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 Legacy

This is one of the most candid conversations we’ve recorded — a masterclass in leadership, resilience and building through volatility.

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 teams

Lee 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.

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 businesses

Dan 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.

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 growth
• The power of B2B partnerships in edtech
• Building a resilient and mission-driven culture
• Hiring mistakes, founder evolution, and staying authentic as a CEO
• Lessons from scaling internationally and the differences between European and US venture ecosystems

Gauthier 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.

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 entrepreneurship

Ali 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 adapt

Plus, 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 monthly

Whether 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 environments

Lexi 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 centre

Whether 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.