Afleveringen
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James and Hector sit down with James Cadwallader, CEO and Co Founder of Profound, to unpack how AI is reshaping the internet and what that means for every brand on the planet.
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 how they show up in AI answers, and then create content that is designed for bots rather than humans.
The conversation covers what GEO (generative engine optimisation) actually is, how Profound uses a huge consumer prompt panel and reasoning models to map where AI gets its answers from, and why SEO teams are surprisingly well placed to become the heroes of this next era. James also shares his view on how ads will work inside products like ChatGPT, why this may finally break the search monopoly, and how he thinks marketers will work in a world where AI creates, distributes and measures most of their campaigns.
James talks through Profounds rapid journey from idea to working with Fortune 10 brands, the fundraising story with Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and others, and why this is the last company he plans to build.
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Ariel Harmoko is the Co Founder and CEO of Artifact AI. Ariel joined James and Hector for a conversation that moves from race tracks to reconciliation engines.
Ariel grew up in Jakarta, was thrown into Go Karts at eight, and went on to race professionally all the way to Formula 3 alongside the likes of Lando Norris and George Russell. That early immersion in high performance teams, engineering and discipline shaped how he now operates as a founder.
He shares how a love of maths and science took him to boarding school in the UK, then into machine learning research at Cambridge while still a teenager, working on early diagnosis in medtech and later deploying internal GPT tools at JP Morgan.
Today Ariel is building Artifact AI, an “agent accountant” that sits on top of existing ledgers like Xero, QuickBooks and NetSuite. The product tackles two huge problems for accounting firms. Fragmented legacy stacks and chronic staff shortages. Ariel explains how their agents ingest data, reconcile, post to ledgers and learn from human review, and why accuracy, auditability and trust are non negotiable in this space.
The conversation covers selling into one of the most conservative industries on earth, founder led FDE style implementations, why advisory is the real margin in accounting, and how vertical AI and agentic workflows could reshape professional services.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Andrew D’Souza is the Founder of Boardy, the Creandum backed AI super connector reshaping how founders and investors meet and build trust.
Before Boardy, Andrew co-founded Clearco, one of the first revenue based financing companies. Clearco deployed over $5bn to thousands of businesses, scaled to six hundred employees, and passed one hundred million dollars in revenue. Andrew is one of the few founders who has built a nine figure company before starting again.
Clearco’s early AI work and Andrew’s interest in generative AI since 2020 sparked the idea for Boardy.
Boardy is a voice based AI that speaks to founders and investors, remembers context instantly, and makes high quality introductions at scale. What started as a side experiment is now one of the fastest growing AI products in fundraising.
We also cover Boardy’s newest chapter. After helping founders secure meetings, term sheets and oversubscribed rounds through his recent campaign, Boardy has launched Boardy Ventures, the world’s first AI led venture fund, allowing him to back the founders he already supports.
We explore the journey from bedroom prototype to top tier backing from Creandum, and how Boardy is building powerful emergent network effects.
In this episode we get into:
🧠 The Clearco story and lessons from hypergrowth
🤖 Early GPT-3 experiments and the Clear Angel project
📞 Why voice matters and why intelligence beats latency
🎯 How Boardy creates uncannily strong introductions
📈 Network effects and solving the cold start problem
💸 How founders are already closing rounds through Boardy
🧪 The superpowered version now helping founders and VC firms
🧩 The long-term vision from venture partner to AI holding company
🎨 Creativity, identity and why great companies reflect their foundersA sharp and thought provoking conversation on AI, networks and entrepreneurial energy.
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Erin Platts is the CEO of Octopus Ventures and former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank UK & Europe — one of the most pivotal figures in the UK tech ecosystem.
In this conversation, Erin opens up in remarkable detail about her personal journey from two decades inside SVB to leading one of Europe’s most active venture firms. She shares the inside story of the SVB collapse — the all-nighters, the adrenaline, the leadership decisions made under extreme pressure, and what it was really like to shoulder responsibility for thousands of founders, operators and employees during a once-in-a-generation crisis.
We then explore Erin’s new chapter at Octopus Ventures, and how she's shaping a platform that spans pre-seed to growth investing, powered by the unique capital model of the wider Octopus Group. We discuss the future of the UK ecosystem, the evolution of UK capital markets, and what needs to change to ensure the best founders choose to build and list here.
In this episode we dive into:
🔥 The inside view of the SVB implosion — four days, 90 minutes of sleep, and how the team navigated full-blown crisis
🧭 Leadership principles forged through chaos: communication, context and visible leadership
🏦 Why Erin joined Octopus Ventures and how she plans to scale a multi-fund, multi-stage European VC platform
🌍 The capital continuum — and how the UK can close the growth and public-markets gap
⚡ Why founders underestimate their own agency in shaping the future of the ecosystem
🏛️ Erin’s role in the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce and what a healthier UK exit landscape could look like
🏫 Octopus’ growing footprint in education, financial services, and energy, including the rise of Octopus LegacyThis is one of the most candid conversations we’ve recorded — a masterclass in leadership, resilience and building through volatility.
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Lee Veitch is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of SuperAwesome, the world’s leading kid-tech and youth marketing platform.
SuperAwesome powers billions of kid-safe digital transactions every month — helping brands like LEGO, Disney, and Nickelodeon connect with young audiences responsibly and safely.
Lee takes us behind the scenes of a remarkable 13-year journey — from the early days of fear, frustration, and opportunity, to scaling globally, being acquired by Epic Games, and then buying the business back to continue its mission independently.
In this episode we dive into:
👶 Why the internet needed a safe space for kids — and how SuperAwesome built it
📺 The shift from TV to digital — and how the youth ad economy evolved
⚖️ Balancing commercial success with mission and ethics
💡 The strategic choice not to build a programmatic platform
🧱 Lessons from the Epic Games acquisition and buyback
🔐 How regulation like COPPA and GDPR-K shaped the company’s tech
🌍 Using influence to drive global policy change
🔥 Founder energy, culture, and why humour builds great teamsLee also shares what’s next for SuperAwesome — from global expansion and M&A to building Awesome Intelligence, a new data platform that helps brands understand kids’ digital lives without compromising safety.
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The AI rollup transforming property management
This week on Riding Unicorns, we sit down with Dan Lifshits, Co-Founder & COO of Dwelly — the AI-first lettings and property management platform reinventing how landlords, tenants, and agents interact.
Dwelly is on a mission to modernise the UK rental market by acquiring traditional letting agencies and rebuilding them with technology at their core. The business is growing fast, backed by General Catalyst and other leading investors, combining the operational rigour of real estate with the scalability of AI.
Before founding Dwelly, Dan was one of the youngest associates at McKinsey, then helped scale Gett (the ride-hailing company) from early stage to over $1bn in GMV and 1,000+ employees — experience that now shapes Dwelly’s operational DNA.
In this episode, we dive into:
🏢 The rollup model — why Dwelly is buying agencies instead of building from scratch
💡 Applying AI to traditional services — from lettings to maintenance and communication
🌍 Moving to Hull — and why the founding team relocated to be closer to their first acquisition
🚀 Turning investor scepticism into conviction: why rollups might define the next decade
🤖 Using data to discover the “perfect process” across thousands of lettings
💼 How to balance being a product builder, operator, and M&A organisation
🔥 Lessons from Gett and McKinsey on scaling complex, real-world businessesDan also shares his view on the coming wave of AI-enabled rollups, why the UK rental market is “crying out for disruption,” and what founders can learn from industries still running on manual workflows.
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Hector is joined by Gauthier van Malderen, Founder and CEO of Perlego, the “Spotify for textbooks” and one of Europe’s leading edtech scale-ups.
Gauthier shares the remarkable journey of building Perlego from a personal frustration with expensive university textbooks into a global subscription platform transforming access to educational content. He reflects on early failures, the turning points that led to success, and how COVID accelerated the company’s growth.
The discussion dives deep into topics including:
Solving the chicken-and-egg problem of marketplace growthThe power of B2B partnerships in edtechBuilding a resilient and mission-driven cultureHiring mistakes, founder evolution, and staying authentic as a CEOLessons from scaling internationally and the differences between European and US venture ecosystemsGauthier also shares his thoughts on leadership, founder ambition, and why being “more American” changed his mindset on growth and success.
A candid and inspiring conversation about persistence, humility, and global ambition from one of Europe’s standout founders.
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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 financing to power its next phase.
We explore the intricacies of fintech business models, investor expectations, the realities of growing a company during AI hype cycles, and what it takes to build enduring value in modern financial infrastructure.
In this episode, we discuss:
💰 How re:cap evolved from an underwriting tool to a full capital + finops engine
📊 Why Paul obsesses over gross margin more than revenue — and how that influenced product decisions
🚨 Lessons from building through hype: “growth at all costs” vs quality of revenue
🧠 The role of AI in financial tooling — and why re:cap built its copilot carefully and quietly
🏗️ Building a remote-first, values-aligned company from day one
📍 What it’s like starting multiple companies with the same co-founders — and how friendship and complementary skills helped them scale
🔁 “Back to the future”: how re:cap is returning to its original thesis, now with product-market fit
🌍 Vision: re:cap as the capital allocation engine for the modern CFO
📉 How investor expectations flipped 180° in 18 months — and why Paul sticks to economic logic over trend-following -
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 venture. He also explains why he believes AI finally offers the chance to create abundance in healthcare, and how Quadrivia’s technology can deliver trusted, autonomous support for doctors, nurses, and patients alike.
🧠 Key topics discussed:
💡 The structural imbalance between global healthcare supply and demand and how AI can finally fix it
🏥 Babylon’s story: what went right, what went wrong, and what Ali learned from the SPAC era
🤖 Introducing Quadrivia’s “Qu”: a clinical AI that can handle patient calls, follow-ups, and real‑time triage
🔐 Building trust in AI: safety, guardrails, and how to design human‑in‑the‑loop autonomy
🎧 Live demo — a real patient conversation handled entirely by AI
📈 Why the future of healthcare lies in clinical process outsourcing powered by intelligent agents
🧩 Building small, fast, focused team, and why scale isn’t the goal (yet)
💬 Lessons on leadership, luck, and surviving the infinite game of entrepreneurshipAli also shares his candid reflections on failure, resilience, and what it really takes to build world-changing technology in one of the hardest industries imaginable.
A fascinating, raw, and inspiring conversation with one of the most visionary founders in global healthtech and a glimpse into how AI could redefine the future of care.
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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 runs 9 in-house live shopping studios (growing to 25 next year), manages 60+ trained presenters, and has developed AI-powered tools like One Place - a real-time data platform that helps brands understand the full impact of social commerce beyond the TikTok checkout.
We dive deep into:
📈 The rise of TikTok Shop and why social commerce isn’t just a trend — it’s becoming a core pillar of brand distribution
🎥 Lessons from China’s live shopping boom and why it’s just getting started in the West
🛠️ Building infrastructure: from creator training to studio logistics and custom AI tooling
💡 How enterprise brands are learning to think like challenger brands in social commerce
🤖 AI’s role in content generation, performance analysis, and dynamic presenter optimisation
🚀 Scaling a startup from 6 to 35 people in 12 months — while maintaining speed and culture
🧠 The underrated skill every founder needs: how to sell
🌍 Why luxury brands are coming to TikTok Shop — and how Go Places helps them adaptPlus, Sam shares his North Star vision, the wildest stat from TikTok Shop, his dream dinner guests (including Mourinho and Ryan Reynolds), and his future unicorn pick in AI-powered finance support.
This is a must-listen for anyone interested in the future of commerce, creator-led brands, or scaling complex operations at speed. Sam brings clarity, ambition, and sharp execution to one of the most exciting spaces in consumer tech right now.
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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 practical perspective on both infrastructure and application-layer AI—and how to evaluate founder-market fit in the era of LLMs.
In this episode, we discuss:
🧠 What “the art of early-stage” really means at Earlybird🤖 AI-native founders vs experienced SaaS veterans – who wins?💡 Infra vs apps – where to invest, and how to spot defensibility🚀 Why velocity and learning rate matter more than credentials⚠️ Red herrings in AI and why some infra startups vanish overnight🛠️ From vector DBs to prompt tooling – what survives when labs move fast🔎 Deep dive on recent Earlybird investments including Briefcase and Spatial💬 Why go-to-market insight is more valuable than tech alone🔮 How to underwrite GenAI founders in an environment that’s changing monthlyWhether you're building at the frontier of AI, trying to raise your seed round, or navigating a product roadmap in a fast-moving category, this conversation offers frameworks you’ll want to revisit.
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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 for investing in emerging markets.
Norrsken22 is on a mission to scale the outliers — high-growth companies tackling infrastructure, financial inclusion, identity, healthcare and more — and Lexi pulls back the curtain on what it really takes to win in this market.
🦄 In this episode, we discuss:
🌍 Africa’s startup boom and what global investors often get wrong
📈 Why Africa’s massive, mobile-first population is a global tech superpower
💸 The rise of Fintech, remittance, and payments infrastructure across the continent
🧠 Building trust in low-trust environments and how tech is solving for identity & access
📊 Valuation discipline and why applying Silicon Valley multiples doesn’t work in Africa
🛠️ Infrastructure before apps and how context shapes investment strategy
🤝 Partnering with international funds - the good, the bad, and the nuanced
🚀 Recent investments like Tyme Bank and what makes a Pan-African breakout
🇪🇬 Egypt, DRC, and beyond and which next-gen markets Lexi is most excited about
📚 Why VCs need empathy, not just capital, to invest in complex environmentsLexi also reflects on her evolution as an investor, the importance of local talent, and why venture success in Africa isn’t just possible, it’s already happening.
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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 building Puma from scratch, starting with the core mission: to deliver true value-add support to founders using his team’s operational and financial expertise. He also dives into the firm’s unique structure (including VCTs), investment thesis, and deep operational involvement with portfolio companies like Pockit and YASO.
🦄 In this episode, we discuss:
📊 Why Puma takes a multi-sector approach and how it helps reduce concentration risk
🧠 What makes a founder truly “venture-backable” and how Puma assesses founder psychology
🚀 Case study: Why Puma backed social commerce infra startup YASO to help brands scale in China
🧰 Exit readiness: How VCs should focus on DPI, not just deployment
📍 Why “next round ready” is as important as product-market fit
💥 Lessons from navigating crises from 2008 to COVID to today’s inflation squeeze
🏦 The power of VCTs and permanent capital in turbulent markets
🌱 Why every venture firm needs resilience and empathy to support founders in hard times
💬 Rupert’s take on customer obsession and why the best founders keep buyers front and centreWhether you’re raising your Series A or building a growth fund yourself, this episode offers deep insight into what great VC support should look like and how fund managers can stay close to the action while scaling.
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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 on building the financial stack that will power the next wave of autonomous agents — and helping AI-native businesses build real, durable revenue.
🚀 In this episode, we cover:
🧠 What an AI Agent really is — and why it changes everything
💸 Why the old SaaS pricing models don't work for agent-native businesses
📊 Outreach’s year-by-year revenue climb — and how they avoided collapse
🪙 Why durable growth matters more than fast growth
🔥 How Paid.ai is redefining payments, margin tracking, and monetisation for agents
🛠️ Building new infra for a world where humans no longer press the buttons
📈 Creating categories — and why most startups get it wrong
⚠️ Why many startups confuse market pull with product genius
👀 Insights into retention challenges at tools like Lovable, Cursor, and Bolt
💰 Manny’s fundraising advice — why sometimes raising less is more dangerousManny is one of the most respected builders in SaaS and now sits at the bleeding edge of the agentic future. If you’re building with agents, selling B2B, or navigating a shift from software to automation, this is a must-listen.
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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 everything — and how founders should rethink UX, infrastructure, and pricing
🚀 The new founder playbook — how AI-native teams are replacing engineers with agents and scaling faster than ever
🛠️ Building agent-first infrastructure — what Resend, Stripe, and Supabase are doing right (and why developers are no longer your only user)
💼 The business model shift — why agents need their own payments, APIs, and enterprise stack
🧠 From artisanal to mass-produced software — and what it means for defensibility, data moats, and GTM
🇪🇺 Europe vs the US — the real difference in ambition, infrastructure, and what founders can learn from each ecosystem
🧪 Inside AlleyCorp’s incubation model — how Kenneth prototypes ideas with vibe-coding and builds companies from zero to seedThis is a must-listen for anyone thinking seriously about the next wave of AI-native startups, especially if you’re building agents, infrastructure, or developer-first products.
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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 discuss:
🧠 What quantum networking is — and why it’s essential for unlocking quantum advantage
📈 Nu Quantum’s pivot from photonic components to full-stack infrastructure
🧬 How to build a team at the bleeding edge of science and engineering
⏳ Why quantum adoption is closer than most people think
🔐 The importance of entanglement, secure comms & UK leadership in quantum
💡 Lessons on commercialising research and navigating long deep-tech timelines
🏗️ Analogies to cloud infrastructure and what Carmen learned from traditional data centres
🌍 Carmen’s take on the global race to build the quantum internetThis is a fascinating look into a frontier technology that could reshape everything from national security to pharmaceuticals. A must-listen for founders, investors, and anyone curious about the future of computing.
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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, using just a product URL and a few prompts.
Patrick’s vision is big: turning every founder into a full-stack marketer, and replacing marketing agencies with a prompt-based AI interface that’s actually performant.
We dive into:
📈 The origin story – from digital product studio to pivoting into the AI-native future of marketing
🤖 Why “prompt-first” is the new UI – and how GenAI is changing how people interact with software
🎥 How Superscale creates hyper-performant UGC-style ads at scale using AI-generated actors
💡 Getting creative at speed – empowering users to produce 100s of high-converting ads with minimal effort
🔥 Why performance data should drive product development, not just UX or engagement
🧠 Agentic workflows – how Superscale is building an agent that can ideate, iterate, and deploy ads automatically
🌍 Who their power users are – from indie hackers and Shopify merchants to Lovable app founders and performance marketers
🧪 What makes an ad “work” in 2025 – and how creative risk-taking is becoming an AI superpower
🔮 The future of marketing – closing the loop between performance data and automated content creation
💰 Business model innovation – the potential of usage-based pricing, rev share, and agency-in-your-pocket experiencesWe also chat about Patrick’s fundraising journey with Creandum, investor feedback loops, and what it takes to win in a competitive GenAI market where everyone's launching an “agent”.
This is an essential listen for:
Founders building digital productsGrowth marketers trying to scale contentBuilders excited about the next wave of AI-native toolsInvestors tracking the next Lovable-style breakout🎧 Tune in now to learn how Superscale AI is giving every product the power of a top-tier marketing agency — at lightning speed and near-zero cost.
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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 a co-founder of Colossal, an innovative new venture that leverages AI and LLMs to help digital goods creators build customised commerce experiences through a prompt-based interface.
Key Topics Discussed:
The Payment Orchestration Insight - How Paul's experience at Braintree meeting enterprise merchants face-to-face revealed the need for a unified payment infrastructure layer that didn't exist in the marketHypergrowth Challenges - Scaling Primer from a three-person team to Series B funding (nearly half-billion valuation) within just 16 months, whilst building a robust enterprise product during COVIDHiring Philosophy and Culture - Paul's approach of interviewing 20-30 people for every hire, treating "autonomy as a requirement not a benefit," and maintaining a "we're not a real business yet" mentality to drive innovationProduct Development Approach - The importance of building POCs and technical spikes to understand how products "feel" rather than just look good on paper, especially when serving enterprise customersThe Colossal Vision - Paul's new venture described as "Lovable for commerce," using AI to help creators build sophisticated customer journeys without technical knowledge, targeting the £400 billion digital goods marketTune in to hear Paul's fascinating insights on building payment infrastructure for enterprise clients, navigating hypergrowth whilst maintaining product focus, and his bold new vision for democratising commerce through AI. This episode offers invaluable lessons for founders tackling complex technical problems and scaling rapidly in competitive markets.
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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 digital asset space. When Elliptic hit an inflection point, Simone stepped into the CEO role — enabling the founder to focus on product while she scaled operations and managed the board.
👥 One of Simone’s most powerful lessons? Hiring an experienced Chair who had been a CEO — a move that transformed how Elliptic operated at board level and beyond. From transparency to over-communication, Simone shares a refreshing and tactical take on what it really takes to lead through complexity.
We dive into:
🚀 Founder to CEO transition — The playbook for scaling when roles are clearly defined
📊 Mastering board management — Running better meetings, communicating through chaos
💾 Business model evolution — Moving from SaaS to data-as-a-service for enterprise clients
📉 Crypto market cycles — Leading through volatility without losing focus
💪 Building resilience — Fostering curiosity and discipline in fast-moving markets
🏢 Enterprise adoption — Why crypto infrastructure is still early — and full of potential
This is a must-listen for founders, operators, and anyone navigating leadership, growth, and the wild world of crypto. Simone’s thoughtful, candid approach is packed with wisdom on how to scale with integrity.🎧 Listen now on your favourite platform and don’t forget to like, subscribe, and follow Riding Unicorns for more inspiring episodes. 🦄
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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 Andrei trusts people over metrics when chasing outliers💶 The Celonis origin story — How a €100k pricing bet helped three inexperienced founders build a global leader🌍 Accel’s European edge — Why they focus on non-obvious founders across Europe and Israel🔁 The art of pattern recognition — Tactical advice for young VCs on fast-tracking their investment instincts⚙️ No-code and AI — Why technical founders may have more of an edge than ever🧊 Inside the Polar deal — How Andrei convinced a former Shopify exec to raise a round he didn’t plan to🧩 Strategic angel orchestration — Why top VCs pull unicorn operators into early rounds (hint: it's not just for PR)🔐 His future unicorn pick — A cybersecurity company from an unexpected European hub building with open-source DNAThis episode is a masterclass in European venture strategy. Whether you’re an investor, a founder, or just obsessed with how unicorns get made, this one will shift your perspective.
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