Latest from Ben
209 articles
Music startups and their buyers go to different conferences
Music Innovation Consulting (MIC) keeps an agenda of 96 music and tech events for 2026. Fifteen carry its music-tech label, and eight of those…
Creative tech in Europe runs on grants. San Sebastián’s finalists prove it
Ten startups pitched at the San Sebastián Film Festival on 24 September. I went through every one of them afterward and couldn’t find a…
AI replaced 3D printing in composites pitches
In 2019, 3D printing was the loudest thing in composites. Across that year’s JEC Composites Startup Booster applications it ran at 24.7 mentions per…
Half the Slush 100 builds hardware
Fifty-two of the 100 companies Slush selected for 2026 sell something that exists in the physical world: a battery, a robot, a membrane, a…
IFA 2026: the twenty startups who pitched, and the one who won
A company that prints implantable human tissue won a pitch competition at a consumer electronics fair. Cellbricks Therapeutics took the IFA Pitch Battle 2026…
The most digital companies in the world are opening coffee shops
The AI industry runs on GPUs, APIs and Discord servers. So why is an AI insurance startup valued at $4 billion signing a lease…
The empty startup area: why tradeshows fail at startup sales
Picture this. A strategy director at a major exhibition calls with six weeks to go before the show. The brand new startup area has…
10 things founders can do during the summer event break
The event calendar goes quiet in July and August. Deadlines don’t. This article assumes you’re an early stage founder, pre-seed or seed at most,…
The hidden costs of events: Why founders get the math wrong
Most startup founders treat events like they’re going travelling: count the days, block the calendar, done. But event tickets don’t come cheap, and the…
US Expansion Isn’t Dead – and 5 Insights to Help European Startups Cross the Atlantic
Index Ventures’ book ‘Winning in the US: The Founder’s Guide to Building a Global Company from Europe’ explores U.S. expansion as a pathway to…