Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

Riding Unicorns
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  • Entrepreneurship
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Meet the people building the future. Hosted by investors James Pringle and Hector Mason, Riding Unicorns goes inside the companies, ideas and decisions shaping the future of technology. Each episode features candid conversations with leading founders, operators and investors about what it really takes to build and back category-defining companies. From finding product-market fit and raising capital to hiring exceptional teams, scaling globally and navigating the moments that can make or break a company, we explore the lessons you rarely find in the playbooks. Whether you're building, investing or simply interested in how great technology companies are created, Riding Unicorns gives you a front-row seat to the people doing it.

  1. 2d ago

    Yaron Valler, Founder of Target Global: Backing 15+ Unicorns, Why Outsiders Win and the Future of AI

    Yaron Valler, Founder of Target Global, a European venture capital firm managing more than €3 billion. With over three decades of experience as an engineer, entrepreneur and investor, Yaron has backed more than 15 unicorns, including companies such as Delivery Hero and DocPlanner. Yaron shares the lessons he's learnt from decades of investing, why understanding people is the most important skill in venture capital and what he looks for in exceptional founders. His ideal combination is simple: low ego, high energy and an obsessive attention to detail. The conversation also explores Yaron's new book, The New Europeans, which examines the relationship between immigration, entrepreneurship and economic growth. Yaron argues that outsiders often make exceptional entrepreneurs because they see problems differently, challenge established assumptions and take risks others might avoid. James and Hector discuss what this means for Europe's future, the importance of integration and how governments can better harness the economic potential of migration. Yaron illustrates his thinking through investments in DocPlanner and Delivery Hero, where international founders helped build businesses across borders. The conversation then turns to artificial intelligence. Yaron explains why he's become more cautious about traditional enterprise software, the challenges of building defensible AI applications and his growing interest in frontier technologies beyond conventional large language models. Topics Covered Yaron's journey from engineering and entrepreneurship into venture capitalBuilding Target Global into a €3 billion investment firmLessons from backing more than 15 unicornsWhy understanding people is the most important skill in investingIdentifying founders with low ego, high energy and attention to detailThe thesis behind Yaron's new book, The New EuropeansWhy immigrants and outsiders can make exceptional entrepreneursImmigration, integration and European economic growthHow DocPlanner and Delivery Hero expanded across bordersWhy Yaron is becoming more cautious about enterprise softwareBuilding defensible businesses in the AI eraOpportunities in frontier AI and next-generation semiconductorsYaron's Future Unicorn prediction, Axonic LabsHis dream dinner party guests: Mark Twain, Neil Armstrong and Elon MuskAfter decades of investing across multiple technology cycles, Yaron's perspective brings together two important ideas: exceptional companies are built by exceptional people, and some of the biggest opportunities emerge when founders approach familiar problems from an entirely different perspective. A fascinating conversation about venture capital, immigration, European competitiveness and the future of technology investing.

    Yaron Valler, Founder of Target Global: Backing 15+ Unicorns, Why Outsiders Win and the Future of AI

  2. Oct 21

    Building Satellites Closer to Earth: Anatolii Papulov, CEO of NewOrbit, on VLEO, SpaceTech and the Future of Space Infrastructure

    In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Anatolii Papulov, Co-Founder & CEO of NewOrbit, the UK SpaceTech company developing satellites designed to operate much closer to Earth than conventional satellite constellations. The company recently raised an $18.5 million Series A to bring its technology to market. Most satellites operate around 500–600km above Earth. NewOrbit is working to unlock Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), at altitudes closer to 200km, where satellites could deliver better imagery, improved communications and new capabilities for industries increasingly dependent on space infrastructure. The technical challenges are significant. At these altitudes, atmospheric drag can cause conventional satellites to fall out of orbit within weeks. NewOrbit is developing proprietary propulsion systems, satellite architecture and software to enable spacecraft to operate commercially for years. Anatolii explains how NewOrbit has assembled engineers from organisations including SpaceX, NASA and Rocket Lab, and what it takes to build and finance a deep technology company where success depends on complex engineering milestones. The conversation also explores the wider SpaceTech industry, including why rocket launch capacity is becoming a major bottleneck, SpaceX's growing influence and the possibility of moving computing, energy generation and other infrastructure into space. Topics Covered What Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO) is and why it mattersHow satellites closer to Earth could transform imaging and communicationsBuilding spacecraft capable of surviving atmospheric drag at 200kmDeveloping proprietary ion propulsion and satellite systemsWhy building in SpaceTech is fundamentally different from softwareManaging testing, reliability and technical riskRecruiting engineers from SpaceX, NASA and Rocket LabRaising an $18.5 million Series A and communicating technical milestones to investorsWhy launch capacity is becoming SpaceTech's biggest bottleneckSpaceX's influence on the commercial space industryThe potential for data centres and energy infrastructure in spaceWhy investment in SpaceTech is acceleratingTurning a university research project into a venture-backed companyAnatolii's Future Unicorn prediction and dream dinner party guestsAnatolii also shares how his interest in VLEO began during his master's degree, when he questioned why satellites operated so far above Earth. That question became a nine-year obsession with solving one of the industry's most difficult engineering challenges. A fascinating conversation about the commercialisation of space, breakthrough hardware and the future of infrastructure beyond Earth.

    Building Satellites Closer to Earth: Anatolii Papulov, CEO of NewOrbit, on VLEO, SpaceTech and the Future of Space Infrastructure

  3. Oct 14

    6 Years, 250+ Episodes: James & Hector on Venture, AI, Investing and the Lessons We’ve Learned

    For this special episode of Riding Unicorns, there is no guest. James Pringle and Hector Mason sit down together to look back at six years of the podcast, what they've learned along the way and how much the technology and venture landscape has changed since the first episode in 2020. They discuss how Riding Unicorns has shaped their careers, from Hector going from Associate to General Partner at Episode 1 to James meeting his current boss through the podcast, as well as the network, investments and opportunities that have come from hundreds of conversations with founders. The conversation also looks at where venture is heading next. James and Hector compare today's AI boom with the 2021 market, discuss why extraordinary companies can still make bad investments at the wrong valuation, and explore where they think the biggest opportunities could emerge across AI, robotics, marketplaces, hardware and SpaceTech. Topics Covered • 6 years and 250+ episodes of Riding Unicorns • How the podcast has shaped James and Hector's careers • Their favourite guests and conversations • The importance of consistency and building a network over time • The AI boom versus the 2021 venture market • Why AI still has a long way to go in real-world adoption • How AI agents are starting to automate real workflows • Why great founders still matter more than fashionable sectors • The return of marketplaces and businesses with network effects • Why hardware and the physical world are becoming more interesting • Being right about a company but wrong about the valuation • James and Hector's best investments and what they learned from them • The opportunity for investors in UK and European technology • Where they would invest today across AI, robotics and SpaceTech • Their latest Future Unicorn predictions • And, for the first time, James and Hector answer the Dinner Party Guest question themselves The episode also gets into some of the investments that have shaped their thinking, including Hector's early investment in Lawhive and James's experience backing companies before they became unicorns, alongside the non-consensus investments they believe can produce the biggest venture returns. After 250 episodes, one lesson keeps coming back: technology changes, markets move and investment themes come and go, but the fundamentals remain remarkably consistent. Back exceptional people, stay curious, build relationships and keep showing up.

    6 Years, 250+ Episodes: James & Hector on Venture, AI, Investing and the Lessons We’ve Learned

  4. Oct 7

    Powering the AI Era: Karl Bach, CEO of Axle Energy on Virtual Power Plants and Building in the Physical World

    AI is creating extraordinary new demand for electricity. But what happens when the grid can't keep up? In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Karl Bach, Co-Founder & CEO of Axle Energy, the energy technology company building a virtual power plant from hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles, batteries and heat pumps. Rather than relying solely on large power stations to balance electricity supply and demand, Axle connects distributed devices across homes and businesses and intelligently shifts when they consume energy. Today, the company manages more than two gigawatts of capacity, roughly equivalent to the capacity of a nuclear reactor. The timing is becoming increasingly important. Renewable energy creates more variability in electricity supply, while AI and the rapid expansion of data centres are creating new sources of demand. In the UK, Karl says a new data centre can face a grid connection wait of around 10 years. Axle's technology can help provide flexibility to the electricity system in weeks rather than waiting years for new physical infrastructure to be built. Karl also shares the realities of building in a heavily regulated industry. Axle spent years helping push through regulatory changes required for distributed devices to participate properly in energy markets, while gradually building from its first EV charger partnerships into a platform managing hundreds of thousands of devices. Topics Covered • How virtual power plants work • Why EVs, batteries and heat pumps can help balance the electricity grid • Building more than two gigawatts of capacity from distributed devices • Why renewable energy increases the need for grid flexibility • The impact of AI and data centres on electricity demand • Why connecting a new UK data centre to the grid can take around a decade • Building a startup inside a heavily regulated industry • How Axle won its first customers before it had a product • Creating recurring revenue for EV charger manufacturers • Karl's experience leading growth at Bulb • What Bulb's collapse taught him about building in the physical world • Balancing startup speed with the consequences of getting things wrong • Hiring exceptional people inside a highly technical industry • Why Karl doesn't believe energy will ever become free • Building a company around a problem you genuinely care about Karl also discusses his experience at Bulb, once one of Europe's fastest-growing companies, and how its eventual collapse following the energy crisis shaped his understanding of the risks that come with building businesses exposed to the physical world. This is a conversation about one of the fundamental constraints on the next wave of technology: energy. How we produce it, how we move it, and how software can make the infrastructure we already have significantly more efficient.

    Powering the AI Era: Karl Bach, CEO of Axle Energy on Virtual Power Plants and Building in the Physical World

  5. Sep 30

    Building the Data Brain for AI Agents: Toby Mather, Co-Founder of Rig, on Data Infrastructure, Enterprise Sales and the Agentic Future

    What happens when companies deploy AI agents before fixing the data those agents rely on? In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Toby Mather, Co-Founder of Rig, the AI-native data infrastructure company building the data layer that allows humans and AI agents to work from the same trusted context. Rig started as a "data brain" sitting on top of platforms like Snowflake and BigQuery, making sense of fragmented company data so teams could use tools like Claude and Cursor to build applications, automations and analytics. It has since expanded into an end-to-end data stack covering ingestion, warehousing and context. Toby explains why LLMs alone aren't the answer to enterprise data. While language models are excellent at understanding context, businesses still need deterministic systems like SQL and structured tables when they want accurate answers from their data. Rig's thesis is that AI should make sense of the complexity, but the underlying calculations still need to be grounded in reliable data. The conversation also explores the rush towards autonomous AI agents. Toby argues that many companies are trying to run before they can walk: connecting agents to dozens of fragmented systems without first creating the clean, consistent data infrastructure they need. Get the context right, and the journey from human-in-the-loop to autonomous agents becomes much easier. Topics Covered • Why AI agents need better data infrastructure • Building a "data brain" for humans and AI agents • Why LLMs aren't always good at data reasoning • Why 55-year-old SQL and tables still matter in the AI era • Moving from human-in-the-loop to autonomous agents • How Rig uses Rig to run its own business • Building agentic workflows across CRM and customer success • Toby's lessons from building and selling Lingumi • Why founders should choose enormous markets • Landing major enterprise customers as an early-stage startup • The PULL framework for B2B sales • How to sell enterprise software without becoming a services business • Competing with incumbents like Snowflake and Databricks • Balancing customer feedback with founder-led product intuition • Why agentic customer success could be a major opportunity Toby also shares some of the more surprising ways customers are already using Rig, from identifying overpayments hidden across thousands of invoices to building AI-powered customer success systems that identify problems and proactively contact customers. This is a conversation about the infrastructure beneath the AI agent revolution: getting company data into the right shape, giving AI the context it needs and building the foundations required for truly autonomous work.

    Building the Data Brain for AI Agents: Toby Mather, Co-Founder of Rig, on Data Infrastructure, Enterprise Sales and the Agentic Future

  6. Sep 23

    Building AI Workers for the Physical Economy: Robin Van Aeken, CEO of Magentic, on Agents, Manufacturing and Supply Chains

    What happens when AI moves beyond the digital world and starts transforming the companies that manufacture the things around us? In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Robin Van Aeken, Co-Founder & CEO of Magentic, the AI company building digital workers for some of the world's largest manufacturers. Magentic's AI agents, or "mages", work alongside procurement and supply chain teams at companies including Siemens and Coca-Cola Europacific Partners. They connect with existing systems, analyse huge volumes of procurement data and identify opportunities to make supply chains cheaper, faster and more resilient. The economics can be significant. A manufacturer spending $10 billion a year on procurement might save $50 million by making its team 50% more efficient. But improving procurement costs by just 1-2% could generate $100-200 million in savings. Robin explains why this makes procurement one of the most compelling applications for enterprise AI. The conversation also explores how Magentic deploys AI agents inside complex enterprises. Rather than expecting autonomy from day one, its digital workers effectively begin as "interns", learning the organisation, its systems and its data before gradually earning the trust to take actions and eventually run significant parts of procurement and supply chain workflows. Topics Covered • Why the next major AI opportunity could be in the physical economy • Building AI digital workers for procurement and supply chains • Why AI can create more value by reducing procurement spend than headcount • How human-in-the-loop feedback helps agents develop domain expertise • Using AI across complex ERP systems like SAP and Oracle • Building trust with some of the world's largest manufacturers • Data privacy, sovereignty and deploying AI inside sensitive organisations • How Magentic's "mages" progress from interns to autonomous digital workers • Why AI agents increasingly interact with software like humans • Robin's journey from McKinsey to founding Magentic • What his co-founder's experience at OpenAI taught them about the physical economy • Building an enterprise AI company backed by Sequoia Capital • How to construct the right investor syndicate beyond simply raising capital • Why faster, cheaper supply chains could ultimately reduce the cost of physical goods Robin also explains why the explosion in AI infrastructure is creating a huge new challenge for the physical economy. Data centres, chips, power infrastructure, cooling and other components all depend on manufacturing and supply chains that weren't designed for today's speed of demand. This is a conversation about bringing AI into the physical economy: deploying agents inside complex enterprises, making global supply chains more efficient and using software to unlock potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in savings.

    Building AI Workers for the Physical Economy: Robin Van Aeken, CEO of Magentic, on Agents, Manufacturing and Supply Chains

  7. Sep 9

    Scaling a Unicorn at Machine Speed: Mirko Novakovic, CEO of Dash0, on AI-Native Engineering and Growth

    What happens to software engineering when almost every line of code is written by AI? In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James sits down with Mirko Novakovic, Founder & CEO of Dash0, the AI-native observability company helping engineering teams understand, monitor and fix problems in increasingly complex software systems. Dash0 has grown at remarkable speed, 4x-ing ARR in six months and recently raising a $110m Series B. For Mirko, now on his third company, that growth hasn't come from a single breakthrough. His philosophy is much simpler: build the fundamentals brick by brick, continuously improve them, and let the effects compound.  The conversation explores how AI is fundamentally changing software development. At Dash0, almost no code is now written manually, with engineers increasingly using natural language to create software and focusing their time on architecture, review and quality. Mirko believes the next step is automating the entire journey from prompt to production.  We also discuss what it takes to scale a venture-backed company aggressively. Mirko explains why founders need to recognise when they have momentum and "step on the gas", why revenue growth is the metric that matters most in the early stages, and why sometimes you need to shorten your runway to capture the opportunity in front of you.  Topics Covered • Why AI-generated code creates a bigger need for observability  • Growing Dash0 from launch to unicorn at exceptional speed  • Why there is no "secret sauce" to building a great software company  • How small improvements compound into significant growth  • Knowing when to step on the gas and scale aggressively  • Why revenue growth matters more than efficiency at the early stage  • Saying no to $10m+ customer opportunities when you're not ready  • Why the first engineers you hire must be exceptional  • How AI is changing the role of software engineers  • Why almost every line of code at Dash0 is now AI-generated  • Building an AI-first organisation without restrictive procurement processes  • Why Dash0 insists presentations are generated entirely by AI  • Developers spending up to $20,000 per month on AI tools  • Turning internal AI tools into new products  • Why AI-native companies are documenting and systemising more of their knowledge Mirko also shares his approach to hiring, why great people attract other great people, and how his experience building previous companies has shaped the speed and ambition behind Dash0. This is a conversation about building at machine speed: using AI across engineering and operations, knowing when to take risk, and creating the organisational momentum required to build a category-defining software company.

    Scaling a Unicorn at Machine Speed: Mirko Novakovic, CEO of Dash0, on AI-Native Engineering and Growth

  8. Sep 2

    Building a Profitable AI Company: Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies.ai, on Virality, AI Agents and Scaling

    How do you build a global AI company without burning hundreds of millions of dollars? In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James sits down with Krish Ramineni, Co-Founder & CEO of Fireflies.ai, the AI meeting assistant used by millions of people around the world. Fireflies started building with AI long before the current boom. After struggling to raise capital, Krish and his co-founder became obsessed with reaching "ramen profitability", keeping costs low and controlling their own destiny. They eventually raised venture funding, but haven't touched the capital from their Series A, reaching profitability in 2023 while continuing to grow rapidly. The conversation explores how Fireflies created the AI notetaker category and engineered distribution directly into the product. Rather than relying on traditional enterprise sales, Fireflies focused on self-service adoption, word of mouth and a viral loop where every meeting introduced the product to new users. This helped Fireflies spread to more than 100 countries within its first year. Krish also explains where Fireflies goes next: beyond meeting notes towards AI that understands conversations across meetings, email and Slack, identifies what needs to happen and eventually completes work while conversations are still taking place. Topics Covered • Building an AI company before the AI boom  • Why Fireflies prioritised profitability from the beginning  • Creating the AI notetaker category  • Engineering virality and word of mouth into the product  • Spending almost nothing on marketing until reaching tens of millions in revenue  • Going horizontal when VCs advised Fireflies to focus on enterprise sales  • Scaling a self-service product across 100+ countries  • Building infrastructure for millions of users  • Privacy, security and customer data in AI  • Expanding from meeting notes into email, Slack and AI agents  • Building a profitable company while maintaining venture-style growth  • Krish's first-principles approach to leadership  • Why iteration speed compounds into competitive advantage  • The opportunity in open-source AI and inference infrastructure Krish also shares why he runs Fireflies with an unusually flat organisation and more than 30 direct reports, and why he believes startups win by iterating faster than their competitors. This is a conversation about building an AI company differently: staying lean, engineering distribution into the product, obsessing over economics and surviving long enough for the market to catch up with your vision.

    Building a Profitable AI Company: Krish Ramineni, CEO of Fireflies.ai, on Virality, AI Agents and Scaling
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Meet the people building the future. Hosted by investors James Pringle and Hector Mason, Riding Unicorns goes inside the companies, ideas and decisions shaping the future of technology. Each episode features candid conversations with leading founders, operators and investors about what it really takes to build and back category-defining companies. From finding product-market fit and raising capital to hiring exceptional teams, scaling globally and navigating the moments that can make or break a company, we explore the lessons you rarely find in the playbooks. Whether you're building, investing or simply interested in how great technology companies are created, Riding Unicorns gives you a front-row seat to the people doing it.

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