Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

Riding Unicorns is delighted to announce an entirely new series called Start-up Spotlight. These new weekly bitesize episodes will provide you with an insight into a company that we are very excited about.  Our very first Start-up Spotlight episode features Raffi Salama from Passionfruit , a UK-based Gen Z freelancing platform that recently closed a seed round of $4.3m.  Make sure to like and subs...

Ben Kaminski is a Partner at leading technology investment firm, Target Global. Prior to joining the firm, Ben spent over a decade working in Investment Banking where he was responsible for overseeing several high-profile M&A transactions. At Target Global since 2018 Ben now heads up the firm's dedicated Mobility 2.0 Fund. His investments include Auto1, Delivery Hero,  GoEuro, Flink and n...

Tom Wilson is a Partner at Seedcamp, an early stage seed fund investing in European businesses that are solving real problems using technology. Prior to his time in Venture, Tom worked in Law where he specialised in VC fundraising and M&A. Since joining Seedcamp In 2014 Tom has been helping the fund source and select companies to invest in at the early stage of their inception. Some of their i...

Francesco Simoneschi is Co-Founder and CEO of TrueLayer, a fintech development platform. TrueLayer is not, however, Francesco's first experience in founding, managing and growing a successful tech company. In fact, prior to launching TrueLayer, Francesco helped develop an angel fund called Mission and Market, which was able to provide investment to more than 50 startups. Following a period wo...

Haakon Overli is the Founder and General Partner of Dawn Capital, a VC firm investing in European founders in the hope of helping them build the next generation of global software companies. During the early stage of his career Haakon worked in investment banking before eventually taking the decision to go out on his own and become an entrepreneur. In 1999 he launched Self Trade, an on-line stock...

Aidan Corbett is the co-founder and CEO of Dublin-based Wayflyer. Founded in 2019 the company supports e-commerce businesses worldwide by providing a range of financing and analytics solutions that improve cash flow, drive sales and optimise supply chains. Since launching in April 2020 the company has already gone on to provide over $500 million to businesses, a fact which has meant that Aidan and...

Martin Bysh is the co-founder & CEO of Huboo , an award-winning order fulfilment service for eCommerce sellers. Martin spent the early part of his career working in a number of industries including everything from video games to dating sites and market research. After years of toiling in different ventures Martin finally decided to launch Huboo in 2017 with his co-founder Paul Dodd. Since then...

Charles Delingpole is the Founder & CEO of ComplyAdvantage, leaders in AI driven fraud and AML risk detection. Founded in 2014, ComplyAdvantage works with over 500 clients across 75 countries to tackle the risk of money laundering, terrorist financing and corruption. Prior to ComplyAdvantage Charles founded the world’s largest student discussion forum The Student Room Group. He then followed t...

Tom Goodwin is the co-founder of innovation consultancy, All We Have Is Now. Tom is however much more than just an entrepreneur. Tom has spent over 20 years studying topics such as the impact of new technology, changing consumer behaviours, and trends in digital marketing and as such is regarded as one of the experts in his field. He is also the author of Digital Darwinism, a business book that ex...

Katie Marrache is a Partner at JamJar Ventures, a VC firm founded by the people behind the hugely popular Innocent drinks. Katie is the definition of a go-getter. Whilst at University she secured an internship with Dragons’ Den investor, James Caan, which saw her manage the entrepreneurs portfolio of consumer investments. After a short stint working in television Katie joined Innocent drinks as a...

Kevin Diestel is a Partner at Sapphire Ventures, a venture capital firm that primarily invests in Series B technology companies. Before moving into private equity Kevin worked as an Analyst for Merrill Lynch. After two years working for the Investment Bank Kevin began working for Shamrock Capital Advisors, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm. During his time there he was responsible for evalua...

Freddy Ward is the co-founder of D2C cosmetics company, Wild. Freddy started his career at Hello Fresh and is actually credited as being its fifth ever employee. After working his way up to Marketing Director Freddy decided to start his own company, Wild, with lifelong friend and former Director of Fly Hiring, Charlie Bowes-Lyon. Wild is best known for its refillable deodorants and range of exotic...

James Routledge is the Founder of Sanctus, leading providers of mental health coaches. After starting his first business at University James was hooked by the idea of being an entrepreneur. His first business venture, MatchChat, a social media app would however ultimately go on to be unsuccessful. As is often the case in life there is a silver lining to all supposed failures. James would ultimatel...

Paul Murphy (@paulbz on Twitter) is a Partner at Lightspeed, a global venture capital firm focusing on multi-stage investments in the enterprise technology, consumer, and health sectors. Prior to his stint at Lightspeed Paul worked at Microsoft, Betaworks, Giphy and Northzone to name but a few. Paul also has extensive experience as an entrepreneur having set-up several companies namely Mobile Game...

Julie Chen is the Founder and CEO of The Cheeky Panda, makers of a range of Bamboo toiletry products including traditional toilet paper, facial tissues, kitchen towel, wipes and nappies. The idea for the company was born out of a family trip to China. While in China, Julie and her husband couldn't help but notice the abundance of Bamboo, which is of course one the world's fastest growing...

Adnan Ebrahim is the co-founder and CEO of health and mindfulness app, Mindlabs. Adnan can trace his entrepreneurial roots all the way back to the school playground where he would often be seen selling wristbands to his classmates. Adnan’s love for business did not stop there however and after one successful venture in blogging Adnan decided to follow that up by launching Car Throttle, an online c...

Rania Lamprou is the co-founder and CEO of Simpler - 1-click checkout for online shopping. Prior to launching Simpler Rania worked in several industries from marketing, business development, sales and product management. In 2020, Rania decided to launch Simpler with the aim of revolutionising the online checkout experience for both shoppers and sellers alike. The company has recently exited stealt...

Hussein Kanji is the founding partner at renowned early stage venture firm, Hoxton Ventures. Following experiences at Microsoft and Accel Partners Hussein decided to set up Hoxton Ventures in 2013 in the hope that by backing Europe’s best global tech companies, his team would be able to bring a slice of Silicon Valley to Europe. As a result of backing four unicorns and creating $54bn of value both...

Dominic McGregor is the Founding Partner of Investment Firm Fearless Adventures. Dominic however is perhaps best known for the role he played in helping to build the hugely successful social media agency, Social Chain. With the help of his co-founder Steven Bartlett the pair were able to transform a mere idea, dreamt up in their university halls, into one of the world's leading media companie...

Brad Coffey is the Chief Customer Officer at Pipe, the trading platform that enables entrepreneurs to grow their business on their terms. By treating recurring revenue streams as an asset, Pipe allows companies to transform their recurring revenue into up-front capital, instantly. Prior to joining Pipe Brad was the Chief Strategy Officer at HubSpot, where he helped grow the business from $1m to $1...

Taymoor Atighetchi is the Founder and CEO of British e-commerce stationary brand, Papier. The story of Taymoor’s rise in business is fascinating. He started out by selling antiques on Portobello Market before going on to co-found the now very popular news youth site, The Tab. Upon graduating Taymoor secured a role at Bain & Company as a consultant. It was there where Taymoor spotted the opport...

Larry Gadea is the Founder and CEO of unicorn workplace software provider, Envoy. Larry’s story is a remarkable one. After his family fled Romania as refugees Larry spent much of his early childhood perfecting his knowledge of computer engineering. His proclivity in this space would see him go on to secure prominent positions at both Google & Twitter. In 2013 Larry decided to go it alone and l...

Jimmy Williams is the Co-Founder and CEO of InsurTech, Urban Jungle. Jimmy started out in consulting before pivoting towards insurance following his own frustrating experience trying to secure a policy. In 2016 Jimmy launched Urban Jungle in the hope of providing an alternative offering in what he increasingly saw as an unfair, expensive and slow moving sector. Having recently closed an $11.4m Ser...

Tom Leathes is the co-founder and CEO of Motorway. Launched four years ago by Tom and his long term friend and business partner Harry Jones, Motorway is harnessing the power of technology to deliver an amazing experience for customers looking to value and sell their car. In the four years it has been operating the company has already helped over 2.5m customers resulting in 300% year on year growth...

Guy Podjarny is the Founder of cybersecurity firm, Snyk. Founded in 2015 the company specialises in offering developer-first security and was recently valued at over £8bn. Prior to Synk Guy worked as CTO at Akamai following their acquisition of his startup, Blaze.io. Guy has spent his career becoming an expert in web application security, a topic which he covers in depth on his own podcast, The Se...