Sélim Benayat, Co-Founder and CEO of Bento

Listen to this episode from The New Creator Economy on Spotify. Sélim Benayat on First-time Founders and The Vanity Metrics You Might Not Want to Follow, What American Football Taught Sélim and The Concept of Self-Governance, Problem Deconstruction and the Characteristics of a Great Product Manager, The Story Behind Bento, Sequoia’s Arc Europe Accelerator and Building A Company ‘The Sequoia Way’, Bento - A personal Hub for the Next Generation of Businesses and Brands, The Future of Work and the Shift in the Generations’ Relationships with Work Towards More Individualism, The Creator Economy and Europe’s catchup vs. The US, The Internet Culture, Leadership and The Mistake of Over-indexing on Input vs. Focusing on Outputs. Second-time founder, Sélim is now the Co-Founder & CEO of CreatorSpaces (now Bento.me), a link-in bio for all your links on one beautiful page. The vision? Be creators’ personal hub for the Next Generation of businesses and brands, empowering everyone, everywhere, to work on what they deeply care about and build and truly connect with their community. In May this year, CreatorSpaces raised a $1.6M Pre-Seed round led by Sequoia Arc Europe, a 7-week acceleration program designed for ambitious European seed-stage founders, and since then it rebranded as Bento and Today (19th Dec 22) finally opened up their waitlist. Go check it out!   This is Episode #15 of The New Creator economy: Web3 creator platforms focused on interviewing The Founders of these new exciting start ups. Today, I am joined by Sélim Benayat, Co-Founder and CEO of Bento, with whom I discuss: Entrepreneurship. You are not a first-time founder. What led you to the start-up world in the first place and how did you become an entrepreneur? What are the learnings you took with you from building the first start up? What are the mistakes you will Not repeat? Leadership. Something that both Vincent and Mugeeb mentioned is your ability to ‘hone in on the essence of concepts and thoughts’, meaning your ability to distil ideas into their core essence, and allow everyone to see what truly matters with clarity, and push towards a common goal. So first I want to ask, where does your ability come from – to (A) Break down complexity and convey a clear, simple message to the team, and (B) How do you align the whole team towards a shared vision and common goal? Building on this, Vincent said that this is exactly what makes you an incredible Product person – your ability to simplify complexity and getting to the core of the issues, fast. What is it, in your opinion, that makes a great Product person’? How has your leadership style evolved from your first start up to Today Self-governance. Jan also told me about how you combine Living in the moment with Discipline; work out every single day (I knew you were my people!), lives between two cities, learns new languages, works multiple businesses, travels. It’s insane. He says you have “algorithm-like self-governance,” and suggested I explore the concept of “self-governance” with you. What does “self-governance” mean, and means to you? How do you combine Living in the Moment with Discipline? Again, for the early-stage founders listening to the show who are probably struggling with (A) I wanna say “Compartmentalizing” almost and living their life separate from their business while also (B) Staying Disciplined and Focused? Sport and American Football. We already touched upon sports, but I want to deep dive here. Both Jan and Vincent mentioned you played American Football at a competitive level and said this was one of the turning points in your life. How so? This one is from Vincent – with many ex-athletes now getting into the VC game, do you think they bring something extra? Bento. First, big congratulations on the big unveil today! (Selim replies). Bento - All your content on one beautiful page. So, first for our listeners, what is Bento and what’s the origin story behind it? In May this year, you raised a $1.6M Pre-Seed round led by Sequoia Arc Europe, an 8-week acceleration program designed for ambitious European seed-stage founders. Again congratulations! First for founders also interested in the program, how does it work and how did you get into the program? And now, what’s next? The Creator Economy connected with The Future of Work Mugeeb would love to hear more about how the mentality of generations has changed in regard to how they view their work and what professional and / or personal fulfilment means to them. It feels to Mugeeb like this matter has been a central topic for almost every generation and the beliefs and answers of every generation seem to be different than the ones before. Tell me more. That said, how do you see the Creator Economy evolving, especially in relation to the Future of Work, Online?