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.
Riding Unicorns: Venture Capital | Entrepreneurship | Technology
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, and now investing in over 70 startups, Carles shares the hard-won lessons that drive startup success.
We dive into:
🔄 Career pivot: Leaving banking for Uber at 20 people and discovering the thrill of early-stage impact
📈 Building GTM from scratch: Lessons from Tractable & ElevenLabs—experimenting on ICPs, pricing, and pitches
💼 Angel investing playbook: How to break in as an operator-investor, source top deals, and add value beyond capital
🗣 Voice AI’s inflection point: Why high-quality speech models are the next frontier, and how ElevenLabs powers voice notes for surgery prep and on-demand customer support
🤖 Robotics meets LLMs: The “GPT moment” in hardware, investing in companies merging industrial robotics with large language models
✂️ Trimming strategies: Locking in gains (10–20%) at Series B/C while staying exposed to upside
🌐 Scaling globally: Personalizing GTM across the US, Europe, Asia, and beyond
This is a must-listen for GTM leaders, startup builders, and aspiring angels looking to roll up their sleeves, experiment at speed, and back the next wave of unicorns.
