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Riding Unicorns is the go-to podcast for anyone interested in venture capital and high-growth startups. Hosted by VCs James Pringle and Hector Mason, the show explores what it takes to build and back successful tech unicorns.
Each episode features candid conversations with top founders, operators, and investors—unpacking the strategies, challenges, and insights behind scaling category-defining companies. From fundraising and product-market fit to hiring, growth, and beyond, no topic is off-limits. Whether you're a founder, VC, angel investor, or just curious about the world of startups, you’ll find valuable takeaways in every episode.
211 Episodes
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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 quantum processors and make quantum computing commercially scalable. 🎙️ In this episode, we discus...
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 that lets you instantly generate performance-ready, AI-powered video ads for TikTok, Instagram, and Meta, ...
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 the complex payment infrastructure challenges he witnessed amongst enterprise merchants. Paul is now also...
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 Elliptic as Head of Product. What began as a pivot turned into a mission: tackling financial crime in the di...
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, methods, and milestones behind his success. What You’ll Learn: 🧠 “Founders are the constant” — Why A...
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 build an enduring infrastructure company in Europe. 🎧 Topics covered include: The founding journey of Upv...
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 career with a major exit, prolific angel track record, and eventually launching one of Greece’s most...
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 assess the right type of capital for their journey 🤖 Why AI is fundamentally changing the way softwa...
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 that drive startup success. We dive into: 🔄 Career pivot: Leaving banking for Uber at 20 people an...
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 each other for over a decade, having worked together across multiple companies before launching StackOne. ...
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 now New York. What started as a freelance marketplace has evolved into a full-stack platform for mar...
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 entrepreneurs and investors. From turning around MySpace to co-founding and investing in over 150 companies, his ...
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 middleware for Call of Duty at university, to building tools that made the internet safer for kids, and now b...
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 are redefining the future of financial services. With offices in London, New York, and Singapore, I...
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 devtools to climate tech, consumer tech and, of course, AI. Breakthrough companies that Creandum bac...
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 leap and launch Defiant. He explains how the fund is using data-driven insights, deep thematic re...
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 massive opportunity in car finance, how he validated his business model before launching, an...
Subscribe to our newsletter here. Follow us on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Mike Smeed, Managing Director at InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s corporate venture capital arm. Mike shares his journey from a career in finance to leading one of the most active CVCs in the UK. He provides unique insights into the role of corporate venture capital in driving strategic innovation, supporting startups, and helping transform legacy industries like automotive. In thi...
Subscribe to our newsletter here. Follow us on LinkedIn here. Subscribe to our YouTube channel here. This week on Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Adam Norris, Founder & CEO of Pure Electric, one of the leading premium electric scooter brands. Adam is also well known for playing a key role in managing the career of his son, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 driver. From building the UK’s largest pension business at Hargreaves Lansdown to investing in 30+ startups through Horatio Investments, Adam ...
Stefano Vaccino is the Founder and CEO of Yapily, a leading open banking infrastructure provider. Stefano shares his unique journey from a career in nanotransistor research and investment banking to discovering his passion for technology and founding Yapily. We explore how open banking regulations like PSD2 inspired him to create a mission-driven company and the challenges he faced as a solo founder building one of the leading players in this competitive space. In this episode, we discuss: St...
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