Sesame Summit 2026 – application open

Launching @ SXSW

For someone who doesn’t know what SXSW is, how would you pitch it?

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Photo courtesy of SXSW

For someone who’s not familiar with South by Southwest (SXSW), it’s a nine day celebration of creativity across many different forms. Everything from speakers to films to band showcases, comedy, and everything in between. It happens in Austin, Texas in March so you also have that whole spring thing working. Ultimately we hope to inspire out global audiences to come up with new ideas and do better things.

Could you tell us a bit more about the building blocks on the program side?

On the program side, we have a conference which typically happens during the daytime. We’ll have 15 tracks that cover everything from civic engagement to culture. This year we have climate change track, transportation track, a design track and so on and so forth. Within these tracks we will have keynotes and featured speakers alongside lots of other sessions. We also have a film festival that will have approximately 300 total films covering everything from documentary shorts to narrative features and everything in between. It very much celebrates independent filmmaking but also features some big Hollywood releases. Last but not least, we have the SXSW Music Festival which started about 30 years ago. The festival has around 1,500 bands from all over the world covering every variety of pop music.

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Photo courtesy of SXSW

Many different avenues to explore creativity, and I think that’s one of the really unique value adds of SXSW. We’re not just a conference, we’re a festival where some of the best networking & business opportunities emerge.

What is the SXSW Pitch?

SXSW Pitch is our in-house startup competition running for 13 years now. It’s a very competitive process where we typically get about a thousand applications from startups from all over the US and the world. We have a very rigorous judging process which picks out the best 50 startups and those 50 finalists pitch on site to an audience of VCs, media, and industry professionals. There will be winners in 10 different categories after the pitch presentations.

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Photo courtesy of SXSW

It’s a great way for startups to leverage the SXSW platform and create new opportunities for themselves.


Hugh also shared his thoughts on hybrid events and how speakers will be able to make the most of SXSW in the future. Check out the full video of this talk here.

Interested in finding out more about this incredible annual event in Austin? Check out our Sesamers profile of SXSW 2022

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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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