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Ben’s List 74

Entrepreneurship

The Key Success Factors of European Startup Studios

“Successful European studios create a strong cultural infrastructure, which is then declined within each portfolio startup. The way to do this is to build a galaxy of enthusiasts: business angels clubs, advisors, events.”

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Guide to Growth Metrics

“The traditional investor view of this metric is, as Lawrence A. Cunningham puts it, that ‘gross profit margin demonstrates competitive advantage’ because ‘it is the purest expression of customer valuation.’ But as we see it, gross margins alone don’t make for a competitive advantage. For instance, having high gross margins—typically above 70% for software companies—demonstrates that your company might have a competitive advantage now, but without a moat, you can’t guarantee that those margins will persist.”

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Venture Capital

From Singapore to Silicon Valley, female founders fight for funds

“Women in Singapore, the VC hub of Southeast Asia, are 38% less likely than men to have a strong network, according to LinkedIn. The corresponding numbers are 14% in India and 28% in the United States.”

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Sarah Miyazawa LaFleur, founder and CEO of MM.LaFleur. (Photo courtesy MM.LaFleur)

All the VC fund of funds you need to know in Europe

“The European Commission — when it announced its €2.1bn fund of funds strategy several years ago — argued that a lack of VC funding is holding European tech back.”

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Photo by Markus Winkler / Unsplash

Community

How The Futur Built A $1M+ Community

“When I asked Ben what lies ahead for The Futur in 2023, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised with the answer.

‘We’re looking to grow our community membership as much as possible in 2023,’ he said. ‘Because doing so will allow us to invest that much more in creating our free YouTube content.’”

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DeepTech

Spinout Playbook

” A licensing deal with a particularly low royalty rate might have an above-average equity allocation, or vice versa.”

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‘Disruptive’ science has declined – and no one knows why.

“Disruptiveness is not inherently good, and incremental science is not necessarily bad, says Wang. The first direct observation of gravitational waves, for example, was both revolutionary and the product of incremental science, he says.”

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Policy

Fighting Tech-Enabled Abuse: 2022 in Review

“Apple has had a very mixed year, taking important steps to secure devices for high-risk users, including survivors of tech-enabled abuse, while also facing the fallout from the disastrous launch of their physical tracker, the Air Tag, whose mitigations against use as a stalking device began as woefully inadequate and have progressed to merely bad.”

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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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