Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Ben’s List 38

This you’ll learn with this week’s list of articles.

You’ll also dive into Web3 & community with 4 articles. Looks like I’m a bit obsessed with that topic lately; wondering if we should be launching our own $SESAME token.

We’re also discovering how a startup founder got placed on 100 podcasts in 6 months and the coolest AgTech startups of 2021.

Let’s start with the revenues made by creators in 2021 with Stripe’s new Creator Index.

Creator Economy

Indexing the creator economy

“The pandemic proved to be an unexpected tailwind for what was once a community on the fringes, ushering in a new generation of creators and bringing substance to the idea that anyone with an idea and an internet connection could make something of value.”

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Web3

Social Token Mid-Year Report

“In 2021, the total market cap of key social tokens surpassed$303m, a ~500% growth from 2020.”

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How To Build An MVC: Minimum Viable Community

“The community is surprisingly sticky, right? Because you know, someone else is a part of it, and you want to be part of it because they’re part of it because they bring you joy. So I think that’s very much under-appreciated and it’s kind of the secret sauce to building great communities, right?”

The community-owned rave: event organisers as DAOs

“Many events already function as decentralized autonomous organisations in informal ways. Connecting it to the Web3 allows the community to persist across the metaverse and leverage NFTs, communal creation, and channel the unique talents of all involved.”

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Spiral Tribe logo

Community

Building An Online Community: From Getting Started To A Community-First Organization

“It’s common to find community managers toiling away developing a premium platform or a complex MVP program without having enough members to use it or plenty of questions to answer. This ends up being a distraction. You should only be working on the activities which take you to the next stage of the community lifecycle. It’s really easy to plot a path forward when you know where you are now.”

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PR

The Playbook This Startup Used to Get Their Founders on 100+ Podcasts in 6 Months

“What if instead of a 60-second scripted ad read that costs $10,000, you did a 60-minute ad read that deeply educates your target audience on the problem you’re solving, that costs $0? Enter: the Podcast Tour. A ‘podcast tour’ is when a brand secures podcast interviews for its founders on shows that its target audience is likely listening to. For a startup, the main value of a podcast tour is education and awareness. This is especially true when you’re building a new product category.”

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Getty Images / akinbostanci

AgTech

Q3 2021 AgTech Venture Capital Investment and Exit Round Up

“Last quarter set a record for venture capital investments into AgTech startups. In total, $4.016B was raised by 171 startups in Q3. To put this in perspective, last year AgTech companies raised a total of $5.15B, so this this a huge haul in just one quarter. In the first three quarters of 2021, 441 AgTech startups have raised over $8.3B.”

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GIPHY

Science

Tree of Life Explorer

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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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