Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology – Détails, épisodes et analyse

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 Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, Founder and CEO of Nu Quantum, a pioneering company building the networking layer for the quantum computing era.

Carmen’s journey started in academia, researching quantum photonics, before she spun out Nu Quantum from the University of Cambridge. Now backed by top deep tech investors, the company is on a mission to connect quantum processors and make quantum computing commercially scalable.

🎙️ In this episode, we discuss:

🧠 What quantum networking is — and why it’s essential for unlocking quantum advantage
 📈 Nu Quantum’s pivot from photonic components to full-stack infrastructure
 🧬 How to build a team at the bleeding edge of science and engineering
 ⏳ Why quantum adoption is closer than most people think
 🔐 The importance of entanglement, secure comms & UK leadership in quantum
 💡 Lessons on commercialising research and navigating long deep-tech timelines
 🏗️ Analogies to cloud infrastructure and what Carmen learned from traditional data centres
 🌍 Carmen’s take on the global race to build the quantum internet

This is a fascinating look into a frontier technology that could reshape everything from national security to pharmaceuticals. A must-listen for founders, investors, and anyone curious about the future of computing.

Startup Spotlight with Chris Priebe, Founder at Zelt.

Zelt is a cloud application you can use to onboard new joiners in 2 minutes and manage HR, payroll and IT from a single system of employee record. They have raised from Episode 1 Ventures, The Fund, Lakestar and Portfolio Ventures.

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Our guest this week is Tony Jamous, CEO @ Oyster™

Oyster is a distributed talent enablement platform that allows growing companies to tap into the global talent pool and offer their remote workers around the world, a great employment experience. They have raised over $220 million from the likes of Connect Ventures, Slack Emergence, Salesforce Ventures. PayPal Ventures and others.

Tony joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss the future of work, the traits of successful founders, creating a healthy schedule and much, much more!

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Our guest this week is Mayowa Ogunremi, Investment Principal @ Form Ventures

Form is a new early stage venture fund investing in startups disrupting regulated markets, or building in new markets that will face regulation. They use decades of experience to help founders break down policy barriers and shape winning regulatory strategies.

Mayowa joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss her route into venture, her experience as a therapist turned VC, Founder appetite to build a huge business and much, much more!

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Our guest this week is Crowdcube Co-CEO Matt Cooper.

Crowdcube is a leading equity crowdfunding platform for investing in high-growth opportunities across Europe. They help entrepreneurs of start-ups and growing businesses to connect with potential investors. Dedicated to helping UK-based entrepreneurs raise finance to start or grow their business, Crowdcube gives investors real equity in the companies they fund.

Matt joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss the evolution of crowdfunding, the democratisation of private market investing, work-life balance and much, much more!

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Startup Spotlight with Blair Hawthorne, CEO & Founder at LoopFX.

They've just come out of stealth mode to improve the efficiency of high level foreign exchange trades. LoopFX have secured funding from some of the best finance angels in the country with participation from Portfolio Ventures.

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Our guest this week is Believe in Science Founder & CEO Anthony Fletcher.

The  Believe in Science mission is to prove people can indulge responsibly, helping consumers make better decisions when it comes to food, starting with The Urban Legend Doughnut - the ultimate treat food, sticky, sweet, delicious yet never high in fat, sugar or calories.

Anthony joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss how the business stared, the dangers of sugar, working with supermarkets and much, much more!

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄

Alan Chang is the CEO of Fuse.  As former Revolut-er #5, Alan was involved in the disruption and innovation in banking, and now, he is bringing that same energy and passion to Fuse.

Fuse was founded to generate affordable renewable power and solve climate change. Their mission is to build a Terawatt of renewable capacity to power the world. They have raised $78m from top tier investors like Balderton, Lakestar, Accel, Creandum, Lowercarbon, and Ribbit to date.

Alan joins James Pringle and Hector Mason to discuss the Revolut journey, where the idea for Fuse came from, never settle culture, the future of the energy industry  and much, much more!

Don't forget to like, subscribe and follow The Riding Unicorns Podcast on our socials and your chosen podcast platform to stay up to date! 🎙️🦄