Firsthand: Building a Unicorn with Adam French
Winning your first customers is one challenge. Building a product they can depend on as you scale is another.
Join Adam French , co-founder and former CEO of Scalable Capital and now a Partner at Antler, for a conversation about the decisions behind building a fintech unicorn: earning trust, finding traction, raising capital and building a company that can deliver on its promises.
Firsthand is Antidote’s series of conversations with people who have built, scaled and invested in technology companies. This evening brings London founders and technology leaders together to explore what changes when customers start depending on what you’ve built.
The conversation
Earn the first customer. What convinced Scalable’s earliest customers to trust it with their money? How do you distinguish enthusiasm from willingness to pay?
Earn their trust. Which product experiences are too important to get wrong? How do founders and technical teams resolve the tension between shipping faster and making the product more reliable?
Earn the right to scale. When does capital accelerate something that works, and when does it amplify unresolved problems? As an investor today, what tells Adam a product is ready to scale beyond its early adopters?
Expect a candid conversation, audience Q&A and time to meet other founders and technology leaders working through similar decisions. Bring a question from your own company.
About Adam French
Adam French is a co-founder and former CEO of Scalable Capital, the European investment platform whose investors have included BlackRock, Tencent and Balderton Capital. The company had raised more than €470m by June 2025, including a €155m round that month. At that time, it reported over one million customers and more than €30bn held on its platform.
Today, Adam is a Partner at Antler, co-leading its UK fund. He is also a founding partner and chair of Houghton Street Ventures and a non-executive director at Innovate Finance. Earlier in his career, he was an Executive Director of Trading at Goldman Sachs.
Who it’s for
London founders, technical co-founders, CTOs, and senior product and engineering leaders building and scaling technology companies.
Request a place. Registration is subject to approval, with priority for founders and technology leaders with live products and established engineering teams.
Location: London. Venue to be confirmed.
Hosted by Antidote, helping software teams test the critical user flows their business depends on—from sign-up and login to checkout. Because customer trust depends on what happens when people actually use your product.