Entrepreneurship

Ben’s List for Entrepreneurs W53 – Selected

With the year coming to an end – (but wait, there’s still week 53 and a new mutation of the virus ‍♀️ ‍♂️) we thought it would be interesting to check again on the recent articles and ideas that I shared on a weekly basis for the past 2 months.

Technically it’s not really my 2020 reading list, but it gives you a bird eye’s view of what my brain is usually busy with. These are the things I find interesting and valuable, hopefully you do too.

Unsurprisingly, I dove into everything related to the launch of Selected by Sesamers lately. So a lot about community, newsletters, marketing and social media. The bread and butter of any business nowadays.

I also entertained my mind with literature, neuroscience and a bunch of exotic concepts around quantum mechanics. A few are shared below.

My top advice to those reading this last article of 2020:

Take the time to be a better manager and infuse the right strategy within your organization.

My New Year’s Resolution is to improve in these areas in 2021.

And to keep sharing what I learn along the way.

COMMUNITY

1. How to Launch an Online Community — Lean Community Launch Framework

Community isn’t just another word for audience. It’s a special space you create for your most engaged members to gather and interact.

Link: yenfm.substack.com/p/how-to-launch-an-online-community
Author: John Saddington
Source: Yen.fm

2. Big trend: online communities at the intersection of content curation and knowledge management

We are living through the emergence of a new business category that doesn’t even have a name yet, but which I believe will become an important part of our digital lives: online communities at the intersection of content curation and knowledge management.

This is EXACTLY what we’re aiming for with Selected

Link: sariazout.substack.com/p/check-your-pulse-55
Author: Sari Azout
Source: Check Your Pulse

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

Diagnosing Symptoms of Success

Here’s one for you on-the-go.

Dive into Kaizo’s podcast with Talixo’s Jan Brenneke as he shares his expertise in the application of analytics & metrics in the context of Customer Service and it’s intersection with management science.

Link: support-heroes-by-kaizo.simplecast.com/episodes/ep4-jan-brenneke
Author: Kaizo.com
Source: support-heroes-by-kaizo.simplecast.com

LITERATURE

To Believe in Things: Poet Joseph Pintauro’s Lost Love Poem to Life, Illustrated by the Radical Nun and Visionary Artist Sister Corita Kent

You are not everything but everything could not be everything without you.

I shared this with Dan. He cried

Link: brainpickings.org/2020/11/10/to-believe-in-things-joseph-pintauro-corita-kent/
Author: Maria Popova
Source: Brain Pickings

MARKETING

Your Marketing Org is Slow. Here’s a framework to move faster.

I’m always an advocate of “done is better than perfect” and I believe that it’s even more the case with marketing. Conveying your story to the right audience is timely. Sometimes it’s a matter of hours for a campaign to become irrelevant to the cultural context.

MANAGEMENT

1. Successful Remote Teams Communicate In Bursts

We started to experiment with flex hours after 2 months of working from home. It means that we are all on deck from 10am to 3pm.

I can confirm that “burstiness” works very well for a small teams like ours. It involves agreeing on some work routines that allow everyone to respond to messages fast and have short and intense periods of communication.

Link: hbr.org/2020/10/successful-remote-teams-communicate-in-bursts
Author: Christoph Riedl & Anita Williams Woolley
Source: Harvard Business Review

2. The Psychology of Focus: How Great Teams Find Traction Amid Distraction

In this podcast, NFX General Partner James Currier sits down with Nir Eyal, author of Hooked and Indistractable to analyze what high performing teams are doing right in a world full of distractions.

NEUROSCIENCE

Altered states of consciousness: the elusiveness of the mind

Maybe instead of considering a default state and a myriad of altered states, we need to contemplate the possibility that all these states of consciousness are all equally important modes of perception.

Link: nesslabs.com/altered-states-of-consciousness
Author: Anne-Laure Le Cunff
Source: Ness Labs

NEWSLETTERS

The best newsletters to follow on European tech

Startup News, Weekly Roundups, Data, Deeptech, … and the list goes on. Great compilation. Now if only they had an Events category …

Link: sifted.eu/articles/europe-startup-newsletters
Author: Amy Lewin
Source: Sifted

LinkedIn’s Alternate Universe

And I quote:

LinkedIn is the fucking worst.

Especially considering the basic fact that…

If you have a job, you might lose it. If you don’t, you might find one. So, we stay. Even if it sucks. LinkedIn is bizarre because it tries to make this hostage situation fun. Even though it’s not.

Link: divinations.substack.com/p/linkedins-alternate-universe
Author: Fadeke Adegbuyi
Source: Divinations

STRATEGY

Build a Network of Ideas, People & Products

Jack Butcher, founder of VisualizeValue walks us through his thoughts and process of finding people you can help, and building products that help them.

Ideas -> People -> Product.

VENTURE CAPITAL

1. Why investors are betting on Silicon Valley’s second climate boom

If the U.S. Presidential election showed us nothing else, Climate Change is now back on the agenda at The White House. It’s on The Valley’s list too.‌

Link: qz.com/1927198/silicon-valley-is-investing-in-climate-tech-again/
Author: Michael J. Coren
Source: Quartz

2. The VC “Strips off” – Silicon Roundabout Ventures VC Fund Deck Reviewed Live by Draper Esprit LP

From a network access perspective, being able to access an engaged community is not just a “nice to have” but really a “must have”.

Link: siliconroundabout.tech/the-vc-strips-off-silicon-roundabout-ventures-deck-reviewed-live-by-draper-esprit-lp
Author: Francesco Perticarari
Source: Silicon Roundabout

ZOOMITIS

Home Screens: Quarantine is the future big tech wanted us to want. How long before we want out?

Before the pandemic, tech companies treated space as an annoying set of limitations to be overcome by apps

Users experience Zoom more as a stultified form of virtual reality than an augmented one, because it now feels like there’s little off-screen reality available to augment

SEASONAL

Eight hours of 4K footage and ASMR audio of a cozy fireplace

Because when you can’t have an actual fireplace, this is the next best thing

Link: youtu.be/AWKzr6n0ea0
Source: Balu – Relaxing in Nature in 4k

Ben Costantini

Become a member of Sesamers

Sesamers is a private community for entrepreneurs, VCs, corporates and events.

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Events 2 days ago

5 brilliant startup marketing techniques from Bits and Pretzels 2025

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.

Sophie Marquet

New Materials 3 days ago

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Anna Heim

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