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Ben’s List for Entrepreneurs W1 – Selected

Finally. It’s 2021 and we’re ready to build outstanding communities and resilient businesses… or are we REALLY ready for this?

I’m genuinely thrilled about this week’s reading list. It will cheer you up and push you towards building communities, raising funds and exiting your business. Maybe? Let’s hack communities, get the right SaaS tools and the financials to become a unicorn. Ok, you’re phoney.

Or maybe not… There will be trillions of individuals after us. The AI stack that powers self-driving vehicles is already stronger than our collective brain. And if you were wondering… YES, it’s more profitable to build a startup out of Silicon Valley. Fuck Miami dude.

I’m gonna get a nice shot of some vegan-friendly drink and then jump over 7 meters like Fosbury. My Google & Arts music will be a home run and I’ll nail it.

What will your 2021 look like?

Book

Biggest takeaway: belonging matters!

Hacking communities is about belonging anywhere and this pursuit of finding that home is the inner journey to your truest self.

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Hacking Communities
Guiding principles and practical insights to anyone willing to start or grow a community. Bring life to any business, cause or physical space. The book includes experience-based frameworks to community building.
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(Speaking of) Community

1. Mapping the Ecosystem of Community Tools

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2. Building Membership-Based Communities with Greg Isenberg and Justin Murphy

Re: Social Capital >> “We’re living through a period of extraordinary cognitive chaos…an utter collapse of centralized, aggregated sense-making abilities.. that’s the real underlying factor that makes these new movements into more private membership communities more profound” – Justin Murphy

3. Community Takes All: The Power of Social+

A social+ company combines the community and network of a social product with a specific category, form factor, or experience.

  • Link: a16z.com/2020/12/07/social-strikes-back-social-plus/
  • Author: D’Arcy Coolican

Startups

It’s all about thinking big, understanding that status comes from impact, and drinking the Kool-Aid.

One newer model of success we are starting to see is what has been called “The Mullet:” a small presence upfront (in SF or other hubs), and a large remote workforce elsewhere.

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SaaS

This should go without saying but David Sacks is here to remind us that “Team products are stickier than Individual products” with one of the main reasons being that “collaboration provides constant opportunities for reactivation.”

In those cases where it makes sense to build the Individual plan first, try to find the use cases for sharing and collaboration as soon as you can. Teams are the ultimate destination.

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Mobility

Hard to tell if this secret AR view was accidentally misfiled in the code or whether Elon Musk wanted his beta-testers to find it and tell the rest of us? Either way it definitely caught my attention as a heads-up of what’s to come from Tesla and/or other self-driving car makers!

Tesla full self-driving code contains secret “augmented reality view”
While digging through the code of their Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature, this hacker found an augmented reality view of everything the vehicle sees.
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Psychology

According to Richard Fisher “around 100 billion people have lived and died in the past 50,000 years. But they, together with the 7.7 billion people currently alive, are far outweighed by the estimated 6.75 trillion people who will be born over the next 50,000 years, if this century’s birth rate is maintained.”

If we hope to be good ancestors, we need to develop a transcendent ‘legacy mindset’, where we aim to be remembered well by the generations we will never know, by the universal strangers of the future.

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Sports

The Fosbury Flop – or why breaking the norms is the gateway to success!

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cheezburger.com/958890752

Before he springs from the pad like some great rocket lifting off, Dick Fosbury meditates, worries, psyches himself.


Music

Still looking for that perfect present? Why not gift a festive song? Blob Opera is a new machine learning experiment by artist David Li that lets you create your own festive song inspired by Opera on Google Arts & Culture.

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Food in 2021

Cheers to kicking off those adaptogenic, upcycled New Year’s Resolutions of yours in style!

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  • Link: snaxshot.com/2021

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Events 2 days ago

AI is reshaping how people discover information. Search traffic, once the lifeblood of websites, is plummeting as AI tools provide answers and context immediately, eliminating the need to browse to websites for answers at all.  Understandably, companies are responding by going down avenues they can control: newsletters, podcasts, memberships and events. This reality is true for startups as well. You simply can’t rely on Google traffic or algorithms to build trust anymore. You need direct channels, and there are few ways to build trust more powerful than  meeting people face-to-face. Welcome to the ‘post-click’ era Startups have long played by the ever-changing rules set by Google and social media platforms, which are more often than not prone to changing their algorithms and leaving everyone scrambling to adapt overnight.  AI is not only accelerating this instability, it’s almost making Google referral traffic obsolete. Companies need to adapt to this new reality with strategies that let them talk directly to their prospective customers. The media industry, one of the most vulnerable to the changes, is proving to be one of the quickest to adapt. Morning Brew, for example, blends its newsletters franchises with events. In a recent interview, Sam Jacobs, TIME’s editor-in-chief, highlighted how the company went from organizing two to three events per year, to holding the same number of events monthly. Even digital-first players are embracing events. Podcasts like Acquired and All-In now host live events to bring their listeners together. Finimize has built grassroots meetups around its newsletter. The new defense tech media title, Resilience Media, born on Substack, is planning events to connect experts in its niche. Alex Konrad’s new Upstarts ecosystem includes live interviews, an upcoming podcast and curated events. These aren’t just extensions of the content; they’re ways to nurture communities. Startups should copy this strategy. They must consider where their credibility and relationships will be built in this new landscape, especially as visibility is no longer about simply appearing on top of search results or burning money with ads; it’s about building lasting trust in the spaces that matter. Events are singularly effective at doing that. Lessons from after the pandemic If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that being present online is insufficient. Platforms like Hopin promised a future of global, scalable, online events. Even experiments in VR conferences were the subject of occasional hype.  All of that fell short, however. What founders, investors and marketers learned was simple: There is no substitute for shaking someone’s hand, catching their eye, and sharing time in the same space. When the pandemic ended, events came back with a bang. Companies large and small continue to invest in gatherings. Events still carry symbolic weight: just look at Apple’s meticulously choreographed product launches, or how scaleups like Helsing showcase new technologies.  For startups, events can also serve as tools for strengthening internal communications and bonds with their employees and their community. Here’s a great example: Italian travel scaleup WeRoad holds an annual, two-day global gathering of its travel coordinators and staff that strengthens culture and commitment in ways a Zoom call never could. Why startups need to show up Startups live and die on the strength of their relationships. Securing investors, signing first customers, and finding the right partners are all processes that depend completely on trust. These early relationships are crucial. In an AI-driven world where digital discovery is fragmented, saturated and noisy, events cut through the noise. They offer something AI and algorithms never will: human presence. Startups should think of events as essential investments in visibility and credibility. Whether it’s speaking on stage, hosting a breakfast or simply showing up to the right conference — being in the room matters. It’s OK to be selective. It’s OK to pass on events when priorities point elsewhere. And don’t take this to mean the digital realm and AI should be ignored. But in this era where we’re putting AI on a pedestal, founders should not underestimate the power of a physical meeting for establishing contact with investors, talent, or any other important stakeholder.

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New Materials 2 days ago

After a successful first edition, JEC Investor Day 2026 is now returning for its second year with expanded ambitions.

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Events 5 days ago

TechCrunch Disrupt? Overrated. Web Summit? A $4,700 mistake I’ll never make again. I’ve burned $18K learning which startup events actually matter for B2B SaaS founders trying to close deals—not just collect business cards. Here’s what nobody tells you: the biggest events aren’t where B2B deals happen. Why “Best Startup Event” Lists Are Useless for B2B Founders Every January, tech blogs publish the same recycled garbage: “50 Must-Attend Startup Events!” They rank by size and buzz. What they don’t rank by: where your buyers actually show up with budgets. I learned this after exhibiting at a 70,000-person mega-conference. Spent $4,700 on booth space, flights, and hotel. Had exactly zero conversations with our target market. The attendees? Mostly consumer startups and the press are looking for the next Uber. According to Cvent, 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority—but only at industry-specific events. Generic “startup” conferences are networking theater. If you’re serious about finding the right startup event strategy, you need to think differently. The 5 Best Startup Events Where I’ve Actually Closed B2B Deals SaaStr Annual – Where SaaS Deals Actually Happen 13,000 SaaS professionals in San Mateo every March. APIDays – The Technical Depth You Need If you’re building APIs, this is your room. 2,000-3,000 API architects who can actually read your docs. Paris is the flagship, but they run 10+ cities globally. What makes APIDays different: it’s deeply technical. No marketing fluff. €3,000 gets you in, and European buyers are way less saturated than US markets. Big Data & AI Paris – Enterprise Buyers With Actual Budgets 15,000 enterprise CTOs and data engineers. I closed two partnerships here worth €400K combined—with French banks and telecom companies that had active Q4 budgets. The French government subsidizes AI adoption, so budgets are real. But your networking tactics need to adapt. Less aggressive, more relationship-focused. €800 for a pass and 3,200€ to exhibit as a startup, totally worth it if you’re targeting European enterprises. Track it on Sesamers so you don’t miss early bird pricing. MicroConf – Where Bootstrapped Founders Share Real Numbers 200-300 attendees max. Everyone’s profitable or trying to be. Zero VC hypergrowth bullshit. I’ve learned more in hallway conversations here than at conferences 50x the size. The attendees are other founders who share actual numbers—not vanity metrics. Churn rates, CAC, payback periods. This is how you measure real ROI from events. Worth every cent if you’re bootstrapped. Industry-Specific Trade Shows – The Secret Weapon Here’s the move nobody talks about: skip tech conferences entirely. Go where your buyers congregate. Healthcare SaaS? Hit HIMSS. Fintech? Money20/20. HR tech? HR Tech Conference. I watched a founder close a $400K deal at a healthcare event while competitors were posting selfies at Web Summit. These cost $3,000 avg, but attendee quality is 100x better. According to Statista, B2B trade shows hit $15.78B in 2024. This strategy works because you’re fishing where the fish actually are. The 3-Filter System I Use to Pick Events Filter 1: Who’s actually attending? Can you name 20 people who match your ICP? If not, wrong event. Use Sesamers to check historical attendee data before buying tickets. Filter 2: What’s your actual goal? Raising money? Go to investor-heavy events. Closing customers? Industry trade shows. Different goals need different event selection criteria. Filter 3: What’s the all-in cost? Ticket + flights + hotel + meals. If it’s over $3K, you need $30K in pipeline to break even. Most events don’t hit that unless you’re strategic. Events I Skip (And Why You Should Too) Web Summit: 70,000 people is networking hell. Consumer-focused despite the B2B claims. Pass unless you need Series A+ PR. CES: Consumer electronics show. Your B2B SaaS buyers aren’t here. I see founders at CES every year wondering why they’re not closing deals. Now you know. TechCrunch Disrupt: Great for press and VCs. Terrible for enterprise buyers. Worth it for launch PR, not pipeline. How I Track Everything Without Losing My Mind I track every event in a spreadsheet: cost, conversations, pipeline generated, deals closed. After three years of data, the pattern is crystal clear. Niche beats broad. Quality beats quantity—industry-specific crushes general tech. The best startup events for B2B SaaS are never on TechCrunch’s homepage. For API companies: APIDays and API World are superior to generic conferences. For AI/ML: Big Data & AI Paris provides European enterprise access that’s nearly impossible to achieve otherwise. Geography matters—European buyers at European events are way less saturated than US markets. Stop Wasting Money on the Wrong Events You have limited time and budget. Most founders can hit 3-5 events per year max. Choose wrong and you’ve burned $15K and 15 days for zero ROI. Choose right and one event generates $500K+ in pipeline. Use Sesamers to find events filtered by your industry and target attendees. See which ones similar founders recommend. Track ROI data. Set reminders for early bird pricing. Never waste another $4K on an event where your buyers don’t show up. Because the smartest way to pick events is learning from founders who’ve already tested them—and can tell you which ones actually matter. Ready to find your next high-ROI event? Start tracking on Sesamers and build your calendar based on data, not FOMO.

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