Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Ben’s List 72

Entrepreneurship

The $100 Trillion Opportunity in Marketplaces

“In recent years there have been fewer breakthrough startups in consumer marketplaces (the category is more saturated than it was in its heyday), but most of the innovation in marketplaces over the past 25 years has been consumer-facing.”

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Venture Capital

An Emerging VC’s Tech Stack: A dive into Hustle Fund’s platform

“In addition to being an investor for Hustle Fund, I have also spent the last several years researching, building, and evolving our tech stack. Today, we would like to share it with the world. Let’s Do it!”

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Artificial Intelligence

What to Watch in AI

“Scams hide in plain sight. The email outlining an investment opportunity or the phone call promising paid work may seem like good fortune. But more likely than not, they’re attempts to defraud you.”

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The Artificial Creativity Landscape

“The artificial creativity space is moving fast, so it would be impossible to map the entire landscape. However, this map will give you an idea of the thriving ecosystem as of 2022.”

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Community

How to live a double life: Using customer support superpowers when building community

“There are a lot of great lessons and skills that I have learned while working in Customer Support which I wanted to share with other Community leaders that are looking to expand their skill sets.”

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Events

Making Panels Not Suck: Lessons from the Masters of Scale Summit

“It’s not entirely the fault of the panelists or moderators; the standard panel has built-in structural flaws, the most important of which is that the panelists, who are at the event to build relationships, are understandably reluctant to disagree with their fellow panelists, leading to anodyne and boring snoozefests.”

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Science

One of the Biggest Problems in Biology Has Finally Been Solved

“I was feeling like it was time to tackle something really hard in science because we had just solved more or less the pinnacle of games AI. I wanted to finally apply the AI to real-world domains.”

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How the Higgs boson could reveal the fate of our universe

“It’s just over ten years ago that the Higgs boson was first discovered. Physicist Toyoko Orimoto writes that the particle could lead us to more discoveries, such as if there are other spatial dimensions and the eventual fate of the universe.”

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Virtual Reality

Palmer Luckey Made a VR Headset That Kills the User If They Die in the Game

“According to Luckey, the anime and light novel series Sword Art Online made people interested in virtual reality, especially in Japan. In SAO, players put on a NeveGear virtual reality headset and log into a new game called Sword Art Online only to discover a mad scientist has trapped them in a virtual world.”

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Events 2 days ago

Last week, I spent three days at Bits and Pretzels in Munich — a startup-focused event with a distinctly Bavarian flavor. Think Oktoberfest meets startup conference, complete with dirndls, lederhosen, and more beer than you might expect. As someone building an AI-powered event platform, I went in with a specific mission: Observe how startups actually market themselves at events. Here’s what I discovered: GoodBytz: The power of good demos What they did: Robotics startup GoodBytz set up a booth where its robots prepared kaiserschmarrn (a traditional German dessert) all day long. Why it worked: Nothing beats seeing a product in action. While other booths had brochures and demos, GoodBytz’s robots were actually cooking. The smell, the movement and the end result stirred together an experience that people will remember and talk about. The lesson: If you have a physical product, show it in action. The old writing adage generalizes well: Show, don’t tell.  Let people see, hear and touch the product. WeRoad: The bathroom hack What they did: Posted “Missing Investor” flyers in bathroom stalls with QR codes pointing to their website. Why it worked: Pure genius. Every startup at the event was looking for investors, but the “Missing Investor” headline, while a bit on the nose, proved irresistible. Plus, bathroom stalls are one of the few places where people have 30 seconds to actually read something. The lesson: Think about where your target audience’s attention will remain undivided. Sometimes, the most effective marketing leverages the most unexpected places. Emqopter: Visual impact matters What they did: Designed a bright orange booth that displayed their drone prominently. Why it worked: In a sea of grey, white, beige and brown, Emqopter’s bright orange booth was impossible to overlook. The drone was real, too, and proved a real conversation starter. The lesson: Your booth is competing with hundreds of others. Make it visually distinctive and ensure your product is the hero. Quests: Community building using the product What they did: Created a busy, branded booth with accessories (toy car, traffic cones, a bulletin board) and used their anti-loneliness app to build communities among founders at the event. Why it worked: Quests used their product to solve a real problem right at the event, and the busy booth design generated energy and curiosity. The lesson: Use your product to solve a problem at the event — if it’s possible, of course. Demonstrate your value in real time. Dyno: Event-themed marketing What they did: Distributed branded electrolyte packs with the tagline “Your hangover ends. Your pension lasts – with Dyno.” Why it worked: Dyno aligned its messaging perfectly with the Oktoberfest theme. Every attendee was thinking about beer and hangovers, so Dyno’s goodies were quite relevant. The tagline was clever, memorable, and directly addressed a pain point most people at the event might have to deal with later. The lesson: Tailor your marketing to the event’s theme and culture. The more you tie your messaging and product to the context, the more memorable you become. So, what did I learn? Event marketing is about more than just showing up and setting up a booth; you have to understand your audience and create experiences that people will remember. Here’s what really struck me: most startups and even big companies don’t know how to leverage events properly. They book the booth, show up and hope for the best; maybe they bring some branded pens and a pop-up banner. Then they’ll go back home and wonder why they spent €5,000 in exchange for 50 business cards that never convert. The startups that stood out at Bits and Pretzels understand something fundamental: event ROI isn’t about booth size or location; it’s about strategy, creativity and planning. None of the startups above improvised on-site, or planned something the night before the event in their hotel rooms. They laid everything out 4-6 weeks before the event. A solid pre-event strategy is what separates successful event marketing from expensive booth rental.  But what matters most for early-stage startups is that you don’t need a massive budget to stand out. WeRoad’s bathroom stall hack probably cost €50 to print the flyers. A standard booth package at Bits and Pretzels would go for €3,000 to €5,500. The ROI difference is staggering when you compare the cost per meaningful conversation. That’s the difference between simply spending money and investing smartly. Building Sesamers has taught me that helping startups find the right events is only half the equation. The other half is helping them understand how to maximize ROI once they’re there. Good props aren’t a marketing expense; they’re opportunities to meet customers, investors and partners, and strike up engaging conversations.

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New Materials 3 days ago

Lios Group, the Irish startup behind SoundBounce, was a winner of JEC Composites Startup Booster 2018, and has been making significant strides since taking home the award.

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New Materials 1 week ago

Tree Composites aims to accelerate the energy transition with innovative composite joints.

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