Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 🦄

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.

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 Upvest and its pivot from blockchain to API investment infrastructureLessons from being a repeat founder (including early failures and a Klarna acquisition)Building a high-performance team and the hiring strategies that workThe challenges of finding product-market fit in fintechFundraising insights: raising from Bessemer, lessons from Series A and BHow Martin keeps himself motivated and structured as a high-pressure founderWhy he still does outbound hiring personally on LinkedInHis view on IPOs, partnerships, and what comes next for UpvestMartin shares candid reflections, hard-earned wisdom, and a rare glimpse into the emotional rollercoaster of building something meaningful. A must-listen for fintech founders, investors, and operators.