Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

ChangeNOW: The world’s largest event for the planet

Normally, this annual event is held at the Grand Palais, but since the Grand Palais is under refurbishment, this year ChangeNOW took place in the beautiful Palais Éphémère, just in front of the Eiffel Tower! Such an A-class location!

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Eiffel Stage

The event featured 5 big stages along with some smaller ones, hosting very interesting talks giving inspirations to the audience. The event welcomed 260+ exhibitors, being mainly startups but also some big companies such as Renault, Orange, LVMH and Microsoft. I was really amazed by the set up of the event.

The event is mainly focused on Sustainability with a diverse range of topics, from Biodiveristy, Health and Mobility to Food & Agriculture, Inclusion and Education or Ocean & Water.

Sustainability is at the heart of our economy and we need to find new ways if we want to achieve carbon neutrality and a net zero world. All the startups featured at ChangeNOW are going in this direction. As Head of Startup Booster at JEC Group – the largest startup competition in the world of Advanced & Composite Materials – I was keen to discover new startups in this field… and I did!

Here are some of the best startups I met and a few interesting talks I attended during the event:

Startups

Revolve Air Wheelchair: REVOLVE AIR approaches the wheelchair in a new revolutionary way that makes it the world’s first active wheelchair that fits the standards of a universal cabin luggage size restriction. It folds in the same amount of time as a common foldable wheelchair, but it saves up to 60% more space when both revolutionary 24 inches foldable wheels collapse along the same hub together with the seat and the backrest, guaranteeing a unique compactness and transportability, not found elsewhere.

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Orange Fiber: Orange Fiber is an Italian startup that has patented and produces sustainable fabrics from citrus fruit by-products. They create high quality fabrics for the fashion-luxury sector. They start from the by-products that the citrus processing industry produces annually — the disposal of which has high costs both for the citrus juice industry as well as for the environment. They have established a fully traced and transparent supply chain to transform this by-product into the perfect ingredient for conscious designers.

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Lightyear: Lightyear One is a long range solar electric vehicle designed to be grid independent and to drive anywhere. Its unique vehicle architecture and technology have been developed with high efficiency in mind, allowing Lightyear One to consume only 83 Wh/km — two to three times less energy than any other electric vehicle on the market today. This results in an exceptional range of 725 km (WLTP) with the lowest emissions, the lowest charging frequency, and 7,000 to 20,000 kilometres of free, effortless, and clean solar range every year.

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Green Gen Technologies: After several years of R&D, a group of 2 French entrepreneurs succeeded in designing a revolutionary biosourced and recyclable bottle, developed from flax fibers and plant-based resins forming a lightweight and ultra-resistant composite. with very low carbon impact.

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Green Gen Technologies

CompPair: This startup develops smart and sustainable composite materials, which are able to repair themselves and be better recycled, bringing circularity to the composites industry. They recently produced the first healable skis with Salomon.

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Inspiring Talks

Mike Horn, the famous explorer and adventurer gave the opening speech of ChangeNOW, motivating and encouraging the audience to change their habits if we want to achieve a more sustainable world: “We have to change the way we think. Working together is the new competition

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Mike Horn @ ChangeNOW 2022

Bertrand Piccard of Solar Impulse Foundation discussing low carbon cities: “if you have a low-carbon city, it means you are saving energy, you are saving natural resources, you are efficient, which means that the people that are the poorest are paying less because they waste less.

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Patrick Boissier, President of the Arch, an initiative labelled by the French Presidency of the EU, proposes to bring visibility to 100 of the best European innovative solutions in terms of ecological transition: “What better way to launch The Arch than with the aura of ChangeNOW 2022

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Tony Estanguet , from Paris 2024 – Comité d’organisation des Jeux Olympiques et Paralympiques de 2024, revealed the new engagements during the “Sport for Change” session at ChangeNOW 2022:
– Around 80% of food served will be locally sourced;
– The carbon footprint of the plates served will be divided by 2;
– The use of of single-use plastic will be divided by 2;
– All of this for 13 million meals served = 10 Fifa World Cups.

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Tony Estanguet @ ChangeNOW 2022

It was fantastic to attend such an event and met some many people face to face. I already look forward to attend the next edition. To conclude, there are no better words than the ones used by ChangeNOW team as motto of this edition: “It’s time for ordinary people to do extraordinary things!

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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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