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My First Virtual Keynote at Uppstart 2020 – Tips and Learnings

Uppstart Speakers. Image via uppstart.com
Speaker Lineup @ Uppstart

Uppstart is a Tech event originally held in the city of Uppsala (Sweden). As with many events this year, Uppstart went virtual, and to do so, the organizers opted for the classic, but user friendly, Hopin platform.

Revolving around 20 entrepreneurship tracks (Scaleup, Impact, AI, etc.), the event was hosted on the 4th of September, 2020. Uppstart decided to retain their large audience format and by their count, welcomed more than 4000 attendees, which, in my opinion, is a pretty good result.

My Session

As network building is at the core of our expertise at Startup Sesame, I was mobilized as a speaker on a specific topic: “How to build and sustain a startup community in the face of Covid-19?”.

My keynote was scheduled for 15 minutes and I could share my presentation. To their credit, the support and follow-up from the technical team was extraordinary. I had test sessions and proper guidelines from founder, Jason Dainter, ensuring I understood how to connect and access my session as a moderator.

Additionally, I had a volunteer test my session 15 minutes prior to going live double checking that everything was working as planned. As every presenter is nervous, whether it’s on stage or at home behind a webcam, having these technical worries eliminated was a great relief.

As I was hosting the keynote from home (thanks to Covid-19!), I had to prepare my own ‘studio’, (but that’s a whole other story)! I’ll admit it was a bit of a challenge, but I did manage to find a blank white wall in the basement.

In terms of computer height, I used a table and also elevated my Macbook a bit more with a few books (The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martinez worked perfectly).

The background wasn’t exactly perfect (I had an elliptical bike and a Spanish ham in one corner!) but if anyone noticed, I received zero questions about what’s for dinner ! And thankfully, I didn’t have to wear headphones, as I wasn’t moderating with someone else, but I made sure there wouldn’t be any disturbing sound during the session.

No fancy studio equipment here, I just made sure all the doors and windows were closed, no laundry whirring away in the machine, and my loving family had no problem leaving the house for a few hours. Thanks fam!

While preparing for my virtual keynote, I found these resources highly beneficial:

Overall, it was a great experience. As mentioned, this was my first virtual keynote, and I really appreciated the short format, the flexibility given to the speakers, and the fact that we all received ample time to introduce ourselves at the beginning of each session.

What Was Missing?

The events industry has been entirely transformed in the wake of the global pandemic. And as such, the rules and “norms” of event attendance have been evolving as well, in some cases, quite dramatically.…

In the “old world”, you had to thoroughly prepare in advance for an event (study the target audience, the topics approached, the attendees identities and style for your stage, etc), now it seems that any and every attendee can simply pop in and pop out whenever they want, and a speaker doesn’t really have to worry about it. Sometimes they don’t even see it, as they’re undoubtedly focused on delivering a quality presentation. There are no physically moving bodies trying to find seats, or navigating towards the aisles. At least, this is true for a casual speaker, and I don’t pretend to be anything more than that.

Even though I really enjoyed receiving multiple messages (on Linkedin, mostly) after the session saying that people appreciated the content and my perspectives for the startup ecosystem and events industry, I would have loved to have gotten  to know a few more other speakers and/or engage further with my session’s attendees.

I would have loved to learn more from speakers in our community: Jesper Skibsby (Warm), Robin Wauters (Tech.eu), Monty Munford (BlockSpeak) and Lubomila Jordanova (Plan.A Earth). There was even a session about sleep as an important asset to any tech startup founder with Frida Rångtell.

On a professional (and personal level), this first experience helped me make some interesting virtual connections that will most likely end up converting to real-world business partnerships.

And as this was my first virtual experience, I now know to allot extra time to take advantage of the “other” opportunities happening at virtual events. E.g. I’d scheduled a call half an hour after my moderation session concluded, and I wasn’t able to involve myself more and take advantage of the VIP lounge that was planned for speakers and investors.

All in all, what I can say is that it was a truly  positive experience, and I’m very much looking forward to repeating it in the near future.

Other relevant events in the Nordics

Speaker lineup image provided via Uppstart.com

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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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