Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Climate action 101 for startups

“Climate risk is investment risk,” stated BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink in his annual letter to chief executives earlier this year.  What’s more – the claim is backed by making sustainability the new standard for their investment strategy. Coming from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, it might be enough to tip over how investors think about sustainability. And with that, how founders prioritize it, too.

I would bet that by the end of 2021 every startup founder will have to answer the question: “And what do you do to stop climate change?” Keep reading to find out what could be your answer.  

The challenge is that in the majority of tech companies with less than 500 employees, sustainability is that hot potato topic that no one knows how to handle. Some team members may have firm opinions. Some are science-based, some are assumption-based and some are plain ignorant. It’s an all-or-nothing kind of thinking, and with the limited resources startups usually have, it’s usually the latter one.

Is that the right way to approach climate change? I don’t think so. Inaction is the worst response. Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum, taking action will increase your competitive advantage in the eyes of investors, employees, and customers.

If you do just one thing right and communicate it well, it’s enough.

Like for many other things in the startup world, the trick is to figure out the Minimal Viable Product— in this case, the sustainability MVP. You’re not Unilever- neither in terms of your business, nor your sustainability strategy. Don’t try to be.

What is the easiest and most impactful thing you can do? A simple customer survey can give you that answer. Choose one thing that suits your company values the most and include it in the project pipeline like you would for any other project.

What the MVP sustainability strategy could look like:

  • measure, reduce, and offset your carbon footprint;
  • spend one day per year doing something good for the environment (cleaning up a beach, planting trees, helping the local community);
  • commit to eliminating plastic from product packaging;

If you choose the route of offsetting your carbon emissions (which would be the most scientific and measurable approach), below are the TOP 3 companies I would trust.

The thing you need to realize is that becoming carbon neutral as a software company is not that expensive. The average carbon footprint per employee for a software company is approximately 6 MTCO2/year. And offsetting that would cost around 30-120 EUR/year. I have talked to each of these companies, followed their progress over time, and researched them for you.

Pick one and take action.

Plan A
If you’re a software company with one office space – Plan A will be the best solution for you. It’s easy. The team walks you through the whole process, you get suggestions for reducing your footprint and options to buy verified carbon offset projects. This company is led by the fierce Lubomila Jordanova, who’s currently one of the main thought-leaders on the topic of sustainability in Europe.

Compensate
Although still a rather new solution, I’ve been following their growth since I first heard about them at Slush 2019. The non-profit team is based in Helsinki and is committing 100% of their time and energy to reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They can help you calculate your footprint, offset unavoidable emissions by investing in carbon capture projects (the new & cool way to become carbon neutral, approved by Bill Gates), and can offer solutions for enabling your customers, too.

Pachama
Main offset provider for Shopify and all of its e-commerce stores. Backed by Paul Graham (Y Combinator founder) and Chris Sacca (Lowercase founder) to name a few. They use technology to do offsetting differently, maximizing the amount of money actually being delivered to their offset projects. They help you calculate your company’s carbon footprint and then offer various projects to invest in – you can choose based on your geographic or other preferences. In the end, you receive a certificate of carbon credit retirement you can use in your communication.

And once you have taken action, share your journey with your customers, your team, and investors. They will celebrate this step with you. And so will I.

Photo by Christian Mack on Unsplash

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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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