Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

Sam Jacobs is the Co-Founder of Go Places, the operating system for social commerce. In just 18 months, Go Places has become a trusted partner to some of the world’s biggest brands including Samsung, Mars, The Body Shop, and Trip. Backed by deep experience from Amazon and Coca-Cola, Sam and his co-founder Jack are building the infrastructure layer for TikTok Shop, combining performance, content, l...

Akash Bajwa , Principal at Earlybird VC , one of Europe’s longest-standing early-stage funds. Akash shares his journey into venture and how he helped launch Earlybird’s London office, now a core hub for the firm. We dive into the state of AI investing, how to distinguish enduring companies from short-term hype, and what traits define the next wave of outlier founders. With experience backing compa...

Lexi Novitske , General Partner at Norrsken22 , a $205m growth-stage fund backing transformative tech companies across Africa. Lexi has spent over a decade living and investing in Nigeria, backing breakout African startups like Paystack , Flutterwave , and Smile Identity . As one of the continent’s most respected VCs, she shares how her team is building a truly Pan-African platform — with partners...

Please note: The topics covered in this episode should not be taken as investment advice. This week on Riding Unicorns , we’re joined by Rupert West , the founder and Managing Director of Puma Growth Partners, a UK-based growth equity investor backing companies at Series A with cheque sizes of £4–10m. Puma invests across consumer brands, B2B SaaS, and scalable business services, with a hands-on ap...

This week on Riding Unicorns , we’re joined by Manny Medina , the visionary founder behind Outreach — the $4B sales engagement unicorn — and now co-founder & CEO of Paid.ai , a startup pioneering how AI agents get priced, paid, and scaled. We dive into Manny’s remarkable journey from zero to $250M+ ARR with Outreach, the gritty early days of selling door-to-door with no cash, and how he turned...

In this episode we are joined by Kenneth Auchenberg , Partner at AlleyCorp — one of New York’s most prolific early-stage funds known for incubating companies like MongoDB, Business Insider, and Radical AI. Kenneth’s journey from coding at 16 in Copenhagen to shaping global developer ecosystems at Stripe and Microsoft gives him a unique lens into the next generation of software businesses — and the...

This week on Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Carmen Palacios-Berraquero , Founder and CEO of Nu Quantum , a pioneering company building the networking layer for the quantum computing era. Carmen’s journey started in academia, researching quantum photonics, before she spun out Nu Quantum from the University of Cambridge. Now backed by top deep tech investors, the company is on a mission to connect...

In this episode, we're joined by Patrick Haede , the founder of Superscale AI , a breakout new startup transforming how digital products are marketed. 🚀 Inspired by Lovable’s success in democratising product-building, Patrick saw the next major frontier: distribution . In a world where anyone can now build a product, how do you market it effectively? Superscale AI is the answer — a platform...

Paul Anthony is the co-founder of Primer , a rapidly growing payment orchestration platform with over 200 employees and more than £70 million in funding from top-tier investors including Seed Camp, Balderton, Accel, and Iconic. His journey began as the first employee at a FinTech startup (now called Depay), followed by a stint at PayPal's Braintree division, before founding Primer to solve th...

In this episode of Riding Unicorns , James and Hector sit down with Simone Maini , CEO of Elliptic , the world’s leading blockchain analytics company. Simone’s career path is anything but conventional — from a history degree and Deutsche Bank to leading a $100M+ funded crypto intelligence powerhouse. 🧠 After 8 years in banking and a stint in anti-money laundering consulting, Simone joined Ellipti...

From international math olympiads to high-frequency trading to leading deals at Accel, Andrei Brasoveanu has carved one of the most impressive careers in European tech. After a decade on Wall Street as a quant, he joined Accel’s London office and quickly became one of their top investors—backing breakout companies like Celonis and, more recently, Polar. In this episode, we explore the mindset, met...

This week on Riding Unicorns , we're joined by Martin Kassing , founder and CEO of Upvest , one of Europe’s fastest-growing fintech infrastructure companies. Martin’s journey spans private equity, Rocket Internet, multiple startups, and now leading a company that powers investment products for the likes of Revolut and N26 . In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore what it really takes to...

In this special Riding Unicorns episode, recorded live during London Tech Week and hosted at Cooley’s London HQ, we bring you two candid conversations from the frontline of startup building. 🚀 First up: Yoann Pavy , a growth marketing veteran (ex-Deliveroo, Depop, Perkbox), shares why distribution-first thinking is flipping product development on its head. From testing product ideas with viral Ti...

In this episode, we’re joined by Apostolos Apostolakis , the founder-turned-VC behind VentureFriends , a pan-European pre-seed and seed fund known for backing consumer and fintech breakouts like Plum, Blueground, Huspy, Carmoola and Instashop. Apostolos shares a remarkable story of resilience — from scaling a startup to €100M+ in revenue and 500 employees, to facing bankruptcy and rebuilding his c...

In this episode, we’re joined by Deepka Rana , Principal at leading venture fund Northzone , early backers of Klarna, Truelayer, Spotify, iZettle, Kahoot, and Personio. Deepka shares her journey from physics at Imperial and investment banking to investing in some of Europe’s most exciting startups. We unpack: 💸 What it’s like to operate a billion-dollar multi-stage VC fund 🧠 How founders should...

In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Carles Reina , Go-to-Market Lead at ElevenLabs , an AI Audio research and deployment company that tripled it's valuation to $3.3BN in January, after confirming a new $180M funding round.  From starting out as a banker in Barcelona to scaling Uber’s first European team, and now investing in over 70 startups, Carles shares the hard-won lessons...

In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we're joined by Romain Sestier and Guillaume Lebedel, the co-founders of StackOne , a rapidly growing startup that’s building the universal integration layer for modern SaaS and AI products. Hot off the back of their $20M Series A led by GV , the duo joins us to share their journey, insights, and lessons from the trenches. Romain and Guillaume have known ea...

Recorded live at the Capsule Scale-Up 50 event in London on 30th April 2025, this episode features a standout panel discussion moderated by our co-host James Pringle. The Scale-Up 50 is Capsule’s flagship celebration of the UK’s fastest-growing, most exciting scale-ups, recognising the founders, leaders, and investors driving the next generation of breakout success stories. Supported by Cooper Par...

In this episode of Riding Unicorns , James Pringle is joined by Raffi Salama , Co-Founder & CEO of Passionfruit, a fast-growing marketing OS used by the world’s most ambitious brands to orchestrate campaigns across resourcing, planning, execution, and tracking. Raffi shares his journey from launching David Beckham’s Inter Miami football club to scaling Passionfruit across London, Lisbon, and n...

Subscribe to the Reading Unicorns newsletter here . Follow Riding Unicorns on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to the Riding Unicorns YouTube channel here. In this episode we're joined by Mike Jones , Managing Partner at Science Inc. , a trailblazing venture studio behind breakout brands like Dollar Shave Club , Liquid Death , and DogVacay (merged with Rover). Mike is one of LA’s most prolific entrep...

Subscribe to the Reading Unicorns newsletter here . Follow Riding Unicorns on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to the Riding Unicorns YouTube channel here. In this episode of Riding Unicorns , we’re joined by legendary repeat founder Dylan Collins , known for building and exiting three companies—including SuperAwesome , acquired by Epic Games. Dylan takes us on a fascinating journey from founding middlewa...

Subscribe to the Reading Unicorns newsletter here . Follow Riding Unicorns on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to the Riding Unicorns YouTube channel here. In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James Pringle and Hector Mason are joined by Mark Beeston , Founder and Managing Partner at Illuminate Financial —a thesis-driven venture capital firm investing in B2B FinTech and enterprise technology companies that...

Subscribe to the Reading Unicorns newsletter here . Follow Riding Unicorns on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to the Riding Unicorns YouTube channel here. This episode sees James Pringle and Hector Mason sit down with Staffan Helgesson , General Partner of Creandum .  Creandum is one of Europe's top early stage investors focused on Seed and Series A across a range of sectors from fintech to SaaS to...

Subscribe to our newsletter here . Follow us on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Joseph Pizzolato   is the Founder & General Partner at Defiant VC, a newly launched venture fund bringing a tech-first approach to investing. Joseph shares his journey from engineering to venture capital, his experiences at Vitruvian Partners and Felix Capital, and what led him to take the lea...

Subscribe to our newsletter here . Follow us on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here.  In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Aidan Rushby, Founder & CEO of Carmoola, a fintech company reinventing the way people buy used cars through a seamless, mobile-first car finance experience. Aidan shares his journey from running a property rental marketplace to identifying a...