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Community building and post-covid world – Ben’s List | Selected

Probably because it was exactly a year ago that I was on my last international trip; first time in Australia, speaking at Pause Fest, the Festival of Creativity & Business hosted in Melbourne.

Back then, we were still betting on the growth of Sesame Asia after a successful year of events in China, South Korea and Vietnam. It made a lot of sense to travel that far to connect with more founders and ecosystem builders from the region.

Fast forward one month and we’re getting into the first lockdown in France. Who would have known?

This week’s book is an intriguing review of businesses and initiatives building our post Covid-19 world.

Sprinkled throughout the list, you’ll find two reports, about community and HR, and several articles about platform strategy, SEO, positioning, productivity, virtual reality and quantum computing. An eclectic mix of news and ideas.

Also on this week’s list is the backstory about The Hustle, a newsletter and media business with 1,5M subscribers getting acquired by Hubspot.

Enjoy

Book

Rebooted: An Uncommon Guide to Radical Success and Fairness in the New World of Life, Death, and Tech

“…required reading for founders and tech companies navigating the post-pandemic world of technology and society”


Report

The 2021 Community Industry Report

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Strategy

Seeking Sustainable Growth in Platform-Marketplaces

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HR

Report by Dreamplex & DecisionLab about attracting & retaining GenZ workers … in Vietnam

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Productivity

Aligning Your Calendar With What Matters Most

Your calendar can be your ally rather than your master. Getting it to align with what’s most important can be a massive unlock. This is not just about getting more done.

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Marketing

1.Scoop: HubSpot is acquiring The Hustle

The big picture: Niche media is becoming a powerful customer acquisition tool and retention tool.

2. A Quickstart Guide to Positioning

Your positioning context sets off a really powerful set of assumptions about who your product competes with, what features your product should have, who the product is intended for, and even things like what the product should cost.

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3. Programmatic SEO: how to create 300 landing pages in a week

Interesting tutorial showing how DelightChat’s daily impressions on Google Search went from 100 to 6,000 in 6 weeks.


Hardware

Chips and Geopolitics

First, while we learned in 2016 (via the US Elections) that technology was inseparable from domestic politics, the lesson in 2020 should be that technology is inseparable from geopolitics.


Virtual Reality

1.Landlords Want to Make Virtual Reality Just as Hellish as Real Life

Real estate bros might be angling to turn the idea of virtual reality into one giant property market, but can we really blame them?

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2. Building Future UIs

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Quantum Computing

What is quantum communication?

Cat photos, music videos, and a great deal of non-sensitive business information will still move around in the form of classical bits. But a quantum internet will appeal to organizations that need to keep particularly valuable data secure.

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Health

Medgadget’s Best Medical Technologies of 2020

From drug-delivering contact lenses to nanorobots chasing down cancer cells, there’s at least 1 person you know who will soon be benefitting from one (or more) of these recently-announced medical technologies.

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Music

BMG, Beggars Group and Hipgnosis Each Have Strong Opinions on Streaming. Here Are Those Opinions.

Interesting because these major labels are basically explaining during official hearings in the UK why the economics of streaming don’t work for artists.

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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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