Benjamin Costantini: Startup Sesame wants to have more presence in Eastern Europe

On February 9-10, Latvia capital Riga hosted TechChill that gathered over 1000 investors, startup founders, entrepreneurs and other representatives of the ecosystem from 26 countries.

Living in Paris, Ben Costantini is the CEO at Startup Sesame, the largest alliance of tech events in Europe. Startup Sesame acceleration program was the first in Europe to provide startups with consultation on holding event, helping them to develop through conferences, education and contact establishment.

Itel.am reporter attended TechChill and talked to Ben Costantini.

-Startup Sesame implements event-driven acceleration programs. What does that mean?

-It is important to understand that we do not organize tech events, we just bring them together in a network, that is basically aimed at helping startups grow internationally by attending the right conference at the right time.

We take into consideration several circumstances, including whether the given event will be relevant and useful for the business and strategy of a particular startup.

We currently have 25 partner events and 12 startups. The same offer is available for corporate companies and investors as well. This is a little bit like an acceleration program in a sense that we select the startups, we are going to work with, taking into consideration typical business criteria, innovations, market demands etc.

photo © Ruslan Zavacky

If your startup has never participated in an event or does not really feel that it is useful, then we are not able to help you much at this stage. That is why we have mostly worked with post seed companies that have raised investments. Participating in 3-4 events throughout the year is mandatory for them, as these startups do not view participation as time loss.

-How Armenia and Armenian startups can get involved in Startup Sesame activities?

- It is pretty straightforward at this moment. Basically they can apply to our European programs, as we take Europe not only in political sense. We need to expand our own network around the region to do more in Eastern Europe. Our success stories are mainly from Western European startups. They are aware of main conferences, and we help them to get involved in even more.

If Armenian startups wish to come to an event, let's say in France, they need to know certain things. To make their expertise more valuable, we also need to have our own networks and events in this area, including not only Armenia, but the whole region.

We are interested in having more presence in Eastern Europe. I would like to note that we have so called “partner events”, and if people want to join, they can easily find us.

photo © Edijs Palens

-What would be your tips for Armenian startups, applying to an acceleration program?

-Prepare in advance! If the deadline is at midnight, do not start filling in the application an hour earlier. If your development relies on getting into an accelerator, then it is all about the research, you need to spend a little bit of time.

30-40 % of applications are not complete; people do not answer to all the questions. But filling in an application properly is a good sign that you are really interested in the program.  

Narine Daneghyan talked to Benjamin Costantini

TechHub Riga is the organizer of TechChill; general sponsors: ALTUM, TWINO and Printful.