Paul Anthony @ Primer & Colossal

This week on Riding Unicorns, we’re joined by Paul Anthony, Co-Founder of Primer, the payment orchestration platform powering enterprise merchants globally. With over £70m raised from top funds like Seedcamp, Balderton Capital, Accel, and ICONIQ and 200+ employees, Paul has built one of the most exciting FinTech companies in Europe.

He’s now also building Colossal, a new venture using AI to let creators build powerful commerce journeys with a simple prompt. Think "Lovable for commerce".

In this episode, we dive into:

💳 Payments insight – How face-to-face time with merchants at Braintree inspired Primer’s creation
 📈 Hypergrowth learnings – Scaling Primer from 3 to hundreds of people in just 16 months
 🧠 Hiring philosophy – Interviewing 30+ people per role and treating autonomy as a requirement
🛠️ Product mindset – Why building POCs is essential, especially in enterprise
 🤖 Colossal’s vision – Democratising commerce for digital goods creators using LLMs

Paul shares thoughtful, honest insights on what it takes to build in FinTech, scale fast, and stay focused. This one’s packed with lessons for ambitious founders and operators.

Listen here:

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Have a great Wednesday,

The Riding Unicorns team