This week on Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Paul Becker, Co-Founder & CEO of re:cap, a fintech platform helping digital businesses unlock capital and understand their financial position through intelligent forecasting, real-time data insights, and flexible financing. In this wide-ranging conversation, Paul walks us through re:cap’s journey from an idea for automated due diligence software to becoming one of Europe’s fastest-growing capital platforms, recently securing over €125M in debt...

Ali first joined us in January 2022, when Babylon was still one of the most ambitious healthtech companies in the world. Today, he returns with a new mission, building Quadrivia and its clinical AI assistant, “Qu”, designed to automate millions of repetitive healthcare workflows and rebalance the global shortage of clinical labour. In this episode, Ali reflects candidly on the rise and fall of Babylon, the structural challenges behind its collapse, and the lessons he’s applying to his new ven...

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, live shopping, affiliate management and analytics into a single high-performance engine. Go Places...

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 companies like Briefcase (AI for accountants) and Spatial (3D generative AI), Akash offers a deep and pr...

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 on the ground in Lagos, Johannesburg, and Nairobi — and why local presence and context are essential ...

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 approach to helping founders scale sustainably and successfully exit. Rupert shares the story of buil...

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 that experience into a masterclass in category creation. Now, with Paid.ai, Manny is laser-focused ...

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 rise of AI agents. 💥 In this episode, we dive into: 🤖 Why “agentic” workflows are changing everyt...

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 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 TikTok mockups to building multi-million ARR with a 3-person team, Yoann reveals: The real metrics th...

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. ...

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 Parry and HSBC Innovation Banking, the event brings together top-tier talent from across the startup...