Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Ben’s List 39

This week, 50% of my weekly selection is about Web3 and community. I’m getting deeper into the rabbit hole, wondering if and how we should launch a social token for Sesamers.

There’s also a fascinating piece on the history of pandemics that I spotted on Slush CEO’s Twitter account.  

Sequoia made waves last week with its new open-ended capital vehicle but Draper Esprit has been doing the same in Europe since 2016. Check out the article below.

Finally, I’ve got two great pieces about launching your startup, including a bunch of Notion templates.

Entrepreneurship

A Guide to Launching Your Startup

“Launching a new startup can be a complex process, but a well-organized game plan, guidance from value add investors with industry connections and a strong network of service providers can make all the difference.”

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Merci Grace’s early-stage startup templates will take your company from zero to one

“‘The hardest thing about going from zero to one is not building something, it’s getting people to care about your product,’ says Merci. Discussing each of your four product fundamentals — core product, business model, positioning, first customers — will set you up well when you’re ready to go to market.”

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Template

Venture Capital

Scoop: Sequoia Capital just blew up the VC fund model

“Venture capital is often about fast follows, and rival firms might have called management meetings before getting to the end of this story. But the odds are that Sequoia will stand alone on making these sorts of changes, due to its outsized public holdings and its unparalleled brand reputation.”

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Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Web3

The Creator Economy: An Interview with Rally.io CEO Bremner Morris

“At the moment, utility is the most exciting use case for NFTs. Platforms are beginning to understand that focusing only on scarcity to create digital ‘collectibles’ is an interesting, but extremely limited and transactional, use case. NFTs should be more than just an income stream for creators; they should drive deeper connections between creators and fans.”

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Tokens Are a New Digital Primitive, Analogous to the Website

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Fundraising in a Community First World

“Creating a safe space for the community to ask honest questions and receive meaningful feedback built trust and showed that investors were here for more than profit-oriented motives. Imagine if the first thousand users of Facebook had a chance to sit down with the platform’s investors 15 years ago to align on values and future vision.

The point of no return

“The collision of money and finance with the infrastructure of a new internet inextricably links two very powerful forces – technology and investing. With Web3, the development of the internet and the financialization of the internet cannot be decoupled. Web3 is both the next consumer internet and the next wave of financial services.”

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Misc

The Pandemic Speaks

“When I appear, I pick my time carefully. I enter the picture when your elites lose their consensus, grand empires reach a border too far, institutions lose their practicality, refugees clog the byways and the climate changes. You may remember my COVID as the beginning of several long emergencies. Or you may watch Netflix instead.”

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‘While you seek to build great walls of stability, I bring volatility.’ A 1625 illustration of Londoners fleeing the plague. Source: New York Public Library.

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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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