Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

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.

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.

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.

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.