The Forge 🔥 of Unicorns - by Michele Brissoni

Thiago Maior scaled from freelance developer to CEO of a 70-person infrastructure company with zero external funding. He lived the DevOps revolution. Now he's watching AI compress that same transformation into months. DevOps started in 2009. Thiago joined in 2014, five years late, and still built a thriving business. Companies that ignored DevOps for seven years caught up eventually. AI is differe...

AI Readiness Gap: Why 70-90% AI adoption with 30-50% readiness is costing billions. The Last Mile framework for CTOs to complete AI coding tool investments. The data is clear: companies are pouring millions into GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf. Adoption rates hit 70-90%. But organizational readiness sits at 30-50%. That 40-point gap is where ROI disappears and technical debt compound...

97% of enterprise developers use AI coding tools. Trust crashed from 40% to 29% in one year. METR found experienced developers 19% slower while believing they were 20% faster. The 39-point perception gap exposes why your AI investment isn't delivering—and the 4-dimension framework that fixes it. 🎙️ EP81 - The AI Readiness Assessment | The Last Mile to 4X Results with AI Coding Tools You made the r...

In this episode, Michele (Mike) Brissoni explores the challenges and realities of software development in the age of AI. He discusses the historical context of coding productivity, the impact of Agile and DevOps methodologies, and the effects of remote work on developer efficiency. Brissoni emphasizes the importance of fundamentals over tools, highlighting the silent killers of productivity such a...

Your $10M AI investment produces garbage code because you hired mediocre, trained badly, and blamed developers when production burned. Not their fault. Yours. This episode explores how leadership and organizational behavior shape software engineering teams—and why understanding the dynamics between teamwork, coding discipline, and behavioral transformation determines whether your software developm...

Three years after ChatGPT's release, $2.5 trillion wasted in 2024 alone. Forecast for 2027? $4 trillion. Meanwhile, 38% burnout rate, 77% disengaged workforce, and 90% failure rate on digital transformations. After 77 episodes analyzing 130 people who built 52 unicorns, one pattern emerged: The bottleneck isn't AI, Agile, or capital. It's the 1% problem—the extreme scarcity of people capable of ex...

Licensing beats equity 10x. Fabio Lettieri (Founder, Artivium | Partner, TLN) reveals how €2M turns into €100M in 24 months through royalty-based partnerships instead of ownership dilution, why Europe's 10x better engineers stay underfunded, and the $34B empire that makes nothing. ---- 🎙️ Episode Highlights: After 27 episodes with 130+ guests who backed 52 unicorns, one pattern emerged: the capita...

Philosophy shapes AI future through karmapreneurship and soft skills revealed by Craig Weiss (Patent Attorney turned Unicorn CEO turned Managing Partner Flagstaff Venture) on execution curiosity mentorship and AI human gap. 🎙️ Episode Highlights: Craig Weiss shares his journey from patent attorney to building Enjoy (unicorn, $1B valuation) to venture capital investor, revealing why philosophy and...

Spitch. AI beats tech giants through customer-centric collaborative AI and cultural readiness. Pier Giorgio Vittori (CEO US division) reveals gradual adoption framework, employee satisfaction foundation, and ethical business practices that turn David into Goliath-killer in AI era. 🎙️ Episode Highlights: Spitch. AI was founded in 2014, expanding from Switzerland to US, UK, and Italy. Instead of out...

Ever wonder how top tech leaders foster exceptional team environments? This Forge of Unicorns podcast episode dives deep into the secrets of high-performing teams and engineering excellence. Is leadership coaching the key to preventing burnout and cultivating a motivational workplace where innovative software solutions thrive? Or is the secret recipe of success the relentless pursuit of excellence...

In this episode of Forge of Unicorns – In the Head of a CEO, the host Michele Brissoni sits down with Stéphan Donzé, Founder & CEO of AODocs, to unpack one of the most uncomfortable truths of our time: AI doesn’t save you. It multiplies what you already are. Stéphan’s journey is unique — a brilliant software engineer who became a CEO, leading a SaaS company trusted in the most critical environ...

Unicorns are going extinct. In 2015 there were 124 new unicorns. In the last 3 years? Barely 17. At the same time, trillions of dollars have been poured into AI, sold as the golden age of innovation. But here’s the paradox: if AI is so transformative, why are unicorns disappearing? In this episode of The Forge of Unicorns, Michele Brissoni sits down with Paul O’Brien — Startup Economist, venture c...

Why is software still the Wild West—with no universal quality standards? In this episode of Forge of Unicorns, 🎙️ Noël Bauza (CEO of Zei) reveals why organizations are running on systems with zero agreed measures of quality, and how the scientific method gives leaders the clarity to evolve with confidence. 🚨 Agile frameworks and AI buzzwords aren’t saving companies from failure. Instead, CEOs are...

Unicorns are dying. Cockroaches creep us out. The future belongs to Camel Startups: resilient, human-centric, and engineered to survive. In this episode of Forge of Unicorns , host Michele “Mike” Brissoni sits down with Umar Munshi , CEO of HasanVC , to explore how ethical investing, halal venture capital, and the venture studio model are reshaping the future of entrepreneurship. 🌍 What You’ll Le...

Listen to Tyler Robertson's inspiring entrepreneur story of building a $100 million business from the ground up. This motivational podcast episode covers everything from how to start a business to insights on heavy duty truck scanner and truck diagnostic tool. Hear how he achieved success through hard work and determination and his journey in entrepreneurship. --- What if a diesel mechanic just ou...

The $30B Mistake: Why Startups Fail and Investors Sleepwalk Through It 💥 Massimiliano Sulpizi exposes what’s broken in **venture capital** and offers a cure: **Equity Match**, a platform blending **AI**, mentorship, and real founder support. Discover how he's teaching startups to build, not just pitch, in a world where 97.5% still fail. --- 🧠 Executive Summary: This world is sick. Startups are c...

Succession isn’t just an HBO drama. It’s real. It’s messy. And when it happens inside a high-growth SaaS company, it can break everything. In this raw, unfiltered episode of Forge of Unicorns, we sit down with 🇫🇷 Adrien Salvat, CEO of WebInterpret to launch our brand-new format: 🎙️ “𝗜𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗖𝗘𝗢” 💥 What’s the story? Adrien didn’t just survive a founder exit. He rebuilt the company — cultu...

💥 Your tech budget is burning—and hiring hype can kill your culture. Here’s the brutal truth: Boards are shelling out $1M+ to AI engineers—none of whom are scientists in the classical sense Meta’s Superintelligence Lab just dangled $100M–$300M packages for top AI talent, while tens of thousands of good people got laid off Worse: Investors are funding AI hires not to build software, but to create...

AI was supposed to help us build organizations faster. Instead, it’s flooding the market with fragile MVPs and founders who lack the knowledge to scale. Welcome to Episode 65 of Forge of Unicorns, where illusions shatter and the ugly truths of software engineering are exposed. 🎧 This week: Most Capital founders Kamila Michalkiewicz and Ágúst Berg Arnarsson join us to unpack the real risks behind...

🤔 Startups pitch AI like magic. But what happens when vibe-coded prototypes crash in production? 👉 Who’s inspecting the code, not just the pitch deck? In this Forge of Unicorns episode, Dr. Jeremy Krell—Managing Partner at Revere Partners—reveals how real VCs assess risk in a post-hype market. With 40% of Revere’s portfolio in software, Jeremy’s team doesn’t just bet on the founder—they inspect...

🤔 Investors are pouring billions into AI. But what if this is dot-com bubble 2.0? 👉 Who will spot the real risks — hidden inside the code, and inside the culture? In this Forge of Unicorns episode, Maria de la Puente, one of the most respected investor advisors, reveals why today’s boards must evolve fast — or risk flying blind. From the boardroom to the engineering floor, Mike & Maria expos...

🤔 Why did Mining ⛏️, Formula 1 🏎️, and MotoGP 🏍️ evolve—and Software didn’t? In this episode of Forge of Unicorns, Nicolás Bañados, Managing Partner at Galgo Capital, helps us uncover the behavioral system behind industries that evolved from danger to precision—while the software world is still fighting over frameworks and labels. From mines to pitlanes, Mike draws the powerful parallel: In all t...

Are you prepared for the real risks of CEO succession, or any other CXO hiring? In this episode of Forge of Unicorns, investor and behavioral screening expert Ron Ondechek reveals the hidden traps that boardrooms, PE/VC firms, and founders face every time a new CEO is chosen. Every time a new leader joins your organization. The risks connected with casual HR hiring by pedigree and resume. 🔑 What...

🕯️ The Torch 🔥 AI-First Leaders Dropped: Purpose --- Klarna. Babylon. Forward. Three companies. Three massive AI-first bets. All failed. Why? They scaled tech. They injected the market hype: #AI But, they forgot to align humans in their AI-driven organization! In this episode of Forge of Unicorns, VC and unicorn builder Pedro Lopez Sela joins Mike to expose the deeper reason behind these collapse...

Agile is collapsing under its own market weight. Drowned in certifications, fake agility coaches, and checkbox processes. The purpose? Forgotten. The manifesto? Commercialized. The results? Burnout, silos, disengagement. It’s not a transformation. It’s a crime scene. 💥 But what if we could resurrect Agile from the wreckage? Not with another framework. Not with another Jira template. But with OKRs...