with the
acquisition.
If we want to tackle sort ofrevenue streams first or how we
thought about monetization,Bento was fairly obvious how we
would monetize the product inthe short term, how we would
(29:24):
monetize and build a categorydefining company out of it in
the long term.
Wasn't clear, which I think thenwould be the segue into the M& A
discussion.
So short term, we were in thelucky position of again, being
very close to our user base,right?
The proximity to our user wasvery short, which led to us
(29:46):
understanding what they actuallywould want to pay for and to not
speak so cryptically, theyliterally just send us hundreds
of messages asking us, I want topay for analytics.
I want to pay for personaldomain.
I want to pay for morecustomization.
Now long term, I think you haveto unravel a lot of things
(30:08):
around the creator economy,which I think is the big
question for any company currentin this space.
So if you think about thecreator in the word creator
economy, not the way Bentodefined it, right?
So a creator is someone who's acore skill.
Is in creating content to engagean audience and the core
(30:33):
monetization is driven throughsponsorships and advertising,
brand collaborations,merchandise, subscriptions,
revenue, and similar, right?
And so it's in directcorrelation with their audience.
And, you have to then thinkabout the power law distribution
within that cohort of peoplethat we just defined and the
(30:56):
parallel distribution in termsof eyeballs from power players
to the long tail, right?
And then we were cognizant aboutthree characteristics in that.
Let me see if I can recall it.
So it was the distribution ofvalue captured.
Within that, whether the longtail is monetizable or not, and
(31:17):
whether you can build a bigcompany around then these two
points.
And so if you look about thedistribution value.
Within that creator cohort.
I think it's pretty clear thatyou have the power creators who
generate a tremendous amount ofrevenue, you can go from the
movie stars to Mr.
(31:37):
Beast, through their content andthen the long tail, if you think
about monetization of the longtail Is very difficult because I
personally think that sort ofthe idea that everyone should be
a creator is somewhat of afallacy because Being a great
creator is so difficult And alot of us just live like boring
(31:58):
Unexceptional lives in thatsense like we just live normal
lives, right?
I'm drinking my coffee in themorning and then I sit in front
of the pc for 10 hours, right?
So we don't generate like Thatoriginal interesting content for
all of these people, right?
So basically it's difficult forthe long tail to be monetized
because there's not tremendousvalue in there.
And so how do you build.
(32:19):
a company around that,especially if your power users
get all of their revenue on acouple of platforms like TikTok,
basically platforms that, thathost their core skill, their
content, TikTok, YouTube,Instagram, and that stuff.
And so as a company that space,you somehow have to build a
(32:43):
product.
Where you can retain your coreuser.
Otherwise you can't grow as acompany and to retain your core
users, somehow have tomeaningfully create.
Career lifetime value, meaningyou have to create a big portion
of their revenue becauseotherwise creators are very
(33:04):
unloyal users because anythingbut the big platforms are
ancillary products to them.
Shikher Bhandary (33:11):
Yeah.
Sélim Benayat (33:12):
Anything that sort of helps them bring more
eyeballs to their core revenuedrivers, they will use.
And they will jump if there'sanother product that does it
better.
And so in the longterm forBento, the big question that I
was pondering over, togetherwith the team was how do we
become a meaningful chunk oftheir revenue over the next
(33:33):
years?
Like what would that look like?
Cause otherwise we have no rightto build a company and be here.
Otherwise we're just going to benoise.
And so what we started thinkingis obviously the lines of not
hosting content because youdon't want to directly compete
with YouTube, but more in thelines of maybe a financial
(33:56):
backbone to them in terms of ecommerce and it's the new
Shopify.
We were thinking Amazon, Etsy,Shopify, Bento kind of thing
that could have been in the longterm something.
But for that, we would need toaggregate more and more
eyeballs.
And this is where the segue tothe M& A basically, I think
comes into play.
Shikher Bhandary (34:18):
I think this is one aspect of the creative
economy that is not spoken abouta lot where churn is real and
you need to be growing 35percent because your churn,
whatever, whoever it Issubstantially high like you need
to be always on to the last bitthe acquisition was it Stressful
(34:41):
because things seem to havemoved so quickly I don't know if
it happened over a phone callover a drink or over a weekend
But how was that whole processwas the team aware as the co
founder were you thinking about?
Okay, do my Company's goalsalign with Linktree.
Was there some uncertainty?
(35:01):
Would love to get a glimpse ofwhat that whole process looks
like.
Sélim Benayat (35:06):
Yeah.
I think, an acquisition processis a multidimensional problem,
right?
it's an emotional challenge.
It's an interpersonal challenge.
It's a financial challenge.
a vision slash mission alignmentchallenge.
And as a founder, you have todeal with all of it at the same
(35:29):
time while running the product.
It happened by cold outreachthrough basically Linktree
reached out cold.
And they were like, Oh, we hearyou're in the market or funding
rounds, yada, yada.
At the same time, there wereother companies that I can't
mention that were actually doingthe same.
So our deck must have been inthe market and must have changed
(35:51):
hands because there were otherbig companies that reached out
for M& A.
And so as a founder, the firstthing you do.
is to ask yourself and your cofounder, basically the co
founder team, to ask thequestion, is this something can
entertain at all?
Like this thought of beingacquired.
(36:12):
once you pass that conversation,you need to really commit And
try to get to the outcome thatis getting acquired.
And you have to gradually startsharing the broader team, the
broader shareholders.
(36:32):
But the keyword is gradually,News of a potential deal hits
the broader team.
The company is in a standstilland nothing happens anymore.
Everyone is on garden leave.
Everyone is excited.
Everyone already thinks abouttheir boat houses that they're
going to buy and nothing getsdone.
And if it doesn't happen, youhave the hangover.
(36:56):
And so it's, that's theemotional challenge.
And the interpersonal challengethat you need to get right.
Then obviously you need to talkto your shareholders and make
them aware that this mighthappen and what that would mean
for their shares and sort oftheir returns and all of that
jazz I think more anecdotally,basically Linktree and I, we
were talking, I was the mainperson to push that deal forward
(37:19):
because again, Majib, my cofounder.
Sort of needed to keep onbuilding because what if doesn't
happen?
The team didn't know at thetime.
And so it was basically a pingpong, on many zooms between me
and Linktree and the other sortof MNA, parties that they were
interested as well, and you weretrying to get the best deal at
the right time.
the reason why we decided to doit was.
(37:44):
The ambition to get Bento to agenerational defining product,
much like at the time, MySpaceor then Facebook, because we
believed it was time for Bentoto hit the big stage and really
grow worldwide hugely to a newsort of social product that
(38:11):
would put the people into thecenter of the story and just
create a more.
delightful internet, a newcorner on the internet called
Bento, where creativity wouldshine and basically creatives
would call their home, right?
That's what I really wanted toget done with that deal.
(38:31):
And I decided that Linktreewould help in doing so because
their scale on the internet isjust mind blowing.
I can't talk about numbers, butyou wouldn't imagine the scale
that Linktree has, and so Ibelieve plugging in that scale
into Bento would get us therefaster, We had we have a nice
(38:55):
tree here and I like to look atthat tree.
Through the seasons in themorning.
And I would be worried slashscared that Bento would stop
working and that we would losethat hype in the market and
people would just not like itanymore.
And I always imagined it to bethe snowflake, the first snow
(39:15):
that falls from the sky andyou're lucky enough to catch it
on the tip of your finger.
You can look at it briefly atthis beautiful snowflake and
then it melts away.
And I always felt like we're atthis stage.
Like I somehow have to keep theconditions on the tip of my
fingers cold enough and perfectenough that this snowflake
doesn't melt.
And I was constantly scared Iwould not keep these conditions
(39:37):
right.
And so I thought with theLinktree deal, I could keep
these conditions right and startbuilding snowmans actually,
right?
That was the idea.
Jed Tabernero (39:49):
That's super poetic.
Thank you for that.
I think we're going to use thatas a soundbite for sure.
What's next for the creatoreconomy, right?
You've gone to the stage whereyou've got the perfect
conditions on your hand to holdthis snowflake, at least
presumably, how do you make surethat the seasons then go well?
And, creator is still at thecenter of what you're building
(40:10):
in the future
Sélim Benayat (40:13):
Yeah.
That's, I think the majorquestion for the entire
industry.
Where is the creator economygoing?
Obviously AI, enters thediscussion.
Because AI will obviouslysupercharge.
The ability of people to create,probably content or create
(40:33):
products that then people wantto use.
And thereby I think the creatoreconomy will grow in the sense
that businesses of one will bemuch more prevalent than ever
before, that you can run ratherbig businesses rather
successfully with the help of alot of AI and agents.
So I would start to include thatinto the creator economy.
(40:55):
More broadly speaking about theinfluencer economy, what I'm
seeing there is that it becomesmore and more professional.
And obviously the spurt in ecommerce helps them to build
bigger businesses there.
Because at the end of the day,it's always a question.
You build your audiences tosomehow monetize them.
(41:15):
And I think the capabilities ofmonetization go beyond now
advertising and just sponsoredcontent into, much more tangible
sort of monetization,opportunities such as e
commerce, but e commerce, notonly for hardware goods, but
also for digital goods due toAI.
So you can build your owneducational environments.
For instance, you have educationinfluencers, or fitness
(41:38):
influencers that can build,digital fitness coaches and
stuff.
So I think all in all thecreator economy just gets
flattened out, gets broader,where there's going to be much
more niche content.
Because you now have the time tocreate that niche content.
And so I think successfulcompanies and products will hop
on that, trend to help peoplemonetize niche audiences, more
(42:02):
efficiently.
Shikher Bhandary (42:03):
there's going to be a pre chat GPD world,
there's a post chat GPD world.
And we are in that phase.
There was this really goodtweet, and I saw that you had
retweeted it too, where I thinkScott Belsky had tweeted out
that in this now AI world, tastewill be a lot more important
(42:24):
than skills.
skills is not going away, but Ifeel the embodiment of that
statement.
there is a certain taste to itthat I will not get anywhere
else.
It is really well designed and Ilove such things.
So do you think that will be nowa key trend with the creator
(42:48):
economy as well?
Because now anyone, You put inyour persona into cloud or, chat
GPT, and you could potentiallyget certain content elements
that you can share.
So would it now be more on yourspecific taste of what you bring
different?
To the table more than it's everbeen
Sélim Benayat (43:13):
Yeah, I think, again, like multi multifaceted,
Super interesting question.
Multifaceted because you can seeit from the perspective of
building product or frombuilding a, an influencer
persona online.
So I think if you're aninfluencer out there, I think
your audience will gobble up thestuff that you put out.
(43:36):
And so I think the most.
Successful influencers will havetaste in what they put out, how
they curate themselves and thenew AI enhanced capabilities
that we'll have, they will useto, to craft something that,
that has a certain type ofelegance.
But in a way that representsthemselves the best, I think
(43:56):
this is where taste comes intoplay.
How do you represent yourselfthe best so that your audience
can connect with it the best?
Now, if you look at it from apure software slash product
perspective, I think taste trulygoes back to craftsmanship.
And I do believe it's the onlyway currently in the application
layer, how to differentiateyourself.
(44:16):
Because if you look at AI, itstill feels like that there is a
huge Delta the felt or perceivedvalue of AI in different,
implementations.
I think why everyone, or a lotof people, went nuts about Apple
intelligence was that.
All of a sudden, like it's smalluse cases, but they're so well
(44:38):
executed.
They're so elegant.
And I don't want to sound likean Apple fanboy because actually
I'm not anymore, but I got togive it to them.
It's so well executed that allof a sudden AI doesn't become AI
anymore, but it's just product.
And I think like we have to getto an expression of a product
(44:58):
where AI is not the drivingfactor, but the experience.
The product expression, that'show we talk about it because I
have the cheeky saying that AIis only called AI if it's not
working.
And if it's working, it's justsoftware, right?
And I think we're going to movetowards that, that it's just
about the expression of theproduct and how well it is
(45:21):
curated.
How well does it understand thecurrent cultural sort of
environment and drum beats thatyou're launching it into?
And with Bento, we startednoticing just like this general,
almost anxiety in the marketabout all of these constant
dopamine hits that you weregetting these constant, this
sort of this scattering of youronline life, constant checking
(45:44):
everywhere, constantly needingto check everywhere.
And so we believed, you knowwhat, let's create a sort of an
environment of tranquility ofdelight, where you just turn
down the noise, like just turnit down, have a lot of white
space, have nicely defined sortof little widgets and let that
be the start of the experience.
Jed Tabernero (46:06):
at the end of the show.
So give a platform to you toalso chat with our users a
little bit to share a little bitabout, what's next for you, how
our listeners can learn aboutyou and what you've built.
And yeah, it's up to you how youwant to, Present that
information.
Typically, a lot of founders useit to say, Hey, we're building
this next.
We need this set of expertise.
This is where we need help next.
And we'd love to hear from youabout this, et cetera.
(46:29):
But yeah, just wanted to giveyou the space to chat about that
stuff.
Sélim Benayat (46:32):
What is next for me is reflection, trying to
understand like what is going onin the world right now, I think
first at large, and then I startzooming into areas that are
relevant to me and thenhopefully, relevant to other
people as well.
So I think for me next until endof the year is reflection.
trying to understand where isthis all headed?
(46:55):
Cause it feels so fluid rightnow.
It's such high ambiguity.
I'm always open to connect withpeople that have an interesting
point of view of the now and thefuture, but also the past
because it always rhymes.
And yeah, I'd be happy if peoplejust reach out, if they have
something to share on product,aI and the trends at large.
Shikher Bhandary (47:20):
that's great.
Thanks.
We Really enjoyed yourcandidness Yeah, we are big
fans.
So we are probably gonna bewatching out for not just your
Work at linktree, but alsobeyond what's coming
Sélim Benayat (47:37):
Thank you.
Yeah.
And thanks for having me guys.
It's always a blast to talkabout product, company, people.
Jed Tabernero (47:45):
Absolutely.
And that's wrap for today'sepisode on things have changed
podcast.
We hope you enjoy this deep diveinto the crater economy with
Selim Benayat and how bento ishelping creators showcase their
work and build their digitalidentity in a whole new way.
If you don't learn more, be sureto check out bento@bento.me as
(48:05):
always, if you found value inthis episode, don't forget,
subscribe, leave a serve you andshare it with someone who needs
to hear the story.
Stay tuned for moregroundbreaking conversations on
the future of work tech.
In the economy.
Please note the opinions andinsights shared by our guests
(48:28):
are their own and do notnecessarily reflect the views of
things have changed podcast.
This episode is intended forinformational purposes only, and
should not be construed asprofessional advice.
if you are an engineer, a designer, an artist.
(00:04):
Like this type of creative, weidentify so much with our output
of work that it's a goodreflection of who we are.
Jed Tabernero (00:13):
The creator economy has redefined how
individuals express themselves.
People have turned platformsinto stages for showcasing
talent.
But as these tools evolved.
One problem.
Persisted.
Content was scattered.
There wasn't really a centralplace to easily display all your
(00:33):
work.
Selim Benayat and hisco-founder.
recognize this gap.
And set out to build bento.
Uh, platform designedspecifically for creators to
organize and present theirportfolios beautifully.
Sélim Benayat (00:50):
by asking the question, how can we make it as
easy as possible for people toshowcase their work?
We started to understand thatmost of that work probably lives
online somewhere
Jed Tabernero (01:03):
so through bento, creators were able to merge
their creative projects.
Into a single stunning digitalspace.
Sélim Benayat (01:11):
our sort of challenge became, how do we make
linking as sexy as possible?
Jed Tabernero (01:16):
In today's episode, we dive deep with Selim
Benayat co-founder of bento andnow director of product at link
tree, following theiracquisition.
We're going to explore theorigin story of bento.
How Selim his team scaled theirvision?
And how bento fits into thefuture of the creator economy.
(01:37):
Join us on things have changedpodcast.
As we talked to Selim about whatit takes to scale a startup in
today's world.
Tune-in.
(02:23):
So over the last few years, thisconcept of the creator economy
has come to light where itseemed like anyone anywhere can
make it just by building theirown brand, right?
Digital platforms like socialmedia were used to enable
creators, artists, writers,musicians, influencers, to build
(02:44):
direct relationships with ouraudiences.
It just shows how much we valueauthentic content, driven by
individuals, not companiesnecessarily.
But one problem still persistedwith the growth of different
digital platforms.
Creator's work was scattered andthere wasn't really a central
(03:06):
hub to easily showcase, Theircontent to even just friends and
peers, right?
became challenging to shareideas and progress and
ultimately even getting feedbackfor the cool work that you've
been doing.
This is a problem that, SalimBinet and his co founder Mujeeba
(03:27):
San has been thinking about andin early 2022 led them to build
Bento, a platform that allowedcreators to showcase their work,
including the tech stack theyused.
Showing proof of skill andultimately your portfolio,
right?
(03:48):
So they've recently combinedforces with link tree.
We all saw that on the newsrecently, and, now they're able
to provide even more value tocreators who are at the heart of
this product.
So today we're super excited towelcome Salim Binayat.
To Things Have Changed podcast,a three time founder, two
awesome exits, and now directorof product at Linktree.
(04:11):
Selim, welcome to Things HaveChanged podcast.
Sélim Benayat (04:14):
Thanks for having me guys.
Shikher Bhandary (04:15):
Salim, you come from a pretty technical
background, like mechatronics,robotics, biophysics.
How did it click in your mind toactually going and creating a
business, creating a company?
During my master's and this isacross the board, across my
postdoc colleagues and PhDcolleagues is they're more or
less like they have the blinderson for their product.
(04:38):
They are research, and it's hardto really just take off the
blinders and see what's outthere, what else they can do.
So it feels like there's such adiversity in your work where you
were able to take off theblinders.
Like, how did that come about?
Sélim Benayat (04:55):
I think this goes back to, my time spent studying
biophysics.
Or let's just call it science,which is, I don't know, you
develop a way to look atproblems.
I remember at the time, like alot of students, which was the
master's sort of time, they werecomplaining that, we weren't
(05:15):
really doing too much math ordoing too much physics.
Like I want to go into the laband stuff.
But I think what I came torealize.
The time spent doing math andphysics and chemistry really was
a time where you started todevelop problem solving and I
think helped you become curiousbecause you were able to look at
(05:38):
many different things in lifeand try to understand like, how
does that actually work?
To the point where some people Ithink sometimes are not with me
when they walk through, I don'tknow, when we're on a walk and
talk and I just sometimes justhave these random questions and,
about nature or life, or I thinkabout proteins and I go like,
how does that work?
Like why does a protein knowwhere it has to go in your cell?
(06:00):
And then I go down these rabbitholes, right?
And so I think it's just thisway of looking at problems that
Did you learn or you acquire,that's I think the acquired
skill in your studies that thenled me to, yeah, just be curious
and then look at differentproblems and then try to solve
them in different ways.
Shikher Bhandary (06:18):
Curiosity is such a key trait for so many of
the conversations that we've hadon DHC.
Sélim Benayat (06:24):
Just the ability to ask questions and to ask
different questions.
I think this theme will come upover and over, probably that
discussion, because forinstance, yeah, Bento would just
ask, I think, a differentquestion and thereby we're able
to.
Build a differentiated product,right?
So I think that if you have tosummarize it, yeah, I think the
ability to look at certainaspects of life and have the
(06:47):
ability to ask differentquestions than the majority, I
think can give you a leg up,when you want to build
something,
Shikher Bhandary (06:57):
good point asking a different question when
I first came across bento Thiswas even prior to the waitlist.
It felt so different compared toany other way of showcasing your
work Throughout either when Iwas in undergrad or doing my
master's or even the work afterthat.
I've always had a portfoliowebsite I used that a lot for a
(07:22):
long time, and I just like thatvisual representation of what
your work is.
Because, as you might know, whenI was doing mechanical
engineering, a lot of things isphysical.
It's showing a design.
So I was into product design,but on the hardware side, so I
needed something to showcase,okay, what I can build with CAD,
(07:44):
what can I build with 3dprinting, so on and so forth.
I've always liked having avisual medium, but it always
felt like I had to create a Wixwebsite, a Squarespace website
to actually have a certain levelof aesthetic to it.
About.
me was just, you put somepictures and text and that's
(08:06):
about it.
It's just a blurb.
It's not interactive.
So to your question of askingdifferent questions, how did
this thought process even arise?
Were you in a pain point thatyou suddenly realized, hey, hang
on my does not reflect a bunchof text on the screen.
(08:28):
It needs to be visual.
Sélim Benayat (08:30):
if you are an engineer, a designer, an artist.
Like this type of creative, weidentify so much with our output
of work that it's a goodreflection of who we are.
Let me say, I think the pinnacleof that obviously, painters,
really bringing their self ontothat canvas.
engineers or digital artists,very similar.
(08:51):
And so bento started actually asa product called creator space
and creator.
The word for us meant much morethe creative rather than the
influencer.
When we started working oncreative space was much more a
product like medium.
(09:11):
It basically was a blog esqueproduct that would empower users
to bring their work onto aalmost blank canvas where they
could write about it.
They could upload images andvideos and even container the
demos about their work and thenpresent that to the world, but
(09:35):
much more in a medium esqueformat.
What we saw there that Is thatthe initial thought of having
such a space you can call yourown, and showcase your work was
enticing to people.
However, we ran, into thelimitation that is.
laziness, right?
(09:55):
A core human trait.
I think we're all lazy.
And I don't mean this in anegative or whatever light.
No, I truly believe like humansare just lazy in the sense that
we try to do, and even ourbrains biologically just try to
use the least amount of energyfor anything we were doing.
And so if you think about this,Tropic state, I think you, you
(10:18):
have to build consumer products,that don't run head first into
that core trade.
And so we ask ourselves thequestion at the time, how can we
help people showcase their workas easily as possible?
And this was in November, 2020.
(10:40):
we started to notice, okaythat's the key issue here.
Like we're not seeing an uptickin the market because we
believe, yeah, there is thiswhite space problem.
It's difficult for people tofill that white space.
by asking the question, how canwe make it as easy as possible
for people to showcase theirwork?
We started to understand thatmost of that work probably lives
(11:01):
online somewhere.
In the worst case, it lives in aG drive.
Like Mujib and my side projects,they live in a G drive or maybe
on the margin, like on GitHub,in the best case, that stuff
lives, somewhere dockered on awebpage that is easy to access
accessible, or it lives on artstation, dribble, any of the
(11:24):
easily accessible sort of veryvisual sites.
And so we believed.
You can just link to your workmost probably.
And so then all of a sudden oursort of challenge became, how do
we make linking as sexy aspossible?
How do we make this as visuallyappealing as possible?
Because if our thesis turns outto be true and you want to have
(11:49):
link to your work to representyourself.
That sort of end result needs tobe visually appealing because
you have to be proud about itbecause it's the culmination of
your digital identity in thatsense, because you have this
fractured landscapes ofdifferent digital identities and
we hope to unify it in a veryaccessible, delightful sort of
(12:11):
way.
Plane, which then we startedcalling Bento
Jed Tabernero (12:14):
and just to clarify, it is definitely sexy.
I put together my Bento websitelast night, very impressed.
Shikher Bhandary (12:23):
was like, Jed, we got to do this.
Because Jed is amazing with hisdrone.
He travels to different placesjust for his drone.
Sélim Benayat (12:33):
I appreciate good drone shots.
Jed Tabernero (12:35):
does.
It does take a while to load bythe way.
Cause there's such a big,especially if they're 4k.
Oh my gosh.
They are super huge files, butthanks shaker.
I appreciate that.
Not.
This problem that you focused onand really the questions that
you've started to ask, for thisspecific community of folks,
right?
I think from my end, we werereading one post that your co
(12:57):
founder Mujib had posted, and hewas talking about lucky us.
We fell in love with the problemrather than the solution.
And this is something wherebeing customer focused, that's
what's, that's what it's allabout.
Falling in love with the problemessentially is being also
customer focused, right?
(13:18):
It's to understand what thatproblem is.
So I guess what influenced yourapproach to be really customer
focused and specifically,
Sélim Benayat (13:29):
one of our core values at Bento was to be a user
advocate or call it customerobsession.
And often these values are a bitcorny and not really authentic.
however, for us, I thinkcustomer centricity and
obsession really was a thingthat we noticed later on, And I
think it came from, us buildinga product for ourselves.
(13:54):
Mujib and I had this problem.
We had all of these coolprojects that we were building
and we were frustrated thatnobody would see it.
we had it on G drive and we werelike, we're not the best at
launching stuff and producthunt.
And we're also quite honestly,we're not like these flashy
social media people that like topost it on social media and be
loud about it.
(14:15):
And so I think we were slightlyfrustrated also that we weren't
getting the recognition that wethought some of these products
deserved, because we couldn'tshow it anywhere.
And since this was the way.
We started to build the productby just asking ourselves what
would we need?
And then we start to ask ourcreator friends, our engineer
and designer friends, what theythink about the product.
(14:37):
It just became a ritual.
And at first, yeah, we didn'tarticulate it.
It just was the way we worked.
we would reach out to people onTwitter, reach out on people on
this score, just people we knew.
And then we started to expandthe pie because we needed more
opinion on stuff that we weredoing.
And since it was our DNA whenbuilding Bento, I think, yeah,
(14:59):
we just kept it, throughout, Theentire time we were building
Bento halfway through when westarted to I think, articulate
our values, we noticed that,this for sure was, or is a value
of Bento.
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (15:13):
In startup life, we've had so many
companies, and startups on, and,It's tough.
It's a struggle.
It's hard.
Things don't move as fast asexpected to get traction and
virality.
It feels like y'all got thatvirality very early on with just
moved things a lot faster.
(15:34):
I feel like I just set up mybento.
Walk us through how thatvirality was achieved.
Was it some ambassadors thatpushed Bento that helped you get
that initial surge, which thenkept it going.
And also looking back, does itfeel like it just all happened
in a flash?
Because it did feel like it wasprobably under 12 months, from
(15:59):
official release to acquisitionor was it in and around that
ballpark?
Sélim Benayat (16:04):
It was about five months, to take on the broader
question of virality and let'sjust say product growth.
I think there's tons to unpackAnd I try to be exhaustive in
the answer.
So bring me back if I rear offtrack.
Bento being a pure consumerproduct, and understanding the
fact that Mujib and I.
(16:26):
We're not the loudest on socialmedia or on product hunt or any
sort of outward facing sort ofactivity.
I started to realize very earlyon that.
To compliment the team, we wouldnot only need design because
consumer products needdelightful and elegant design,
at least in my mind.
And we would also needcommunity.
(16:49):
We would need that social mediaslash outreach piece that we
were really missing between thetwo of us.
And so against allrecommendations from VCs and
friends and then, yeah, andfounders and everyone around me,
basically even against Mujeeb'srecommendation, it was a
(17:10):
discussion.
We hired a specific person, todo community Social media.
And the idea was that if youthink about Bento as a product,
it's inherently a networkproduct because basically you
create your Bento for twothings.
(17:32):
One, you just want to see yourdigital identities converge on
one surface and you want to seeyourself represented in a good
light.
You want to see your dronefootage.
You want to see your products.
You want to see your podcast.
You want to see whateverrepresents you on a beautiful
day.
I believe that to be true for alot of people.
(17:54):
And once you see it, it makesyou feel good.
However, what makes you feeleven better is if actually all
the people that you care aboutsee it.
If my friends see my coolprofile or if a recruiter sees
my profile or a customer isgoing to see my profile, that
makes me feel even better.
(18:15):
And so at its core, bento is anetwork product.
And because of that, we believedwe had to foster a network
around the product.
Not just for defensibility,which is another topic we can
talk about later on, because itwould help us grow because
achieving the first five to 10views would make you rave about
(18:38):
the product much more than ifyou would not get it And so we
started to lean into that factone from a product perspective.
So we would build specificfeatures that would make it
easier for you to share yourbento.
One, or that would make iteasier for you to build a good
bento, be it on desktop or onmobile, such as the little
(19:00):
physics that we have in there,like these delight features that
just make it nicer to build, orthe mobile editor that just
makes it very easy to build amobile,
Shikher Bhandary (19:08):
plane flying over a map.
Sélim Benayat (19:10):
there you go, or the little music notes that come
out of the podcast player andstuff like this.
And all of this, these delightfeatures and the ease of use
obviously helps from a productperspective.
The product to grow because itmakes it easier to build
beautiful things, which iseasier to then consume.
Now from a community let growside, we started to notice that,
(19:32):
creatives inherently are insearch of inspiration and this
comes often through their peers.
For instance, for Majip and me,we love to go on product hunt or
just chat to friends andunderstand what they are
building, same for artists,ArtStation, Dribbble, all of
these places.
And so it was a natural sort ofextension of that group's
(19:57):
behavior to start buildingcommunity.
And then obviously community initself helped the growth of the
company and the product, becausebasically people were referring
each other and ultimately wantedto be part of that very positive
community that was fostered.
Shikher Bhandary (20:13):
From outside in, it feels Oh, just the right
notes were hit and they wereable to get that success.
But, thanks for peeling theonion.
and giving us a showcase ofwhat, instrumental steps and
very mindful steps have to betaken internally for the world
(20:34):
to then see that virality.
Sélim Benayat (20:36):
Yeah, it was definitely orchestrated.
So it was not just happenstance.
one of my regrets is that wedidn't start with community
advocates earlier.
I remember I spoke a lot to theFigma guys at the time and their
advocacy team to understand howthey do it, how they think
about, the advocacy programs andtheir community around Figma.
I believe one of the bigmistakes we did at Bento was.
(21:00):
To realize too late that weshould have leaned into creating
an actual ambassador program,because we had people that call
themselves bento ambassadors,by, their own volition
basically.
And that took a lead in thecommunity, but I think we should
have been more deliberate, moreconcrete about these actions
earlier, which goes back to thefact that, yeah, we tried to
(21:23):
orchestrate it, but this basicwas a miss.
Yeah.
Jed Tabernero (21:28):
Thanks for sharing that.
I think one of the things that,was also really fascinating.
What was bento was part of thefirst cohort of startups in
Sequoia arc.
And, we're talking about growthnow and how you've led to this
community led growth.
How was the experience atSequoia arc?
(21:49):
What kind of things did youlearn from that experience?
That program that helped youbuild this company,
Sélim Benayat (21:57):
Yeah.
So Bento was in the inauguralbatch of the Sequoia art
program, which was anilluminating.
Sort of journey, I think, mostlypersonally as a founder rather
than the product.
And this has something to dowith the fact that we basically
(22:22):
applied to ARC without reallyknowing what we're going to do.
To be honest, creative spaceonly existed in a Figma at that
time.
And so we were by far.
The earliest sort of productteam or company in that program.
And we basically, one of ourmilestones together with George,
(22:42):
one of the partners at Sequoiawas that we're going to launch
creator space within the eightweeks of the program.
At the end of the program, we'regoing to use that demo day to
launch greater space.
So that's how early we were, andso for us, I think the main
benefit was the ambition thatSequoia gave you as founders
(23:06):
because they have a programcalled, basically company
building the Sequoia way.
And one of the main takeaways asfounders, as a founder is that
you as a founder have to grow sothat your company can grow.
And so they really focus on thefact that you need to have huge
(23:28):
ambitions as a founder.
And at the same time, you needto work on your skills to
actually reach those ambitions.
And by doing that, you will pullthe company behind you up to
these heights as well.
exercises, being in the roomwith another 30 tremendously
skilled founders, being shownwhat world class looks like,
(23:51):
being able to talk to worldclass.
Being all of these huge Sequoiafounders that they brought in.
You name the company, they'regoing to have the founders going
to come in to talk to you.
So being exposed to world classgave you an ambition, gave you a
good sort of understanding whatworld class actually looks like
and how it behaves.
And helped you to find communitywithin those other 30 founders.
(24:12):
which was transformational, Ithink for us as a team with Jeep
and myself.
And then this basically was thentranslated into how we approach
Company and product building.
Jed Tabernero (24:22):
cohort is telling to what kind of founders you
guys were already.
So getting to that level aftermeeting with these like super
successful people that'sawesome.
Is there any like favorite storyyou have on your journey and
Sequoia arc, which really led toa lot of this stuff that you're
building today?
didn't know what you were goingto deliver, right?
(24:43):
You had said it yourself.
Like you started with an idea,they taught you how to grow.
And then now you have builtsomething, way past that.
Sélim Benayat (24:53):
think it was just, I would say the community
that we built, around thecohort, Sequoia was really
intentional in helping founderscreate lasting memories and grow
closer as a team.
I don't want to say familybecause it's still a team.
It was still competition in thatsense, but not competition for
(25:15):
the money, but more like healthycompetition amongst ambitious
people because we all knew it'snot a zero sum game.
There's enough money fromSequoia that, they could feed a
hundred thousand teams.
So that was not what we werecompeting about.
It was more like healthycompetition amongst friends.
And then at the same time,because we grew so close as
(25:35):
friends, Due to these activitiesthat Sequoia hosted, we were
also very supportive of eachother And I think that was the,
yeah, the biggest sort of, Ithink, value add to us.
I think to also be realisticabout it all and not just only
mention the tremendouslypositives, I think where Sequoia
could put in, some reflection ison specifically product.
(26:00):
Help.
'cause I think Sequoia thinks sobig all the time and has all of
these huge founders that theiradvice tends to be much later
stage, rather than super earlystage.
Jed Tabernero (26:12):
it's really fascinating that throughout this
call, you are vocally, not onlyself critical, but you're also
critical of those things thatyou've learned from, through
your entire journey, and that'squite unique, to be honest, when
we're on the show, a lot of whatwe hear from founders are like,
these are the cool things thathappened, and this is what's
(26:34):
awesome about it.
So really appreciate thebackdrop and saying, look, I'm
going to remember from this callthat, we should have leaned in
further into creating thiscommunity.
And getting ambassadors, so Ithink really appreciate you
going back and like being selfcritical about that.
You think that's reallyimportant trait to have being a
(26:54):
founder?
Sélim Benayat (26:55):
Yeah.
I thinks self-awareness is, Ithink is key.
I self-awareness because ithelps you understand, where you
need help, right?
And at the end of the day, Ithink this goes back to having
no ego at the end of the day,it's all about winning as a team
because then the company wins.
and creates shareholder valueand societal value.
(27:17):
So yeah, throw that ego out ofthe window and be self aware to
create also an environment oftrust, right?
Because no one of us is crushingit all the time.
That's not true.
Jed Tabernero (27:27):
Yeah.
Shikher Bhandary (27:27):
So fast forward from your Sequoia Arc
experience.
Now we have gained thatvirality.
You find yourselves five monthsinto the product.
In conversations with, thebiggest player in the space,
which is Linktree.
So how was that process looklike?
Because firstly, as part of theproduct lead and, the founding
(27:51):
team, you were still gettingyour stride in trying to
balance, not just your internalcosts, hosting, and all of that,
but also the creator side of itThe, your revenue side versus
the creator monetization side.
It feels like at odds and thecreators win and you win as part
(28:12):
of that as well.
Sélim Benayat (28:13):
Yeah.
Multi layered sort of question.
First of all, I want to say Ilove your engineering mindset of
you thinking about the hostingcosts, and research that it
takes.
That, that little map, by theway, that shows you the little
clouds and the planes, thatfeature is way too expensive if
we talk about, but it's worthit.
Shikher Bhandary (28:31):
is the first thing that came to my mind when
I put that map.
I was like, Jed, stop whatyou're doing.
Sélim Benayat (28:37):
Yeah, there you go.
Sometimes you can put a pricetag on delight on user delight.
Sometimes.
Okay.
Let me go back to that question.
You talked about the acquisitionand how that went and how we
were thinking about balancingcosts and possible sort of
revenue streams and how thatsort of intertwined with the
(28:59):
acquisition.
I think first of all, ourthinking and frameworks around
revenue creation and cost hadnothing to do with the
acquisition.
If we want to tackle sort ofrevenue streams first or how we
thought about monetization,Bento was fairly obvious how we
would monetize the product inthe short term, how we would
(29:24):
monetize and build a categorydefining company out of it in
the long term.
Wasn't clear, which I think thenwould be the segue into the M& A
discussion.
So short term, we were in thelucky position of again, being
very close to our user base,right?
The proximity to our user wasvery short, which led to us
(29:46):
understanding what they actuallywould want to pay for and to not
speak so cryptically, theyliterally just send us hundreds
of messages asking us, I want topay for analytics.
I want to pay for personaldomain.
I want to pay for morecustomization.
Now long term, I think you haveto unravel a lot of things
(30:08):
around the creator economy,which I think is the big
question for any company currentin this space.
So if you think about thecreator in the word creator
economy, not the way Bentodefined it, right?
So a creator is someone who's acore skill.
Is in creating content to engagean audience and the core
(30:33):
monetization is driven throughsponsorships and advertising,
brand collaborations,merchandise, subscriptions,
revenue, and similar, right?
And so it's in directcorrelation with their audience.
And, you have to then thinkabout the power law distribution
within that cohort of peoplethat we just defined and the
(30:56):
parallel distribution in termsof eyeballs from power players
to the long tail, right?
And then we were cognizant aboutthree characteristics in that.
Let me see if I can recall it.
So it was the distribution ofvalue captured.
Within that, whether the longtail is monetizable or not, and
(31:17):
whether you can build a bigcompany around then these two
points.
And so if you look about thedistribution value.
Within that creator cohort.
I think it's pretty clear thatyou have the power creators who
generate a tremendous amount ofrevenue, you can go from the
movie stars to Mr.
(31:37):
Beast, through their content andthen the long tail, if you think
about monetization of the longtail Is very difficult because I
personally think that sort ofthe idea that everyone should be
a creator is somewhat of afallacy because Being a great
creator is so difficult And alot of us just live like boring
(31:58):
Unexceptional lives in thatsense like we just live normal
lives, right?
I'm drinking my coffee in themorning and then I sit in front
of the pc for 10 hours, right?
So we don't generate like Thatoriginal interesting content for
all of these people, right?
So basically it's difficult forthe long tail to be monetized
because there's not tremendousvalue in there.
And so how do you build.
(32:19):
a company around that,especially if your power users
get all of their revenue on acouple of platforms like TikTok,
basically platforms that, thathost their core skill, their
content, TikTok, YouTube,Instagram, and that stuff.
And so as a company that space,you somehow have to build a
(32:43):
product.
Where you can retain your coreuser.
Otherwise you can't grow as acompany and to retain your core
users, somehow have tomeaningfully create.
Career lifetime value, meaningyou have to create a big portion
of their revenue becauseotherwise creators are very
(33:04):
unloyal users because anythingbut the big platforms are
ancillary products to them.
Shikher Bhandary (33:11):
Yeah.
Sélim Benayat (33:12):
Anything that sort of helps them bring more
eyeballs to their core revenuedrivers, they will use.
And they will jump if there'sanother product that does it
better.
And so in the longterm forBento, the big question that I
was pondering over, togetherwith the team was how do we
become a meaningful chunk oftheir revenue over the next
(33:33):
years?
Like what would that look like?
Cause otherwise we have no rightto build a company and be here.
Otherwise we're just going to benoise.
And so what we started thinkingis obviously the lines of not
hosting content because youdon't want to directly compete
with YouTube, but more in thelines of maybe a financial
(33:56):
backbone to them in terms of ecommerce and it's the new
Shopify.
We were thinking Amazon, Etsy,Shopify, Bento kind of thing
that could have been in the longterm something.
But for that, we would need toaggregate more and more
eyeballs.
And this is where the segue tothe M& A basically, I think
comes into play.
Shikher Bhandary (34:18):
I think this is one aspect of the creative
economy that is not spoken abouta lot where churn is real and
you need to be growing 35percent because your churn,
whatever, whoever it Issubstantially high like you need
to be always on to the last bitthe acquisition was it Stressful
(34:41):
because things seem to havemoved so quickly I don't know if
it happened over a phone callover a drink or over a weekend
But how was that whole processwas the team aware as the co
founder were you thinking about?
Okay, do my Company's goalsalign with Linktree.
Was there some uncertainty?
(35:01):
Would love to get a glimpse ofwhat that whole process looks
like.
Sélim Benayat (35:06):
Yeah.
I think, an acquisition processis a multidimensional problem,
right?
it's an emotional challenge.
It's an interpersonal challenge.
It's a financial challenge.
a vision slash mission alignmentchallenge.
And as a founder, you have todeal with all of it at the same
(35:29):
time while running the product.
It happened by cold outreachthrough basically Linktree
reached out cold.
And they were like, Oh, we hearyou're in the market or funding
rounds, yada, yada.
At the same time, there wereother companies that I can't
mention that were actually doingthe same.
So our deck must have been inthe market and must have changed
(35:51):
hands because there were otherbig companies that reached out
for M& A.
And so as a founder, the firstthing you do.
is to ask yourself and your cofounder, basically the co
founder team, to ask thequestion, is this something can
entertain at all?
Like this thought of beingacquired.
(36:12):
once you pass that conversation,you need to really commit And
try to get to the outcome thatis getting acquired.
And you have to gradually startsharing the broader team, the
broader shareholders.
(36:32):
But the keyword is gradually,News of a potential deal hits
the broader team.
The company is in a standstilland nothing happens anymore.
Everyone is on garden leave.
Everyone is excited.
Everyone already thinks abouttheir boat houses that they're
going to buy and nothing getsdone.
And if it doesn't happen, youhave the hangover.
(36:56):
And so it's, that's theemotional challenge.
And the interpersonal challengethat you need to get right.
Then obviously you need to talkto your shareholders and make
them aware that this mighthappen and what that would mean
for their shares and sort oftheir returns and all of that
jazz I think more anecdotally,basically Linktree and I, we
were talking, I was the mainperson to push that deal forward
(37:19):
because again, Majib, my cofounder.
Sort of needed to keep onbuilding because what if doesn't
happen?
The team didn't know at thetime.
And so it was basically a pingpong, on many zooms between me
and Linktree and the other sortof MNA, parties that they were
interested as well, and you weretrying to get the best deal at
the right time.
the reason why we decided to doit was.
(37:44):
The ambition to get Bento to agenerational defining product,
much like at the time, MySpaceor then Facebook, because we
believed it was time for Bentoto hit the big stage and really
grow worldwide hugely to a newsort of social product that
(38:11):
would put the people into thecenter of the story and just
create a more.
delightful internet, a newcorner on the internet called
Bento, where creativity wouldshine and basically creatives
would call their home, right?
That's what I really wanted toget done with that deal.
(38:31):
And I decided that Linktreewould help in doing so because
their scale on the internet isjust mind blowing.
I can't talk about numbers, butyou wouldn't imagine the scale
that Linktree has, and so Ibelieve plugging in that scale
into Bento would get us therefaster, We had we have a nice
(38:55):
tree here and I like to look atthat tree.
Through the seasons in themorning.
And I would be worried slashscared that Bento would stop
working and that we would losethat hype in the market and
people would just not like itanymore.
And I always imagined it to bethe snowflake, the first snow
(39:15):
that falls from the sky andyou're lucky enough to catch it
on the tip of your finger.
You can look at it briefly atthis beautiful snowflake and
then it melts away.
And I always felt like we're atthis stage.
Like I somehow have to keep theconditions on the tip of my
fingers cold enough and perfectenough that this snowflake
doesn't melt.
And I was constantly scared Iwould not keep these conditions
(39:37):
right.
And so I thought with theLinktree deal, I could keep
these conditions right and startbuilding snowmans actually,
right?
That was the idea.
Jed Tabernero (39:49):
That's super poetic.
Thank you for that.
I think we're going to use thatas a soundbite for sure.
What's next for the creatoreconomy, right?
You've gone to the stage whereyou've got the perfect
conditions on your hand to holdthis snowflake, at least
presumably, how do you make surethat the seasons then go well?
And, creator is still at thecenter of what you're building
(40:10):
in the future
Sélim Benayat (40:13):
Yeah.
That's, I think the majorquestion for the entire
industry.
Where is the creator economygoing?
Obviously AI, enters thediscussion.
Because AI will obviouslysupercharge.
The ability of people to create,probably content or create
(40:33):
products that then people wantto use.
And thereby I think the creatoreconomy will grow in the sense
that businesses of one will bemuch more prevalent than ever
before, that you can run ratherbig businesses rather
successfully with the help of alot of AI and agents.
So I would start to include thatinto the creator economy.
(40:55):
More broadly speaking about theinfluencer economy, what I'm
seeing there is that it becomesmore and more professional.
And obviously the spurt in ecommerce helps them to build
bigger businesses there.
Because at the end of the day,it's always a question.
You build your audiences tosomehow monetize them.
(41:15):
And I think the capabilities ofmonetization go beyond now
advertising and just sponsoredcontent into, much more tangible
sort of monetization,opportunities such as e
commerce, but e commerce, notonly for hardware goods, but
also for digital goods due toAI.
So you can build your owneducational environments.
For instance, you have educationinfluencers, or fitness
(41:38):
influencers that can build,digital fitness coaches and
stuff.
So I think all in all thecreator economy just gets
flattened out, gets broader,where there's going to be much
more niche content.
Because you now have the time tocreate that niche content.
And so I think successfulcompanies and products will hop
on that, trend to help peoplemonetize niche audiences, more
(42:02):
efficiently.
Shikher Bhandary (42:03):
there's going to be a pre chat GPD world,
there's a post chat GPD world.
And we are in that phase.
There was this really goodtweet, and I saw that you had
retweeted it too, where I thinkScott Belsky had tweeted out
that in this now AI world, tastewill be a lot more important
(42:24):
than skills.
skills is not going away, but Ifeel the embodiment of that
statement.
there is a certain taste to itthat I will not get anywhere
else.
It is really well designed and Ilove such things.
So do you think that will be nowa key trend with the creator
(42:48):
economy as well?
Because now anyone, You put inyour persona into cloud or, chat
GPT, and you could potentiallyget certain content elements
that you can share.
So would it now be more on yourspecific taste of what you bring
different?
To the table more than it's everbeen
Sélim Benayat (43:13):
Yeah, I think, again, like multi multifaceted,
Super interesting question.
Multifaceted because you can seeit from the perspective of
building product or frombuilding a, an influencer
persona online.
So I think if you're aninfluencer out there, I think
your audience will gobble up thestuff that you put out.
(43:36):
And so I think the most.
Successful influencers will havetaste in what they put out, how
they curate themselves and thenew AI enhanced capabilities
that we'll have, they will useto, to craft something that,
that has a certain type ofelegance.
But in a way that representsthemselves the best, I think
(43:56):
this is where taste comes intoplay.
How do you represent yourselfthe best so that your audience
can connect with it the best?
Now, if you look at it from apure software slash product
perspective, I think taste trulygoes back to craftsmanship.
And I do believe it's the onlyway currently in the application
layer, how to differentiateyourself.
(44:16):
Because if you look at AI, itstill feels like that there is a
huge Delta the felt or perceivedvalue of AI in different,
implementations.
I think why everyone, or a lotof people, went nuts about Apple
intelligence was that.
All of a sudden, like it's smalluse cases, but they're so well
(44:38):
executed.
They're so elegant.
And I don't want to sound likean Apple fanboy because actually
I'm not anymore, but I got togive it to them.
It's so well executed that allof a sudden AI doesn't become AI
anymore, but it's just product.
And I think like we have to getto an expression of a product
(44:58):
where AI is not the drivingfactor, but the experience.
The product expression, that'show we talk about it because I
have the cheeky saying that AIis only called AI if it's not
working.
And if it's working, it's justsoftware, right?
And I think we're going to movetowards that, that it's just
about the expression of theproduct and how well it is
(45:21):
curated.
How well does it understand thecurrent cultural sort of
environment and drum beats thatyou're launching it into?
And with Bento, we startednoticing just like this general,
almost anxiety in the marketabout all of these constant
dopamine hits that you weregetting these constant, this
sort of this scattering of youronline life, constant checking
(45:44):
everywhere, constantly needingto check everywhere.
And so we believed, you knowwhat, let's create a sort of an
environment of tranquility ofdelight, where you just turn
down the noise, like just turnit down, have a lot of white
space, have nicely defined sortof little widgets and let that
be the start of the experience.
Jed Tabernero (46:06):
at the end of the show.
So give a platform to you toalso chat with our users a
little bit to share a little bitabout, what's next for you, how
our listeners can learn aboutyou and what you've built.
And yeah, it's up to you how youwant to, Present that
information.
Typically, a lot of founders useit to say, Hey, we're building
this next.
We need this set of expertise.
This is where we need help next.
And we'd love to hear from youabout this, et cetera.
(46:29):
But yeah, just wanted to giveyou the space to chat about that
stuff.
Sélim Benayat (46:32):
What is next for me is reflection, trying to
understand like what is going onin the world right now, I think
first at large, and then I startzooming into areas that are
relevant to me and thenhopefully, relevant to other
people as well.
So I think for me next until endof the year is reflection.
trying to understand where isthis all headed?
(46:55):
Cause it feels so fluid rightnow.
It's such high ambiguity.
I'm always open to connect withpeople that have an interesting
point of view of the now and thefuture, but also the past
because it always rhymes.
And yeah, I'd be happy if peoplejust reach out, if they have
something to share on product,aI and the trends at large.
Shikher Bhandary (47:20):
that's great.
Thanks.
We Really enjoyed yourcandidness Yeah, we are big
fans.
So we are probably gonna bewatching out for not just your
Work at linktree, but alsobeyond what's coming
Sélim Benayat (47:37):
Thank you.
Yeah.
And thanks for having me guys.
It's always a blast to talkabout product, company, people.
Jed Tabernero (47:45):
Absolutely.
And that's wrap for today'sepisode on things have changed
podcast.
We hope you enjoy this deep diveinto the crater economy with
Selim Benayat and how bento ishelping creators showcase their
work and build their digitalidentity in a whole new way.
If you don't learn more, be sureto check out bento@bento.me as
(48:05):
always, if you found value inthis episode, don't forget,
subscribe, leave a serve you andshare it with someone who needs
to hear the story.
Stay tuned for moregroundbreaking conversations on
the future of work tech.
In the economy.
Please note the opinions andinsights shared by our guests
(48:28):
are their own and do notnecessarily reflect the views of
things have changed podcast.
This episode is intended forinformational purposes only, and
should not be construed asprofessional advice.
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