Playing With Unicorns
Playing with unicorns is a new weekly show on startups, entrepreneurship, and venture capital.
I cover everything I learned as an entrepreneur, angel investor and venture capitalist during the last 22 years, focusing on everything I wished I knew when I first got started as a tech entrepreneur.
- Update frequency
- every 16 days
- Average duration
- 64 minutes
- Episodes
- 50
- Years Active
- 2020 - 2025
#30 A Conversation with Thomas Plantenga
Thomas Plantenga is the CEO of Vinted. He was born and raised in the Netherlands. Thomas was previously a Venture Partner at FJ Labs and an early member of OLX.
Thomas never intended to join Vinted. …
#29 The Latest Marketplace Trends
In episode 27, I took a stab at which categories investors and entrepreneurs should focus on for the coming 5 years. In today’s episode, I wanted to cover the themes and trends that emerged in the la…
#28 What's the deal with crypto
When Satoshi Nakamoto famously wrote the Bitcoin white paper on November 13, 2008 it proposed to solve the Byzantine Generals problem. The Byzantine Generals Problem is solving the puzzle of how mult…
#27 The Tech Of Tomorrow
In a way I live in your future. By virtue of receiving 150 startup pitches per week, I have a good sense of what founders are trying to build for the coming decade. At the same time, as a student of …
#26 Jeff Wald & The End of Jobs
Jeff’s newest book, The End of Jobs: The Rise of On-Demand Wokers and Agile Corporations, provides a look into the future of work by looking into the past. In human history, there have been three mon…
#25 Clearco & the future of SMB lending
As most of you know, I want to empower people to work on the things they love. As a result, I am excited that FJ Labs invested early in Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), now valued at $2 billion, which i…
#24 How Slice is helping mom-and-pop pizzerias compete with Dominos
One of our main theses at FJ Labs is to focus on vertical marketplaces. Slice is a great example of a company that has found product-market fit within a vertical.
In this episode Ilir Sela gives insi…
#23 Synthesis: The startup scaling up the most innovative ideas from Elon Musk's school
The education system has not evolved since the industrial era. New tools have been introduced over the years, but nothing has dramatically changed. To reinvent education, you don’t more tools to add …
#22 Why Startups Fail with Tom Eisenmann
9 out of 10 startups fail. This is a gloomy number. However, it has never stopped entrepreneurs from hedging their bets to create successful companies. And I want to help entrepreneurs, whether they’…
#21 How to build the perfect pitch deck
This is one of the most requested questions I’ve received since starting Playing with Unicorn podcast. People want to know “How do I build the perfect pitch deck to raise funds?”
So joining me is K…
#20 So you want to launch a SPAC ?
Today’s episode is special because Jeff Weinstein interviews Rahim Lakhani, the CFO of Alpha Capital. Most of you will remember Jeff from Episode 13: What's the deal with SPACs. He is the resident SP…
#19 Reinvesting in the Latam Tech Ecosystem with Brian Requarth
Brian Requarth is the Co-Founder of Latitud and former CEO of Viva Real. Through Latitud, he now dedicates his time to providing mentorship and advice for entrepreneurs in Latin America (LATAM). Bria…
#18 Thirty-Six Lessons from Company Founders & CEOs with Tim Jackson
Tim Jackson is a fellow entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author. He has lived an interesting life from a career in journalism for the Financial Times, to VC seed funding for technology startups. …
#17 The State Of Solar
This week Kerim Baran (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kbaran/) shares where we stand in the world of solar. He covers: • The history of solar • The impressive decline of the cost of panel over the last …
#16 Startup Talent & Startup Trends
I often pondered the makeup of successful founders and founding teams. At FJ Labs we spend a disproportionate amount of time screening for EIRs. We only build 1 or 2 companies per year, so we cannot …
#15 Mistakes to avoid as an Entrepreneur
It is extremely hard to succeed as an entrepreneur. Even the most successful entrepreneurs have countless ups and downs. I would argue that I failed my way to success. My brother Olivier (https://oli…
#14 A Conversation with Christian Angermayer
Christian is the rare breed of polymath Renaissance Man operating in a world that rewards specialization. We had an extremely broad and far-ranging conversation covering: • Whether you should always …
#13 What’s the deal with SPACs?
SPACs have been one of the hot topics of 2020. Jeff Weinstein, who co-heads investing at FJ Labs, and our resident venture capital nerd, joins to talk about all things SPAC. He covers: • What are SPA…
#12 The Surprising Case for Optimism in 2020
Given the omnipresent doom and gloom of 2020, I took the time to reflect objectively on where things stand and where the world is heading. My deep dive across so many industries and technologies left…
#11 Loonshots with Safi Bahcall
In general, I do not read “business books” as I find them simplistic. Loonshots is the exception to that rule. It blew me away. It mixes compelling personal narratives of entrepreneurs like Edwin Lan…