#41 - Sam Marchant, Partner at Inaugural & Founder of Forward Pursuit: MENA Startups Overview, Building AI Camels and the Power of VC Media

#41 - Sam Marchant, Partner at Inaugural & Founder of Forward Pursuit: MENA Startups Overview, Building AI Camels and the Power of VC Media

Sam Marchant builds AI companies designed to exit at $20 to $100 million, and thinks the industry has been chasing the wrong animal. Sam is a partner at Inaugural, an AI venture studio that has built eight revenue-generating companies in 24 months, and the founder of Forward Pursuit, a Dubai-based family office. He also hosts the Now We Build podcast and runs Scaling MENA, the weekly newsletter for anyone paying attention to the Gulf and broader Middle East ecosystem. Before Dubai, he founded and exited a food brand at university, then spent years in early-stage VC in London. In this episode, Mauro sits down with Sam to unpack a deeply contrarian thesis on how AI companies should be built, funded and exited, and to get a clear-eyed view of what is actually happening across the MENA startup ecosystem. We discuss: 🐫 Why he's betting on $20 to $100 million exits instead of billion-dollar unicorns, and why his LPs love it  🤖 How Inaugural takes AI companies to $20-30k MRR before handing the keys to founders  🏗️ The industry-insider partnership model that powers their bets 🇦🇪 Why he chose Dubai over the US, and what most founders get wrong about the region  🗺️ Where to actually build each product in MENA 🧢 How to balance multiple hats in VC 📰 Why he thinks media will be one of the last industries flattened by AI  📧 🎙️ Scaling MENA, Now We Build and Sam's approach to media 🗣️ Getting started with media and overcoming fears of cringe 🌍 What the war has done to UAE deal flow, and why Q3 and Q4 could see record investment Give it a listen. Follow Sam on LinkedIn and subscribe to the Scaling MENA newsletter. Episode links: Sam Marchant on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-marchant/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-marchant/] Inaugural: https://www.inaugural.ai/ [https://www.inaugural.ai/] Forward Pursuit: https://forwardpursuit.vc [https://forwardpursuit.vc] Now We Build podcast (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/show/65dN21XYOgD5wVzLWcPpRx [https://open.spotify.com/show/65dN21XYOgD5wVzLWcPpRx]  Now We Build podcast (Apple Podcasts): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-we-build/id1755152119 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/now-we-build/id1755152119] Scaling MENA: https://substack.com/@scalingmena  [https://substack.com/@scalingmena ] ================================================================= Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/runway-podcast/]. Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more. Black Unicorn PR [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/] is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC. For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/ For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/blog/]

#40 - Arthur Renard: Lessons and Stories From 20+ Years Building a Career as a Freelance Football Journalist

Arthur Renard is a freelance football journalist who built his career hustling interviews as a teenager. Today, you can read him in publications in 20+ countries and languages, and see him on TV. We sat down to hear his story. Arthur Renard moved from the Netherlands to London at 18 with a few bags and no detailed plan. Within nine months he was in the Chelsea canteen interviewing José Mourinho. Today he's the BBC's go-to voice on Dutch football, a regular on Sky Sports and TNT, and has bylines in The Guardian, The Times, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gazzetta dello Sport, France Football, El País and many more. He's interviewed Jürgen Klopp, Louis van Gaal, Frenkie de Jong, and Vincent Kompany and other players and coaches writing history. Mauro sits down with Arthur to unpack how a freelance career in football journalism actually gets built, story by story, relationship by relationship. And a tiny dose of football chat! In this episode, we cover: 🎯 The Mourinho story that kicked it all off 📞 Why phone calls still have a role to play 📨 Pitching cold versus warm 🌍 Getting placed in multiple country markets ⚖️ Balancing stories of personal interest with those that will sell for publications ✈️ The economics of self-funded tournament journalism, and why Arthur keeps investing in being there ❤️ Using "the heart as a compass": why Arthur prefers to focus on the personal stories 🎤 Breaking into broadcast 🔮 The next chapter: video, podcasts, and the 2026 FIFA World Cup 🏆 World Cup 2026: predictions, the dark horse, and the off-pitch storylines Arthur thinks will define the tournament Give it a listen! And do follow Arthur on LinkedIn & explore his portfolio. Links below. Links mentioned in the episode: * Arthur's website: https://arthurrenard.com [https://arthurrenard.com] * Arthur on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-renard-44ba0a88 [https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-renard-44ba0a88] * Arthur on X: https://x.com/arthurrenard87 [https://x.com/arthurrenard87] ================================================================= Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/runway-podcast/]. Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more. Black Unicorn PR [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/] is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC. For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/ For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/blog/]

#39 Raitis Purins: Building Printful's Marketing Machine to Unicorn, and His Shift to Chief Growth Officer at Mapon

Raitis Puriņš built Latvia's biggest marketing team almost from scratch and helped make Printful a unicorn. Now he's Chief Growth Officer, a new role with some overlaps, over in B2B fleet management. Raitis spent seven years as Head of Marketing at Printful, scaling the team from 5 to over 100 people and helping the company reach a $1B valuation, making it Latvia's first unicorn. Before that, he was a computers teacher, a sports journalist, and (still to this day) a top-level handball goalkeeper. Currently, Raitis is Chief Growth Officer at Mapon, a fleet management company on an acquisition spree across Europe. In this episode, Mauro sits down with Raitis to hear the full Printful story told with the benefit of hindsight, and learn what it's like rebuilding a marketing playbook in B2B SaaS. We discuss: 🔍 How SEO became Printful's most powerful growth channel, and what happened when they cut all ad spend during COVID 📧 The one email mistake that cost millions 🏗️ How to build a marketing team of 100 🎯 Category creation and turning "print-on-demand" from a niche into a global industry 🤝 The Printful-Printify merger 📢 Leadership principles from the Printful years ⚖️ Brand vs. performance 🏷️ Why he's "Chief Growth Officer" and not CMO at Mapon 🔀 What translates from ecommerce to fleet management SaaS 🇱🇻 The marketing community he's building for Latvian marketers targeting export markets Give it a listen! 🎧  Follow Raitis on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/raitispurins Learn more about Mapon: https://www.mapon.com/ ================================================================= Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/runway-podcast/]. Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more. Black Unicorn PR [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/] is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC. For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/ For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/blog/]

#38 - Andrii Degeler, Head of News at Dealroom, Founder of Unzip Media: On the Future of Journalism, The Impact of AI and Why News Are Becoming Data

If news is becoming data, what's left for journalists to do? How is AI changing media and journalism? We sat down with Andrii Degeler, one of the journalists in startup and VC media looking at this most closely. Andrii has been covering the European tech ecosystem for 19 years. He started in Ukraine reviewing smartphones, hustled his way into The Next Web, spent years at Tech.eu, and now serves as Head of News at Dealroom, where he's building a journalistic operation on top of one of Europe's most important startup data platforms. He also founded Unzip Media, a project dedicated to understanding what's happening inside the media industry. JJ and Mauro sat down with Andrii at TechChill 2026 in Riga, in collaboration with Unzip Media (thanks for the cameras! Look for a video version on YouTube), for a frank conversation about the forces reshaping journalism and European tech media. We discuss: 📰 Why a growing share of "news" is actually structured data, and how that changes the newsroom 🪦 The European tech media brands that have disappeared and what's filling the gap (are they like for like replacements?) 🤖 The most dystopian scenario for journalism in the AI era... *suspense* 📉 Lessons from the Facebook pivot-to-video era and why media risks repeating the same mistake with AI 💸 Why the Substack model has a hard ceiling... with subscription fatigue is already biting 🏢 Building editorial independence inside a brand: how Dealroom News approaches integrity... is this model the future? 🔧 Andrii's real AI workflow as a journalist and editor (including why he's a Claude user) 📊 Making daily data reels and why Andrii is "in love" with Dealroom's dataset Give it a listen. Follow Andrii on LinkedIn and check out Dealroom News for his latest reporting. His personal site is shlema.me. More links below. 🔗 EPISODE LINKS: Episode on video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40kiFwmp7Io Andrii Degeler on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shlema/ Andrii's website: https://shlema.me Dealroom News: https://app.dealroom.co/news Unzip Media: https://unzip.media/ ================================================================= Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/runway-podcast/]. Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more. Black Unicorn PR [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/] is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC. For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/ For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/blog/]

#37 - Uldis Tēraudkalns, Creator of The Pursuit of Scrappiness: What 200+ Conversations Reveal About Baltic Founders, Unicorn Traits and the Leap to Founder With OkoRide

After hosting 200+ (scrappy and not so scrappy) startup and business founders and operators on The Pursuit of Scrappiness Podcast, Uldis developed the ultimate Baltic business-building knowledge base. On this episode of Runway, we unpack it together with him, and get to know his latest venture, OkoRide. Uldis Tēraudkalns co-created The Pursuit of Scrappiness [https://www.pursuitofscrappiness.co/], the most popular English-language business podcast in the Baltics. Over four years, he interviewed personalities from the Baltics and abroad, from the co-founder of Wise to the CFO of Intel, building one of the deepest perspectives on the Baltic startup ecosystem.  He's also a finance and technology executive, former CEO of regulated fintech Nexpay, and has now co-founded OkoRide [https://okoride.com/], a mobility startup running an electric car fleet on the Bolt platform in Riga. In this episode, Mauro sits down with Uldis to dig into the lessons from 200+ episodes, the traits that separate founders who make it from those who don't, and the full story behind his leap from podcast host to startup founder. We discuss: Part 1: Lessons from The Pursuit of Scrappiness 💡 Why "scrappiness" in the Baltics is a structural advantage, not just a word. 🌍 The small-market advantage: why being forced to think globally from day one outperforms having a comfortable domestic market 🇱🇹 Lithuania's rise: how it went from Estonia's shadow to a serious challenger in Baltic tech 🇪🇪 How Estonian founders support each other and boost the ecosystem in doing so 🎯 What unicorn founders actually have in common across 200+ conversations: insanity, vision, and storytelling 📉 The VC-only myth: why the unicorn path isn't the only valid model, and the wild story of ss.com in Latvia 🎙️ Why The Pursuit of Scrappiness paused Part 2: The OkoRide Journey as a Co-founder 🛞 The OkoRide story: pivoting from fintech CEO to running a Tesla ride-hailing fleet in Riga 🤖 Vibe coding internal ops systems 🔧 Acquiring a Tesla workshop (OxWorks) and why uptime is the real competitive advantage in fleet management 🇬🇧 UK expansion plans 🔮 Where autonomous vehicles fit in Europe Follow Uldis on LinkedIn and check out OkoRide! ================================================================= Thanks for listening! For more, follow us on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/company/runway-podcast/]. Runway is a podcast started by Black Unicorn PR co-founders Julija Jegorova and Mauro Battellini to help startup founders, company builders and business leaders with insights, tools and advice from specialists in sales, marketing, PR and more. Black Unicorn PR [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/] is a London-based tech PR agency focused on startups, scaleups and VC. For more information visit: https://www.blackunicornpr.com/ For even more advice, especially on PR, visit the Black Unicorn PR blog [https://www.blackunicornpr.com/blog/]