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@nico_jeannen @nikpolale ❤️

@nikpolale Yes that plays a part too for sure :) But it doesn't fix the usage problem, I would just get "ghost" users. I think the product needed lots of fixes (and still do!) For emails I use @bento !

have been stagnating like crazy since then 💀 MRR is actually lower now, back under $900 (less if I only count Adkit) I spent 3 days investigating trying to figure out what's happening using Claude code connected to Posthog, Stripe and Heyo Chat to investigate (more on that later if anyone interested). First, I got way less traffic, but also every new subscription I got was negated by other people canceling = no growth. So it’s like less traffic + bad retention, so it’s guaranteed fail The Churn indicated by Stripe is tricky, it showed ~10% but it was closer to 40% actually 😬 Reason is because churn updates retroactively when ppl cancel, so if you just check the last 4 weeks in Stripe it will always be lower cause ppl won’t have churned yet (it’s been less than a month). But when I switched to 3 month view I saw it was much higher than expected. I thought the product was fine but it was not at all TL:DR: most people did not use the app that much and canceled after 2-3 month (either cause of bugs, forgetting about it, not knowing all the features or just because they only needed it for a short time) For ex in Adkit, to get the value of the product (ads competitor tracking), you can either follow advertisers already in the db, or add your own. But the empty state when you search and no advertiser is found makes it looks like if it’s not there then you can’’t do anything about it I thought it was obvious cause there is a big button “add advertiser” but apparently not (I saw session replays of users getting frustrated) In this case. I think the fix is just to add a better empty state with a CTA to make it very clear that people can track their own competitors Another issue is that I didn’t took the time to setup email sequences, so people who purchased kinda forgot about the app and also might not know all the features available. Then they cancel cause they don’t really use it. So now I’m making a full onboarding sequence to help users take habits of using the app, give them tips, etc. (@bento is the best for that). And then the other issue is getting started. From the data I got, people who have 5+ advertisers tracked are more likely to keep using the app and stay subscribed. So one thing I’m going to add is Starter Packs = users can follow a bunch of handpicked advertisers for a specific industry in one click That way they don’t have to browse the list of advertisers to get started => Less manual work => Less friction => (hopefully) more usage There is many more issues (lots of actual bugs), I fixed a good chunk of them already so hopefully this could improve things Big mistake is that I stopped talking to users. I did it at the beginning while launching the app but then I stopped. So now I’ll try to talk to one customer per week minimum. Either people who use the app a lot, started using or churned. Only way to truly understand users IMO. ====== Now that was ONLY for activation/retention (keeping existing users). This is only half the issue. Other half is acquisition (getting new users) I thought the app was growing well on its own, but turns out most traffic came from X (launch post + general traffic) The launch posts died out after while so traffic died eventually. Then I also stopped using X in January / Feb to detox mental health (and it did work!). but then it meant I lost most of my traffic source. I dint launch ads yet cause of all the issues I have to fix etc, but it will be time to start! Relying launch for long terms is not a strategy, esp when it comes from just one platform. I should probably try to post more about the app again But I need to get rid of doom and political posts in my timeline cause it makes me angry/depressed :D Started working on SEO a bit but never got any success with it so I don’t hope much. My friend @aurelien_dio is helping a bit so maybe this time it will work (he did SEO for big French corpo). === So, TL:DR, issue is that not only I don’t have enough water filling the bucket but also the bucket has a hole so any effort I put in is wasted. First fix the bucket, then pour more water. I know Adkit has potential, I just have to put the pieces of the puzzle together. I managed to get from 0 to 1 but now I need to figure out how to go from 1 to 2. Plan rn is to fix issues, then try new acquisition channels SaaS is fking hard, cause you dont just have acquisition, you also have activation and retention, that's like 3x more stuff to work on compared to one-time purchases (that’s why I recommend doing one-time when you start out btw, much less to manage). But it's ok, learning on the go and (hopefully) figuring things out over time I know I can make a great product, and I will ==== Some great resources that helped: longform.asmartbear.com/max-mrr / longform.asmartbear.com/customer-devel… by @asmartbear (insane this is free) Product-Led Growth by @wes_bush Deploy Empathy by @mjwhansen (best resource to talk with users IMO)

Here are some of the things we shipped last week.

@jchatelaine @george__mack Half of Bento was built to @benbohmermusic

@george__mack Changes every month or so when they run out of juice and depends of my level of energy. I love build up musics. At the moment: open.spotify.com/track/4sigEqg7… open.spotify.com/track/4PyKCv9A… Ben Böhmer is pretty excellent anc of course Hans Zimmer (F1, Moneyball, Inception and interstellar)

What's the best song you've found for looping on repeat whilst you work?

@itsjustamar @jessethanley @alexchristou_ Zenmaid! 😆

@jessethanley @alexchristou_ @Bento Since you started Bento or since ZenMaid finally moved over? 😉

How have I never heard of this product before? Had a traffic spike this eve so wanted to throw an email capture up. Bento had super super smooth onboarding and claude got it setup in about 4.5 minutes. Usually this email is a right malarcky. Cheers @Bento

@alexchristou_ @Bento bento is legit the best email product out there

WELCOME JIM!

“At Bento, maintaining high email deliverability and protecting our platform from abuse is a top priority. Spamhaus’ accurate, real-time data has become an essential part of our trust and safety infrastructure.” — @jessethanley, Founder, @Bento By integrating Spamhaus blocklists and reputation data to screen domains and IPs during signup and ongoing monitoring, Bento proactively blocks bad actors, reducing spam complaints, and helping legitimate senders reach the inbox. ✅ Better inbox placement ✅ Stronger sender reputation ✅ Fewer abuse issues Learn how Spamhaus' Real-time DNS Blocklists can protect your email ecosystem 👉 spamhaus.com/data-access/re… #EmailProtection #DNSBL

@coreyhainesco Lovely! Just what I needed as I'm deep into using @Bento these past weeks.

@martindonadieu @jessethanley @ashleyhindle 😂

@jessethanley @ashleyhindle @Bento Gonna tell that to my kids instead of mind your language 😂😂😂

I thought we were friends @Bento 🫶

people, rightfully, get confused why @bento also has a fully baked crm/shared inbox and it’s because of interactions like this: > app sends event to @bento > @bento flow triggered, notif. sent > customer replies to email > email routed to @Bento Chat > specialised agent assigned to ticket > agent discusses issue with customer, flags some nuance > customer acknowledges > resolves ticket by itself > monitor whole thing in Slack with a full @bento setup you can have this too — entire end to end communication automated on a friendly way.

PSA for @Bento customers: if you are using our chat/shared inbox product then you have a lot of freebies coming your way in the next 24 hours.

@dean_walsh1 @jessethanley @aarondfrancis Not an SES wrapper! We host our own email servers and have fallbacks to a few hosted solutions for redundancy 👍

@Bento @jessethanley @aarondfrancis Wasn’t actually sure if you guys used AWS. Apologies!

wow @aarondfrancis such fast email delivery! who do you use?

@dean_walsh1 @jessethanley @aarondfrancis No he sends through me silly

@jessethanley @aarondfrancis @Bento AWS?

@AlecMcCullough @openclaw Yah mostly “how is my broadcast going?” and “can you take the draft from Notion and publish it in Bento?” - a few people also want to add people to automations on the go too.

@Bento @openclaw This is exactly the kind of integration that makes moltbot actually useful in real workflows. CLI for stats and broadcasts is practical as hell. What's the most requested feature from those customers so far?

Turns out we have a few customers who love @openclaw so we’ve shipped a CLI so the little fella can fetch stats, draft broadcasts and more! Enjoy!

@jkudish @openclaw github.com/bentonow/bento…

@Bento @openclaw What's the link for the CLI please?

@tothesteward @Linktree_ No we are alive and thriving.

Like literally @Linktree_ is buyout all this other link in platforms and shutting them down eg @bento & others

@Dusanwriter @jessethanley 😂😂😂 Question did you use the AI for the flow build? Did you ask how to start based on the Supabase hook?

@Bento @jessethanley Geez you’re nuts. 19 seconds later. Epic work team !

So deeply impressed with what @jessethanley and his small team have built with @Bento . And a lesson in “vibe coding” - it felt easy to spin up an email system of my own for Sojen. It worked. Was using Resend and created a pretty sweet admin page. But it also creates overhead! Bento solves problems I honestly don’t really want to think about. And was up-and-running with triggered edge functions (thanks @supabase !) in under an hour. Now just need account approval and go!