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Ben’s List 10

That’s right, you guessed it; we’re deep diving into NFTs this week!

According to Wikipedia, a non-fungible token (NFT) is a “unique digital file stored on a blockchain (a digital ledger). One NFT is a cryptographic token, but unlike cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and many network or utility tokens, NFTs are not mutually interchangeable, aka “not fungible.”

NFTs recently took the worlds of digital art and sport collectibles by storm with several jpg files sold for thousands and even millions of dollars. An auction at Christie’s recently broke the record for the most expensive NFT ever sold with “The First 5,000 Days” by Beeple.

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Without really planning it, I ended up listing 7 articles in this week’s list about NFTs, including: how you create them, their impact on the creator economy and the issues around them – in particular, environmental & copyright challenges.


Book

Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook & The World

On my wishlist

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Events

What if this moment was ultimately an opportunity to reimagine the future of fairs and events?

“Of course, physical connection is a fundamental element in establishing a relationship, but it is now impossible to imagine that it is the only one. Since the onset of 2016, we have invested significantly in our digital platform, MOM, to enable our community to communicate yearlong. The goal? To allow buyers and specifiers to be in touch with the brands through their new product catalogues.”


Diversity & Inclusion

Making steps towards a DEI aware universe

via Andreea, one of our former team members 🙂

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AI

Should CC-Licensed Content be Used to Train AI? It Depends.

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How I Learned to Judge” by John Sloan Photography, licensed CC BY-NC-SA.

NFTs

Non-Fungible Tokens Yearly Report 2020

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NFTs and a Thousand True Fans

“The second way NFTs change creator economics is by enabling granular price tiering. In ad-based models, revenue is generated more or less uniformly regardless of the fan’s enthusiasm level…Fan of Bitcoin? You can buy as much or little as you want, down to 8 decimal points, depending on your level of enthusiasm. Crypto’s fine-grained granularity lets creators capture a much larger area under the demand curve.”

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Are NFTs The Future Of Digital Music Or Just Crypto Snobbery?

“But for its proponents in the worlds of art and technology, NFTs have the ability to change the very nature of digital media, allowing artists to eliminate financial middlemen and make a profit from their work outside of the demands of mass popularity.”

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A Step by Step Guide to NFTs for Creators NFTs

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Here Is The Article You Can Send To People When They Say “But The Environmental Issues With CryptoArt Will Be Solved Soon, Right?”

“Many would call me unrealistic and naïve for this, unwilling to make compromises in the world we are living now because of an idealistic vision of a tomorrow; and to them I would like to say that we literally invented an extra-sovereign monetary system that within 10 years has generated trillions of dollars of worth and is held up with the power consumption of a small country.”

NFTs are a dangerous trap | Seth’s Blog A Word on NFTs

“The trap, then, is that creators can get hooked on creating these. Buyers with a sunk cost get hooked on making the prices go up, unable to walk away. And so creators and buyers are then hooked in a cycle, with all of us up paying the lifetime of costs associated with an unregulated system that consumes vast amounts of precious energy for no other purpose than to create some scarce digital tokens.”

A Word on NFTs

“The underlying misconception here is to think that in the digital world copies are indistinguishable from originals. In a trivial sense this is true. Let’s say you copy a digital artwork, you will now have exactly the same bit sequence as the original. But in a much more profound sense it is not.”


Science

Check out the most extensive map of black holes ever

“This first image, which covers four percent of the Northern sky, combines a decade of development and analysis, and nearly 11 days worth of radio emissions absorbed by LOFAR.”

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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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