Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology

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.

George Davis, Founder and CEO of Lorum.
George has been deep in payments for years: Head of Product at TrueLayer, then co-founder of BVNK, and now building Lorum to tackle the hardest layer of the stack: global clearing.
We get into:
Why payments becomes an obsession if you look closely enough
What “rebuilding clearing from the ground up” actually means, in plain English
Virtual accounts, ledgering, Swift, and why settlement speed still matters
The real opportunity: fixing dollar clearing and cross border flows
How Lorum makes money, and why being “payments only” changes the incentives
The fundraising sprint, choosing Northzone, and what great investors actually do day to day
The hardest part early on: banking reality versus licensing theory in the Middle East
How George runs transparency, morale, and intensity during high growth
A simple lesson for founders: do not start a company unless you care deeply about the problem

James sits down with Dr. David von Rosen, the serial founder behind Lottoland and 25 Degrees, and the Principal of the VONROSEN family office, through which he invests globally and pan-sector in fast-growth pre-IPO startups.
David does not pretend to have one neat playbook. He prefers volatility, backs ideas that feel genuinely new, and invests like an operator, often taking a significant stake so he can get involved properly.
We talk about:
Why David prefers fewer bets with bigger ownership
How he thinks about hiring generalists and spotting motivation over credentials
What most people misunderstand about risk, and how his relationship with risk has changed with age
Why Dubai feels like a magnet for talent, capital, and momentum
The origin story of Lottoland, and the clever regulatory workaround that made it possible
His future unicorn pick: Tytan Technologies
Dinner party guests, featuring Alex Honnold and Rihanna
Plus, a brilliant story from David’s past: how his fashion brand ended up on Steve Jobs during an Apple WWDC keynote, and what happened next.
If you like founder psychology, unconventional investing, and real operator stories, you’ll enjoy this one.