Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Reading List for Entrepreneurs W48 – Selected

This week will make you cry. There’s a hidden gem in the list where you will discover the artistry of a “radical nun”.

As usual, you will also get a solid dose of marketing knowledge on communities and the future of digital media, including a crazy case study by Zenly’s Head of Comms.

I’m wondering if you’ve ever had a feeling of community with Selected. Back in the day, we presented Startup Sesame as an alliance of Tech events and quickly felt that event lovers around us were feeling part of a movement. Some are still praising it, calling themselves Sesamers.

But are we still nurturing this feeling while socially distant? Can it be solved by launching a digital hub for members of Selected? Let me know what you think >> ben@sesamers.com.

By the way, quantum physicists are breaking the speed of light.

Community

How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet.

A comprehensive look into how a series of pivots and recognizing the most valuable feature(s) of a product (accidentally) led to an astounding community success.

How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet
Discord’s founders just wanted to create a way to talk to their gamer friends. They created something much bigger.
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  • Link: www.protocol.com/discord
  • Author: David Pierce
  • Source: protocol.com

Big trend: online communities at the intersection of content curation and knowledge management

We are living through the emergence of a new business category that doesn’t even have a name yet, but which I believe will become an important part of our digital lives: online communities at the intersection of content curation and knowledge management.

This is EXACTLY what we’re aiming for with Selected.

Check your Pulse #55
The rise of community-curated knowledge networks
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What are community driven companies and why to invest in them?

Lolita Taub is the Co-Founder and General Partner at The Community Fund (TCF). They invest in community-driven companies and believe that companies with community at the core will become unicorns and produce outsized returns.

Here’s her breakdown on WHY.

Community-Driven Companies: What They Are and Why We’re Investing in Them
Learn about community-driven companies, their business benefits and their attractiveness to investors.
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Media

How do you calculate the value of attention and eyeballs in the digital media & entertainment industry.

How Elena’s escape to a New York City movie theatre led to some serious revelations about “Is this profitable?”

Is this Profitable?
(or, what we talk about when we talk about eyeballs)
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Marketing

Putting Ice Cream on the Map

An overview of the challenges Zenly navigated and the lessons they learned from building a viral brand experience.

Putting Ice Cream on the Map
On November 1st, a select group of users in Japan opened Zenly to find an ice cream truck driving around Tokyo. 3 days and a few laps around the country later, the truck unlocked to unveil Zenly…
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  • Link: blog.zen.ly/putting-ice-cream-on-the-map-8f7eb048c1ab
  • Author: Sarah McBride
  • Source: blog.zen.ly

Customer support

Diagnosing Symptoms of Success

Here’s one for you on-the-go.

Kaizo’s podcast with Talixo’s Jan Brenneke, as he shares his expertise in the application of analytics in the context of Customer Service and it’s intersection with management science.


Politics

How Washington’s power brokers are adapting to the New Normal — and that includes how they party and raise money.

A breakdown of how one of Washington, D.C.’s most influential social gatherings, The Meridian Ball, went virtual, and kept their bottom line on par with years prior. $850,000 on par.

The annual Meridian Ball in 2016. The event is glamorous, prestigious and usually packed shoulder-to-shoulder. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)
The annual Meridian Ball in 2016. The event is glamorous, prestigious and usually packed shoulder-to-shoulder. (Deb Lindsey/For The Washington Post)

Science

Breaking the speed of light.

Gotta love how scientists pack their machines into aluminium foil

Quantum Tunneling Is So Quick It Could Be Instantaneous And Could Be Breaking The Speed Of Light
This website is about Latest NEWS and Updates from the world of Science, specifically from Physics, Astronomy, Quantum Physics and Technology
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Literature

“You are not everything but everything could not be everything without you.”

I shared this with Dan. He cried.

To Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro’s Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent

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Music

Doctor Who’s sonic pioneers to turn internet into giant musical instrument.

The Radiophonic Workshop has always broken new sonic ground, from the Doctor Who theme to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Now they’re at it again – this time using the internet as a musical instrument.

We’re all subject to the internet now in a way that we never thought we would be. And Bob and Paddy came up with an idea that is literally using what we’re all relying on for a creative purpose, using something that we’ve all taken for granted but in an artistic way.”

Doctor Who’s sonic pioneers to turn internet into giant musical instrument
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop made the famous science fiction theme tune and worked with the Beatles. Now it is preparing to make history
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Tools

Was it hangouts or zoom? Personal or work calendar? Cut through the noise and manage all your calls and meetings in one place.

This one’s for the Mac folks (sorry others), and is a SUPER useful menu bar app that keeps you on track and on time.

‎Meeter for Zoom, Teams & Co
***9to5Mac featured productivity app*** Was it hangouts or zoom? Personal or work calendar? Cut through the noise and manage all your calls and meetings in one place. View and manage your upcoming calls. Simply connect your calendar and Meeter will automatically pull all your upcoming calls and l…
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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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