Selected - The Sesamers Podcast

Ben Costantini
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Selected is the podcast from Sesamers, the unfair advantage of the world's most startup-packed events. We talk about events, technology, science, entrepreneurship, culture, venture capital, and everything in between.

  1. Antonio Cellie

    May 27

    Antonio Cellie

    Mathematical Forecast Modeling and the Food Valley Roots  Antonio’s background is rooted in applied econometrics and mathematical forecast models designed to help food brands optimize retail assortments and international export distribution. In 2009, he stepped into the role of CEO at Fiere di Parma through its institutional backing from Crédit Agricole. Located in Italy's famed "Food Valley," the Parma region encompasses massive agricultural networks where food and food tech comprise roughly 40% of the local GDP. The Lucrative Economics of Private Venue Governance  Under Antonio's management, Fiere di Parma modernised its facility architecture through a massive 100 million euro infrastructure revitalization program. Operating with a majority of private shareholders—a structural rarity for European exhibition hubs—the venue has achieved remarkable profitability. Antonio shares that the firm reached 65 million euros in annual revenue, pulling in 20 million euros in EBITDA with a positive net financial position of 35 million euros. The Strategic Consolidation of Cibus and Tuttofood  Fiere di Parma operates a deep global alliance with international organizer Koelnmesse to co-manage iconic food technology formats. Recognizing that the historical Tuttofood exhibition in Milan was experiencing a downward operational trend, Antonio negotiated a deal to fully acquire the show from Fiera Milano, bringing them on as their second-largest private shareholder. To maximize technical efficiency, Tuttofood has been strategically rescheduled to occur during even years, serving as a highly qualitative, premium counterpart to Germany's mainstream Anuga event. The Launch of the Food Manifesto and Cultural Value  Tuttofood 2026 marks the introduction of the official Food Manifesto, a positioning framework treating food as a strategic asset to fight major systemic global crises. Strongly influenced by slow food pioneer Carlo Petrini, Antonio emphasizes that saving the planet requires societies to change behaviors to eat less quantity and choose higher quality products. He stresses that health crises like obesity should be solved through foundational Mediterranean lifestyle choices and balanced natural nutrition instead of relying strictly on pharmaceuticals. Unpacking Market Trends: The Possible vs. The Impossible  Analyzing over 700 new product launches at the fair revealed significant market trends across premiumized tradition, global street food, and functional items. Reflecting on early plant-based waves in California, Antonio frames Italy as the country of "the possible," explicitly contrasting it with the hyper-processed "impossible meat" narratives. He highlights major food tech breakthroughs that transform regional agricultural proteins—such as lentils, chickpeas, and lupini beans—into delicious meat alternatives that do not feel like a culinary punishment. Advising Startups to Target the Field-to-Process Chasm  As modern consumers demand highly transparent and readable agricultural supply chains, Antonio urges emerging Agrotech startups to move away from generic end-consumer items. He points out a significant operational gap existing between open farming fields and industrial processing factories. The next generation of food innovators should build specialized process tools to help these two fragmented segments share data, satisfy regulatory retail compliance, and practice true upcycling across the food value chain. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    25 min
  2. Maxim Segeren

    Mar 21

    Maxim Segeren

    Bridging the Academic Gap to Solve a Massive Engineering Problem  Maxime's expertise lies in the structural design of offshore lattice steel frames. During his PhD, he recognized that welding tubular components is incredibly troublesome to calculate and prone to extreme material fatigue. He partnered with cofounder and inventor Marco Pavlovic, who proposed a radical solution to bond steel tubulars with composites rather than welding them. Although initially highly skeptical, structural testing convinced Maxime that this approach solved the iterations, stress concentration, and material degradation holding the offshore engineering sector back. The Strategy of an Industry-Backed Consortium  In 2018, Maxime vetted market demand by asking major energy players if they would adopt this composite bonding approach. Finding immense interest from steel yards but a lack of structural understanding from composite companies, he launched Tree Composites in 2019 to bridge the two worlds. He formed a powerful initial consortium of 15 industry parties, securing co-financing from future clients and the Dutch government. To avoid conflicts of interest, he strategically kept these corporate partners off the equity cap table while keeping them involved in product development. Biomimicry and the Physics of Stress Reduction  The name Tree Composites is a literal nod to nature. The technology was inspired by a massive plantain tree in Belgrade that was structurally supported by legacy steel columns. Over time, the tree naturally grew its biological fibers around the metal tubes, thickening only in localized zones of maximum load transfer. Tree Composites mimics this by wrapping glass or carbon fibers precisely where needed around steel junctions. Because welding actively damages mother metal and requires up to ten times the thickness to meet standard service lifetimes, shifting to wrapped nodes allows developers to slash overall steel requirements by 50%. Simulating a 35-Year Lifetime Without Protective Coatings  To reassure conservative maritime clients that a connected foundation can withstand severe deep sea elements, Tree Composites spent five years conducting brutal accelerated aging trials. They subjected the composites to non-stop seawater baths, intense frost cycles, and alternating defrost cycles hundreds of times. Crucially, they ran these durability profiles on bare, unprotected materials without any secondary coatings. This ensures that if a component gets scratched or exposed offshore, it can survive without triggering immediate, costly maintenance excursions. A Massive Extension of Wind Farm Lifespans  Traditional welded wind turbine substructures have a limited life span and require an estimated 350 million euros to dismantle and clear away after their initial operational use. By removing the structural vulnerabilities of welding, Tree Composites allows these mega foundations to remain safely anchored for up to 100 years. Instead of spending nearly a billion euros every few decades to pull out massive structures and damage marine ecosystems, operators can simply swap out the electrical power unit sitting on top while reusing the structural lattice indefinitely. Navigating the Hardware Chicken and Egg Financing Bottleneck  For the first time in company history, Tree Composites is stepping away from bootstrap mechanics to raise external funding. Despite immense pipeline traction from enterprise developers like Shell and Vattenfall, tier one clients refuse to sign final purchasing contracts until a startup can prove physical manufacturing scalability. Maxime is raising capital specifically to de-risk delivery capability and build out automated production lines. Rather than raising capital to survive, their runway is already secured through 2029, meaning the fresh capital will go purely toward serving commercial orders. Scaling Through Automation and the "Future in Steel" Podcast  Live at JEC World 2026, Tree Composites announced a major Memorandum of Understanding with manufacturing giant Owens Corning. This partnership allows them to scale without inflating their internal capital expenditure by tapping directly into global raw material and automation networks. To educate the engineering sector on this structural transition, the company has launched a dedicated podcast called Future in Steel. Listeners can tune in to learn how non-welded breakthroughs are paving a path for European material independence. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    23 min
  3. Alina Chanaewa

    Mar 19

    Alina Chanaewa

    Bridging the Gap from Academic Labs to Marketable Products  Alina identifies fundamentally as a scientist who is deeply motivated by seeing advanced technology packed and commercialized to solve real world problems. After shifting from academia to industry at a startup called Skytree, she met her physics professor and aerospace engineer cofounders, Rudolf and Christian. The duo was explicitly hunting for a commercial leader to transition their university research project into a full fledged business entity. The Vibrancy of Amsterdam's Science Park Network  The founding team originally connected through a mutual friend within Amsterdam's Science Park network. Alina describes the location as a highly collaborative environment where multiple universities, prestigious research institutes, and innovative technology businesses physically coexist. This close proximity facilitates critical serendipitous interactions that help heavy science projects find industrial operators. The Physics of Non-Destructive Testing via Eddy Currents  Unlike destructive testing methods that require slicing through components to examine their integrity, non-destructive testing inspects materials without causing physical damage. While legacy methods like ultrasound require years of specialized training to correctly interpret complex bouncing wave reflections, Editech focuses strictly on electrical conductivity. By passing a current through a localized coil sensor, they induce circular eddy currents inside the carbon fiber layer. Any micro-cracks, structurally broken fibers, or internal delaminations immediately alter the material's conductivity patterns, creating a clear signal visualization via their integrated software. Bypassing the Rigid Certifications of the Aerospace Bottleneck  While high stakes aerospace safety protocols represent a massive future market, getting new validation methods officially approved by aviation regulators takes an immense amount of time. To establish an immediate market entry point, Editech targets manufacturers that lack internal non-destructive testing capabilities and are currently forced to contract slow, expensive external testing labs. Their product serves as a rapid preliminary tool for technicians to instantly scan for structural hotspots. This enables them to target lower regulation, high performance sectors like premium prosthetics, race cars, hockey sticks, and competitive race boats. Navigating the Hardware Investor Disconnect in an AI Era  Alina notes that raising capital for physical deep tech in Europe is a highly nuanced challenge. The overarching venture market trend is heavily dominated by software agents and trending AI models, causing many generalist VCs to pass on hardware operations. While Editech plans to incorporate machine learning algorithms for automated signal processing in the future, their foundation remains hard sensing equipment. To cut through this friction, Alina selectively targets dedicated hardware investor ecosystems like JEC World, advising founders to build relationships with technical funds up to three years before actually triggering a seed round. The Smart Capital Roadmap for 2026  Backed by a previous 300,000 euro convertible loan from a Dutch regional development fund, Editech successfully expanded its team to include a dedicated head of engineering and a seasoned automotive commercial director. To finance the direct manufacturing launch of their first commercial product, Alina is organizing a half million euro convertible loan round to secure a 12 to 18 month operational runway. Rather than just chasing raw cash, she is prioritizing strategic angel investors with deep industrial backgrounds who can directly open corporate procurement doors across the automotive and manufacturing supply chains. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    19 min
  4. Shaun Seaman

    Mar 17

    Shaun Seaman

    The Surfing Trip Epiphany and Shifting Focus  Shaun traces the origin of Mushroom Material to a 2018 surfing trip to Indonesia. Expecting pristine ocean waters, he was instead hit with plastic bags wrapping around his ankles and beaches covered in Styrofoam. The experience had a profound emotional impact, driving the mechanical engineer to drop his plans for a travel app and dedicate himself to building physical, tangible solutions for material sustainability. Solving the 10,000x Bio-Scaling Bottleneck via Pelletization  Traditional mycelium packaging requires agricultural waste to grow inside static molds for two weeks. For large clients like Samsung requiring hundreds of thousands of components, climate-controlling that many separate molds is financially impossible. Viewing this as a process engineering challenge rather than a biology problem, Shaun's breakthrough was pelletizing the material and coating it in a protective biopolymer. This allows the material to drop into standard plastic injection molding machinery, cutting the time to shape it by 10,000 times. The Regulatory Squeeze Overriding Unit Economics  Multinational clients are split into two buckets. High-end retail brands like Estée Lauder approach Mushroom Material for tactile, emotional, and aesthetic branding purposes. However, consumer electronics and retail giants like Samsung and IKEA are completely driven by strict, fragmented legislation. As regions across Australia and Europe outright ban non-recyclable plastics, using sustainable materials has transitioned from a cost preference to a strict requirement for shipping goods across borders. Unlocking High-Value B2B Wins at JEC World  Returning to JEC World as an exhibitor after being a startup booster finalist in 2023, Shaun highlights the massive return on investment from physical trade shows. He shares how a brief, seven-minute face-to-face interaction at their booth connected them directly with the senior packaging engineer from Apple. He notes that physical material must be held in a client's hands to be truly understood, bypassing months of digital friction. Circular Partnerships with IKEA and Diageo  Mushroom Material has moved past basic packaging into creative, circular product development. Because IKEA cut its beanbag inventory due to synthetic foam restrictions, Shaun's team is stepping in to directly supply home-compostable pellets to revive the line. For whiskey titan Diageo, Mushroom Material is actively testing how to take the brand's own leftover barley waste from the distilling process and convert it directly into premium packaging for Johnny Walker Blue Label. The 350 Pitch Grind and the Flight to Singapore  Reflecting on their 5.2 million dollar seed round, Shaun describes the grueling process of surviving 350 investor conversations. After walking away from an unfavorable local term sheet with only three months of runway left, he took a one-way flight to Singapore. Within a couple of weeks, he secured a major institutional deal with Wavemaker. By headquartering in Singapore, the brand preserved its green New Zealand identity while positioning itself financially close to the primary manufacturing supply chains of Southeast Asia. The 20 Million Dollar Roadmap to Industrial Scale  With their New Zealand pilot line fully operational and heading to market, the company's next phase is scaling up capacity. To survive the fast-approaching demands of their massive enterprise pipelines, Shaun has initiated early conversations to raise a 20 million dollar funding round. The capital will split evenly between extended deep tech R&D and building their very first 10 million dollar full-scale industrial manufacturing facility. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    23 min
  5. Claude-Sebastien Lerbourg

    Mar 14

    Claude-Sebastien Lerbourg

    Operational Grit and the Massive VC Boom in China  Claude-Sébastien began his career with manufacturing giant Saint-Gobain, spending nine years navigating operations and running a fast growing abrasive business in China. Transitioning to Saint-Gobain's corporate venture capital arm, Nova, in 2018, he witnessed a historic wave of venture funding. During this era, Chinese tech rapidly advanced from simply producing cheaper clones of Western materials to manufacturing high performance products with superior market metrics. The Imperative of Mapping Chinese Competition  His time investing in the Asia-Pacific ecosystem permanently altered his startup evaluation framework. Claude-Sébastien observes that for nearly every deep tech breakthrough emerging in the United States, there is a highly serious competitor simultaneously tackling the exact same problem in China. He urges European and American founders to thoroughly research Chinese market activities, noting that a complete competitive analysis is impossible without this perspective. Supernova Invest's Multi-Stage Financial Architecture  Co-created by the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and asset manager Amundi, Supernova Invest bridges deep technical expertise with institutional financial power. While the platform historically focused on seed stage investments out of the lab, it has expanded to include Series A, Series B, and a late stage fund called STS to prevent the common funding cliff deep tech startups face as they scale. The Strict Geometry of Seed Stage Rules  Managing a 100 million euro seed stage fund, Claude-Sébastien operates under rigorous regulatory guidelines set by BPI France. To qualify for a seed check, which typically ranges from 2 to 3 million euros, a startup must be under eight years old, have less than 500,000 euros in historical revenue, and have never raised institutional venture capital before. The fund actively leads or co-leads rounds across advanced materials, health tech, clean tech, and digital value chains. Real Hardware Success Stories from the Portfolio  Claude-Sébastien highlights several core hardware investments, including EasyBot, a CEA robotics spin-off that replicates human precision in industrial sanding and surface contact. He also details CWS, a company engineering massive 40 meter high rigid composite wings for container ships to reduce global maritime fuel consumption, and TeraCalis, which utilizes terahertz wavelengths to perform non-destructive testing and detect microscopic defects within composite layers. Reengineering Composites for a Circular Economy  Attending JEC World, the largest composite trade show on earth, Claude-Sébastien notes that the material space has boomed across aerospace, defense, and automotive sectors. While historically criticized for being immensely difficult to recycle, the entire European industry is undergoing a major shift toward sustainability. Supernova actively tracks this space, looking for innovative startups proposing circular solutions to use lightweight composites in an environmentally friendly way. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    18 min
  6. Nina Heine

    12/05/2025

    Nina Heine

    The Behavioral Lens of Sociology in Startup Building  Rather than taking a traditional business track, Nina shifted her academic focus to sociology, politics, and economics. She firmly believes that studying group behavior and societal shifts provides the ultimate foundation for building a startup. By matching deep analytical insights with strong operational leadership tools learned during her master’s studies at Copenhagen Business School, she discovered a framework for identifying widespread market inefficiencies. The Geopolitical Absurdity of the Global Sludge Market  After committing a full year to researching the water sector, a conversation with a German farmer opened Nina's eyes to the massive sewage sludge crisis. Germany alone produces millions of tons of wastewater byproduct that is constantly trucked up and down highways with nowhere to go. On a global scale, humans generate 150 billion tons of sludge annually, representing a massive, untapped, and highly predictable local energy resource. Supercharging Heavy Industrial Hardware via Neural Networks  To bypass the logistical nightmare of having prospects ship 50 kilogram buckets of actual feces to their lab for physical testing, Shit2Power built a digital twin architecture powered by a custom neural networks model. This machine learning integration allows prospective customers to simply email their chemical lab protocols directly to the team. The AI then dynamically analyzes the compound composition, mathematically determining the exact energy yield without the physical mess. Using a Polarizing Brand Name as an Innovation Filter  Nina intentionally leaned into the provocative corporate name Shit2Power because it functions as an exceptional filter for business development. She notes that the name naturally weeds out overly conservative corporate clients who lack the internal courage to pilot a deep tech, first of its kind industrial solution. The naming convention saves the internal team immense hours by immediately aligning them with bold, action oriented utility operators. Decentralized Containers and Reclaiming Grid Autonomy  Instead of forcing municipalities to invest in massive, centralized incinerator facilities that trigger intense bureaucratic permitting loops, Shit2Power deploys modular, containerized units directly onto existing local infrastructure. Their core reactor chemistry effectively cracks the negative energy balance of raw wet waste, turning it into a rich syngas composed of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. A single containerized unit can generate up to 504 megawatts of clean energy annually, potentially powering up to half of a municipal wastewater plant's overall energy grid requirements. The Language of Industrialization and the 2026 Seed Round  Having secured a clean 1.3 million euros in pre-seed funding and generated over half a million euros in pre-product revenue, the six person team is preparing for major market expansion. Currently sitting at technology readiness level six, Shit2Power is using a live two year municipal pilot to translate their science heavy background into a hardened, industrial grade solution. To fuel this transition, Nina is actively meeting with venture capital investors at Slush to organize a 2.5 million euro seed round. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    24 min
  7. Alex Brunicki

    12/05/2025

    Alex Brunicki

    Key highlights How Backed grew from a $30M first fund to a newly closed $100M Fund III, with top-quartile returns and 5 unicorns across 100 investments.The founder traits they optimize for: deep competitiveness, speed under uncertainty, and “PQ” - a founder’s magnetic pull on top talent and early believers.Why the biggest outcomes come from betting early on markets that look strange, overlooked, or technically impossible.How events became Backed's secret weapon — sourcing better deals, meeting founders earlier, and building a tight-knit community through 40+ events a year.What it means to run a venture firm where portfolio founders also become LPs, and why this deepens alignment across every new fund.The frontier-tech themes they’re betting on now: financial services, manufacturing, and biotech — all at the edge of engineering and scientific breakthroughs.Why Backed is expanding their US presence while keeping the core of their thesis focused on European founders.This episode is a masterclass for early-stage founders and investors navigating fast-moving markets, deep tech, and high-ambition company building. Tune in to learn how Backed spots founders, builds community at scale, and chooses markets long before they become obvious. Recorded live at Slush 2025 in Helsinki. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    24 min
  8. Sarah Fleischer

    12/03/2025

    Sarah Fleischer

    Meeting in the Space Cafe and a Pact on a Napkin  Sarah’s path to battery recycling began in the unique tech hub of Luxembourg, where she worked for the space agency and her cofounder, Xenia, worked for a space startup. After meeting at a networking event called Space Cafe, they signed a literal napkin promising to build a company together one day. Three years later, after Xenia published a breakthrough method for extracting lithium from end of life batteries in Nature, she scanned the napkin and called Sarah to fulfill the promise. Finding a Mission Worth the Founder Sacrifice  Having previously launched two purely profit driven e-commerce and luxury retail startups that failed, Sarah realized her third venture had to stand for something greater. As a passionate diver who has witnessed coral reefs dying for over 15 years, she wanted to dedicate her life and energy to a true environmental cause. Her academic professors had always insisted electric vehicles were not truly sustainable, and she set out to prove them wrong through scalable closed loop recycling. Outcompeting Industry Giants via Aggressive Scaling  Based in Munich, ToZero achieved commercial delivery of recycled lithium in just two years with a team of only 10 to 15 full-time employees. In contrast, corporate competitors like BASF had over 200 people and a decade of R&D. Sarah explains that while big corporates waste years mapping out extensive risk portfolios before moving forward, her team skipped that entirely, choosing to scale directly up to 4,000 liter reactors just to see exactly where the chemistry would break. The Geopolitical Squeeze and Becoming the Miner of Tomorrow  By 2030, global lithium demand is projected to soar to 3 million metric tons, but traditional mining is only on track to supply 180,000 metric tons. With China currently controlling 100% of the lithium supply chain, European and American politicians are only now waking up to the critical raw materials crisis. Furthermore, mid-sized legacy industries like ceramics, glass, and lubricants are getting entirely squeezed out of the market by massive EV buyers. ToZero positions itself as a cheaper, more reliable, and greener alternative local miner. The Physics of Economics and the CapEx Advantage  Sarah points out that natural mining ore contains less than 1% lithium concentration, whereas a processed battery contains 4% to 6% concentration. Because they are starting with a highly concentrated feedstock, recycling is fundamentally and drastically cheaper than digging raw materials from the earth. Setting up a traditional mine requires up to 2 billion dollars and takes 10 to 15 years to become operational, while a ToZero recycling plant can be built in just two years at a capital expenditure that is 150 times cheaper. Unveiling the "Frankenstein" Blueprint in 2026  Backed by a 11 million euro seed round from investors like Nordic Ninja and Honda, ToZero is currently building its first commercial demo facility in a historical German chemical park. Moving into 2026, the company's objective is to activate this first of its kind industrial plant, which Sarah affectionately dubs the Frankenstein because it plugs completely unproved subsystems together on a massive industrial scale. Once this facility successfully outputs lithium and graphite, it will serve as the repeatable blueprint for worldwide expansion into North America and Japan. Sarah’s Advice for Deep Tech Founders  For entrepreneurs tackling complex engineering hurdles where speed is critical, Sarah advises a ruthless focus on data and fundamental assumptions, noting that she requires her team to write out formulas on whiteboards to back up claims. She also urges leaders to push their engineers completely out of their comfort zones. In physical science, you often cannot calculate every risk, meaning the only true way to discover your technological limits is to go 10 times bigger than where you feel safe and let the system break. Be sure to follow Sesamers on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X for more cool stories from the people we catch during the best Tech events!

    25 min
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About

Selected is the podcast from Sesamers, the unfair advantage of the world's most startup-packed events. We talk about events, technology, science, entrepreneurship, culture, venture capital, and everything in between.

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