Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
Riding Unicorns is the go-to podcast for anyone interested in venture capital and high-growth startups. Hosted by VCs James Pringle and Hector Mason, the show explores what it takes to build and back successful tech unicorns. Each episode features candid conversations with top founders, operators, and investors—unpacking the strategies, challenges, and insights behind scaling category-defining companies. From fundraising and product-market fit to hiring, growth, and beyond, no topic is off-limits. Whether you're a founder, VC, angel investor, or just curious about the world of startups, you’ll find valuable takeaways in every episode.
Show episodes
In this special Riding Unicorns episode, recorded live during London Tech Week and hosted at Cooley’s London HQ, we bring you two candid conversations from the frontline of startup building. 🚀 First up: Yoann Pavy, a growth marketing veteran (ex-Deliveroo, Depop, Perkbox), shares why distribution-first thinking is fli
From Founder Failure to Building a €100M+ European VC Fund with Apostolos Apostolakis, Managing Partner @ VentureFriends
In this episode, we’re joined by Apostolos Apostolakis, the founder-turned-VC behind VentureFriends, a pan-European pre-seed and seed fund known for backing consumer and fintech breakouts like Plum, Blueground, Huspy, Carmoola and Instashop. Apostolos shares a remarkable story of resilience — from scaling a startup to
Investing as a multi-stage fund into Europe's top startups with Deepka Rana, Principal @ Northzone
In this episode, we’re joined by Deepka Rana, Principal at leading venture fund Northzone, early backers of Klarna, Truelayer, Spotify, iZettle, Kahoot, and Personio. Deepka shares her journey from physics at Imperial and investment banking to investing in some of Europe’s most exciting startups. We unpack: 💸 What it’
Building voice-AI infrastructure and scaling go-to-market globally with Carles Reina, GTM @ ElevenLabs & Angel Investor
In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Carles Reina, Go-to-Market Lead at ElevenLabs, an AI Audio research and deployment company that tripled it"s valuation to $3.3BN in January, after confirming a new $180M funding round. From starting out as a banker in Barcelona to scaling Uber’s first European team,
In this episode of Riding Unicorns, we"re joined by Romain Sestier and Guillaume Lebedel, the co-founders of StackOne, a rapidly growing startup that’s building the universal integration layer for modern SaaS and AI products. Hot off the back of their $20M Series A led by GV, the duo joins us to share their journey, in
Recorded live at the Capsule Scale-Up 50 event in London on 30th April 2025, this episode features a standout panel discussion moderated by our co-host James Pringle. The Scale-Up 50 is Capsule’s flagship celebration of the UK’s fastest-growing, most exciting scale-ups, recognising the founders, leaders, and investors
