Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
Riding Unicorns is a podcast featuring the world's best minds from venture and 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 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.
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What Makes a Top VC Fund Today? Dave Neumann at Schroders Capital on LP Thinking, DPI and Venture Returns
<p>What does a genuinely great VC fund look like today, from an LP’s perspective?</p><p>In this episode, James and Hector are joined by Dave Neumann, Investment Manager at Schroders Capital, one of the most experienced institutional investors in venture. With a career spanning decades and exposure to top-tier global funds, Dave shares how leading LPs actually evaluate venture firms, and where many GPs get it wrong.</p><p>The conversation covers what separates top quartile funds from the rest, why venture is increasingly about building a firm rather than just making investments, and how the best ma...
Tony Jamous & Hadi Moussa at Oyster HR on leadership transition, CEO succession and unlocking global talent
<p>Tony Jamous first joined Riding Unicorns in January 2023, just after Oyster became a unicorn. Since then, the company has raised its Series D, Tony has moved into the Executive Chairman role, and Hadi Moussa has stepped in as CEO.</p><p>In this episode, James sits down with both Tony and Hadi to unpack what really happens when a founder hands over the CEO role in a high-growth company. They discuss why Tony knew Oyster needed a different kind of leader for its next stage, how the search process unfolded, and what Hadi has focused on in his first...
Nikola Mrkšić, Co-Founder & CEO at PolyAI on Building One of the World’s Leading Voice AI Companies
<p>Nikola Mrkšić is the Co-Founder and CEO of PolyAI, one of the world’s leading voice AI companies, helping enterprises automate customer service through conversational AI at massive scale.</p><p>Before PolyAI, Nikola was a machine learning researcher and part of the team behind Siri. In this episode, he joins James to unpack what the world is only now starting to understand about voice AI, why most automation still misses the point, and how PolyAI has built a full stack enterprise product that goes far beyond simply reducing call queues.</p><p>They discuss how PolyAI is used...
Matt Wilson, Co-Founder & CEO at Jack and Jill, on AI Career Agents, Talent Density, and Building the Next Network-Effect Marketplace
<p>This week on Riding Unicorns, Matt Wilson returns to the podcast. Matt previously joined us in September 2022 to talk about Omnipresent, which has since been acquired by Deel. He is now back building Jack and Jill, one of the most talked-about venture-backed companies in Europe right now.</p><p>Jack and Jill is bringing conversational AI to job hunting and hiring, with two agents built for two audiences:</p><b>Jack</b>, an AI agent for individuals that learns who you are, what you want, and monitors the job market for you, while also helping with career coaching, CVs...
Nicolò Frisiani, Co-Founder & CEO at Lupa, on Building the AI Operating System for Vets, Enterprise Sales, and Scaling at Speed
<p>Nicolò Frisiani is Co-Founder & CEO of Lupa, the world’s first enterprise-ready AI operating system for veterinary clinics.</p><p>Lupa has raised over $25m from investors including Singular and Firstminute Capital, and is on a mission to modernise a sector still running on 1980s technology.</p><p>In this episode, Nicolò shares:</p>Why Lupa started as a consumer app and quickly pivoted to a full-stack operating systemHow note-taking became the wedge product into a much bigger platform visionWhat he learned from sending his co-founder to work as a vet receptionist for a monthThe complexity of selling into PE-b...
George Davis, Founder & CEO at Lorum on Rebuilding Global Clearing, Why Dollars Are Broken, and Building a Payments Only Bank
<p>George Davis, Founder and CEO of Lorum.</p><p>George has been deep in payments for years: Head of Product at TrueLayer, then co-founder of BVNK, and now building Lorum to tackle the hardest layer of the stack: global clearing.</p><p>We get into:</p>Why payments becomes an obsession if you look closely enoughWhat “rebuilding clearing from the ground up” actually means, in plain EnglishVirtual accounts, ledgering, Swift, and why settlement speed still mattersThe real opportunity: fixing dollar clearing and cross border flowsHow Lorum makes money, and why being “payments only” changes the incentivesThe fundraising sprint, choosing Northzon...
David von Rosen, Founder of Lottoland on Majority Stake Investing, Loving Risk, Dubai’s Energy, and the Steve Jobs Turtleneck Story
<p>James sits down with Dr. David von Rosen, the serial founder behind Lottoland and 25 Degrees, and the Principal of the VONROSEN family office, through which he invests globally and pan-sector in fast-growth pre-IPO startups.</p><p>David does not pretend to have one neat playbook. He prefers volatility, backs ideas that feel genuinely new, and invests like an operator, often taking a significant stake so he can get involved properly.</p><p>We talk about:</p>Why David prefers fewer bets with bigger ownershipHow he thinks about hiring generalists and spotting motivation over credentialsWhat most people misunderstand about risk...
Harrison Rose, Co-Founder at GoodFit on Mapping Your Market, Modern Go To Market, and Lessons from Building Paddle
<p>Harrison Rose co-founded Paddle, one of the UK’s standout B2B billing and payments companies. Now he is building GoodFit, a go to market platform helping teams prioritise the right accounts, at the right time, with the right data.</p><p>In this episode, Harrison breaks down a simple idea most teams still get wrong: before you buy another shiny GTM tool, make sure you are actually selling to qualified customers. He shares how Paddle approached go to market from first principles, why the “execution layer” has exploded (16,000 tools and counting), and why fundamentals like market mapping and qualif...
Ben Freeman, Co-Founder & CEO at Omnea on Building an AI Native Procurement Platform, Talent Density, and Founder Paranoia
<p>Ben Freeman is the Co-founder and CEO of Omnea, an AI native procurement and supplier management platform used by companies from the mid-market through to enterprise, including Synthesia, Typeform, Spotify, Monzo, Albertsons, and The Adecco Group.</p><p>Ben’s path to procurement was not obvious. From running a bootstrapped events business in Manchester (and dropping out of uni), to a stint in investment banking at Lazard, to scaling cybersecurity company Tessian in New York, he accidentally discovered just how broken procurement can be inside otherwise world class organisations.</p><p>In this conversation, Ben breaks down how he fo...
Why "AI Visibility" is critical for your brand with James Cadwallader, Co-Founder & CEO at Profound
<p>James and Hector sit down with <b>James Cadwallader</b>, CEO and Co Founder of <b>Profound</b>, to unpack how AI is reshaping the internet and what that means for every brand on the planet.</p><p>James explains why large language models are not just a new interface, but a fundamental platform shift in how people retrieve information. Instead of humans clicking blue links, user agents now visit the web on our behalf, read content, and answer questions directly. Profound sits in the middle of this change, helping some of the worlds biggest brands understand if and...
