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Ben’s List 27

But I feel you and it can be one of the most interesting ways to enjoy your time off: reading articles from Ben’s List 🙂

Check out my Selected profile to dive into previous posts and (re)discover around 300 articles that made it to my weekly selection.

This week is a short post since it’s my last one before we take a break and return on August 19th. We cover marketing, venture capital and startup astronomy.

Strategy

Choosing Your North Star Metric

“Whatever companies choose as their guiding metric, all energy and brainpower will flow in that direction. This can be hugely effective — it has worked wonders for companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Uber, especially early on — but it can also be dangerous. By maintaining a laser focus on a single metric for too long, teams risk short-term thinking, missing new opportunities, and sacrificing the user experience.”

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Venture Capital

The future of VC is decentralized

“VC is a relationship business… this is why industry folks tend to be so resistant to process and tooling. And yet we shouldn’t forget that the relationships in VC are governed by numbers. The relationship between a VC and a founder is governed by the cash and equity.”

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Startup cities in the Entrepreneurial Age

“Each day, more than two new unicorns emerged globally during 2021. There are now 1,601 unicorns and $1B+ exits of which 1,071 still private unicorns. The combined global value of tech companies has ballooned to over $35 trillion, of which $18T from companies founded after 2000, and $10T from companies founded after 2010. The rate of innovation is accelerating.”

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Marketing

Virality deep-dive: Virality vs. Network Effects

“Network Effects and Virality are often confused in the online content world, possibly because the two often occur together and, in such cases, end up reinforcing each other. Network effects and Virality are, however, completely different. There are many products which have network effects but are not viral. Conversely, many viral products do not have network effects.”

Network Effects – A product with network effects gets more valuable as more users use it. They are achieved only after a certain critical mass is reached but can prove to be a very strong source of value and competitive advantage beyond that point.

Virality – A viral product is one whose rate of adoption increases with adoption. Within a certain limit, the product grows faster as more users adopt it. There are many products that exhibit virality without exhibiting network effects.

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TED Talks Are Coming to Clubhouse

“‘For nearly forty years TED has brought the world’s preeminent ideas, imaginations and voices to audiences,’ Stoetzel said in a statement. ‘This partnership will bring those minds into a dialogue with the millions of creators who make up the Clubhouse community.'”

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LAWRENCE SUMULONG/GETTY IMAGES

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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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