What happens when software adapts to humans, rather than humans adapting to software?

In this episode of Riding Unicorns, James and Hector sit down with Jonathan Sanders, Founder & CEO of Light, the AI-native finance platform redefining how businesses manage money.

Jonathan's journey spans investment banking, consulting, Pleo, founding Juni, and now building Light. Along the way, he has developed a unique perspective on technology, AI, and what the next generation of business software will look like.

The conversation explores Jonathan's concept of "organic software" where AI agents learn, adapt, and operate alongside teams, reducing complexity and transforming finance from a reporting function into a strategic intelligence layer.

Jonathan shares real-world examples of AI agents managing company spend, monitoring compliance, automating finance workflows, and generating insights that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

The discussion also covers founder psychology, building through uncertainty, AI-first organisations, and how leadership teams must evolve in a world where software development, product design, and operations are increasingly powered by AI.

Topics Covered:

• Jonathan's journey from finance and consulting into startups
• Why founding a company is one of the hardest ways to create change
• The concept of "organic software" and AI-native business tools
• How AI agents learn from company behaviour and improve over time
• Building finance software that tells stories instead of generating reports
• Real-world examples of autonomous finance workflows
• Why AI is changing the role of CFOs and finance teams
• How Light uses AI internally across product, engineering, and operations
• The rise of AI-first organisations and new ways of working
• Founder resilience, stress, and the realities of building companies
• Why software development is changing faster than most people realise
• The future of business operations in an AI-native world

This is a conversation about the next generation of software, the future of work, and what happens when AI becomes a true operating system for businesses.

Steve Domin, Founder & CEO of Duffel, the company rebuilding the infrastructure layer of the global travel industry.

Duffel is taking on one of the most complex and outdated sectors, creating modern, developer-first APIs for flights, hotels, and more. Backed by investors including Index Ventures and Benchmark, the company has raised over $50M to transform how travel is bought and sold.

Steve shares the journey of building Duffel from scratch, including:

•  Why the travel industry is fundamentally broken 
•  The insight that led to Duffel’s API-first approach 
•  Building deep supply-side integrations with airlines and incumbents 
•  Navigating COVID when travel demand dropped to zero 
•  The painful reality of scaling, resetting, and rebuilding product-market fit 
•  Where long-term defensibility comes from in complex infrastructure businesses 

We also explore:

•  What makes companies like GoCardless “talent factories” 
•  How AI is changing how modern engineering teams are built 
•  The future of smaller, highly efficient companies 
•  Steve’s view on the next generation of AI-native products 

This is a masterclass in persistence, infrastructure thinking, and building through uncertainty.

Mahdi Yahya, Founder and CEO of Ori, is now part of Radiant following its partnership with Brookfield.

Mahdi is building at the centre of one of the most important shifts in technology: the global race to scale AI infrastructure.

We cover:

•  From telecoms to data centres: lessons from building infrastructure businesses from age 20 
•  Why Ori chose the harder path of building for a future that did not yet exist 
•  What “AI infrastructure” actually means, from GPU clusters to orchestration software 
•  The Radiant model: combining capital, power, compute and software into a single platform 
•  Why AI is becoming sovereign infrastructure and what that means for governments 
•  Where value will accrue in the AI stack across hardware, infrastructure and applications 
•  The importance of vertical integration and marginal gains in a capital-intensive market 
•  Two pivotal decisions that shaped the company, including early acquisition and moving into physical infrastructure 
•  Founder resilience and the simple rule: stay alive 

Mahdi also shares his perspective on the next wave of AI companies, the opportunity in inference, and why robotics could be the next breakout category.

This is a conversation about building at civilisational scale and what it takes to operate where technology, capital and infrastructure collide.

This week on Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Charlotte Palmer, Vice President of Venture Capital at Integra Global Advisors.

Charlotte sits on the other side of the table as an LP, backing emerging venture funds globally. In this episode, she lifts the lid on how LPs actually evaluate VCs, what really matters beyond headline performance, and why many GPs still get fundraising wrong.

We cover:

• How LPs really underwrite venture funds and why early DPI is often misunderstood
• What matters more than performance in the early years of a fund
• Why access and ownership drive returns more than anything else
• The reality of backing emerging managers and why smaller funds win
• Team dynamics, attribution, and how LPs assess partners under the hood
• Why fewer funds are getting backed and what’s changed in the market
• The shift in venture towards early-stage and how late-stage AI impacts LP strategy
• Portfolio construction from an LP perspective and how diversification actually works
• The role of co-investments and why LPs increasingly lean into them
• How GPs can create urgency in fundraising and what actually cuts through

Charlotte also shares practical advice for GPs, including how to re-engage LPs, how to position a fund without strong DPI, and why most outreach fails to land.

A clear, honest view from the LP side on what it takes to get backed and build a fund that lasts.

This week on Riding Unicorns, we welcome back Alan Chang, Founder and CEO of Fuse Energy.

Since his last appearance, Fuse has scaled rapidly, reaching a $5B valuation and setting its sights on £1B ARR. In this episode, Alan breaks down what it really takes to build a full-stack energy company from scratch, and why solving energy is one of the hardest and most important challenges of our time.

We cover:

• Why lowering the cost of energy is a trillion-pound opportunity
 • The reality of building in a deeply complex, regulated industry
 • What it actually means to “buy the grid” and why it matters
 • How Fuse has already reduced energy costs by 15%
 • The next big product: plug-and-play solar and battery for every home
 • Why time, not capital, is the biggest constraint in building a company
 • Hiring world-class engineers and building a high-performance culture
 • Lessons from Revolut and applying them to energy
 • Why the best founders are obsessed with speed, not comfort

Alan also shares his mindset as a founder, why he rarely looks back at achievements, and why he’s more convinced than ever that this problem can be solved.

Clear thinking on how to build a generational company in one of the world’s most complex industries.

What does a genuinely great VC fund look like today, from an LP’s perspective?

In this episode, James and Hector are joined by Dave Neumann, Investment Manager at Schroders Capital, one of the most experienced institutional investors in venture. With a career spanning decades and exposure to top-tier global funds, Dave shares how leading LPs actually evaluate venture firms, and where many GPs get it wrong.

The conversation covers what separates top quartile funds from the rest, why venture is increasingly about building a firm rather than just making investments, and how the best managers create a long-term flywheel across talent, track record and capital.

They also go deep on often overlooked topics including DPI, liquidity, fund size, and portfolio construction. Dave explains why access is everything in venture, why consistency matters more than one-off performance, and how LPs think about returns in a world where companies stay private for longer.

A sharp, practical look at venture through the LP lens and what it takes to build a durable, high-performing fund.

Topics Covered

•  What defines a top VC fund today 
•  The LP perspective on venture performance 
•  Why venture is about building a firm, not just investing 
•  Top quartile vs lower quartile returns and the compounding effect 
•  Talent, incentives and the VC flywheel 
•  Portfolio construction myths vs reality 
•  Fund size and where returns are really made 
•  DPI, liquidity and secondaries in Europe 
•  How LPs think about risk, time horizons and outcomes 
•  Why access is the biggest advantage in venture

Tony Jamous first joined Riding Unicorns in January 2023, just after Oyster became a unicorn. Since then, the company has raised its Series D, Tony has moved into the Executive Chairman role, and Hadi Moussa has stepped in as CEO.

In this episode, James sits down with both Tony and Hadi to unpack what really happens when a founder hands over the CEO role in a high-growth company. They discuss why Tony knew Oyster needed a different kind of leader for its next stage, how the search process unfolded, and what Hadi has focused on in his first months in the role.

They also go deep on scaling leadership, building operational rhythm, giving effective feedback, and how to turn a strong remote culture into a genuinely high-performing organisation. The conversation then shifts to the future of global employment, the impact of AI on hiring, and why Oyster still sees a huge opportunity ahead.

A candid episode on succession, self-awareness, scale, and what it takes to lead a mission-driven company through its next chapter.

Topics covered:

•  Why Tony stepped aside as CEO 
•  How Oyster prepared for a leadership transition 
•  What Hadi is changing in his first months as CEO 
•  Founder-led vision vs operator-led execution 
•  Building a high-performing remote team 
•  Feedback, vulnerability, and leadership maturity 
•  AI’s impact on hiring and global talent 
•  The future of Oyster and global employment

Nikola Mrkšić is the Co-Founder and CEO of PolyAI, one of the world’s leading voice AI companies, helping enterprises automate customer service through conversational AI at massive scale.

Before PolyAI, Nikola was a machine learning researcher and part of the team behind Siri. In this episode, he joins James to unpack what the world is only now starting to understand about voice AI, why most automation still misses the point, and how PolyAI has built a full stack enterprise product that goes far beyond simply reducing call queues.

They discuss how PolyAI is used by major brands across hospitality, utilities, retail, banking and insurance, and why the real opportunity is not just handling calls, but turning the contact centre into an intelligence layer for the whole business. Nikola also explains why enterprise voice AI is harder than it looks, where the moat really sits, and why owning the models and the application layer matters.

The conversation covers Siri, Gordon Ramsay, pricing power, Nvidia, enterprise stickiness, and what it takes to build a category leader from Europe.

Topics include:

• Why Siri was too early for the vision it was aiming at
• Why PolyAI focused on the step between clunky IVR and true AI assistants
• How voice AI can improve revenue, customer experience and operational insight
• Why enterprise deployments become hard to rip out
• The difference between real voice AI companies and wrappers
• Whether voice AI is becoming commoditised
• How PolyAI thinks about pricing, margins and defensibility
• Why Nikola believes many “AI companies” are borrowing from the future
• Gordon Ramsay as a customer and brand partner
• Nikola’s future unicorn pick: Paid.ai

This week on Riding Unicorns, Matt Wilson returns to the podcast. Matt previously joined us in September 2022 to talk about Omnipresent, which has since been acquired by Deel. He is now back building Jack and Jill, one of the most talked-about venture-backed companies in Europe right now.

Jack and Jill is bringing conversational AI to job hunting and hiring, with two agents built for two audiences:

• Jack, an AI agent for individuals that learns who you are, what you want, and monitors the job market for you, while also helping with career coaching, CVs, and interview prep.
• Jill, an AI agent for companies that learns what you are hiring for, then works with Jack to make high-signal introductions at scale.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why careers and hiring remain massively under-optimised, and why that matters
• How Jack and Jill avoids the marketplace cold start by winning in “single-player mode” first
• Why Matt is building a flatter, leaner org this time, and staying closer to the action
• Talent density in an AI-native company, and why paying above-market is a deliberate strategy
• What “escape velocity” looks like in a two-sided marketplace, and the metric they track
• The long-term moat: network effects over features
• Matt’s future unicorn picks, plus dinner party guests (with Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, and a very specific competitive curiosity)

If you care about AI agents, marketplaces, or how recruiting changes when everyone has an AI working on their behalf, you’ll enjoy this one.

Nicolò Frisiani is Co-Founder & CEO of Lupa, the world’s first enterprise-ready AI operating system for veterinary clinics.

Lupa has raised over $25m from investors including Singular and Firstminute Capital, and is on a mission to modernise a sector still running on 1980s technology.

In this episode, Nicolò shares:

• Why Lupa started as a consumer app and quickly pivoted to a full-stack operating system
• How note-taking became the wedge product into a much bigger platform vision
• What he learned from sending his co-founder to work as a vet receptionist for a month
• The complexity of selling into PE-backed veterinary groups
• Why speed and momentum drove two fundraises in quick succession
• The long-term vision: from clinic OS, to monetisation infrastructure, to unlocking veterinary data for AI-driven medical research

We also discuss the realities of scaling enterprise SaaS, underestimating sales cycles, hiring challenges, and how a consulting background shapes early-stage founders.

If you’re interested in vertical SaaS, AI infrastructure, or how to go from scrappy MVP to enterprise-ready platform, this one is worth your time.