Clay Unicorn is the Founder and former CEO of Unicorn.Love, a venture studio that empowers entrepreneurs to build, scale, and exit high‑impact B2B companies. Under his leadership, Unicorn reached a $1.25 billion valuation and became known for its innovations in AI, technology, and venture development. Clay has been a consultant for some of the biggest names in tech: Google, Samsung, Facebook, and Comcast. He has played a pivotal role in launching and scaling ventures like Bowery, iPondr, and ReVision — turning bold ideas into multimillion‑dollar successes.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:31] Clay Unicorn’s candy and Pokémon card hustle as his first taste of entrepreneurship
- [5:30] Why Clay launched Chosen Development agency during the 2008 downturn
- [10:10] Emotional cost of business breakdown and the concept of trauma bonding
- [14:44] Lessons from losing a $3 million acquisition deal after a partner sabotaged the negotiation
- [17:25] Building Unicorn.Love from an agency into an ethical venture studio for high‑impact startups
- [21:38] How Bowery Valuation’s $150K MVP fueled a $6.2M raise and massive growth
- [24:16] Challenges of running brick‑and‑mortar businesses versus digital ventures
- [25:26] How AI is transforming development agencies and why mid‑level developers should be cautious
- [30:17] Personal fallout from a partner’s NFT losses and bankruptcy freeze
In this episode…
What do you do when your hard-earned agency falls apart, a big exit deal collapses overnight, and your business partner’s investments freeze assets? How do you recover with integrity — and even reshape your company into something more mission-driven?
Clay Unicorn confronts these challenges head‑on, sharing actionable lessons from building and rebuilding multiple ventures. He emphasizes the importance of surrounding yourself with the right partners, recognizing the warning signs of misaligned visions, and protecting both your capital and emotional bandwidth. Clay recounts his journey from early candy hustles and agency launches to creating Unicorn.Love, an ethical venture studio, illustrates how failure can fuel smarter decisions, how small MVPs can lead to multimillion‑dollar funding rounds, and why embracing AI and calculated risk is essential for scaling ventures.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Clay Unicorn, Founder of Unicorn.Love, about transforming a traditional development agency into an ethical venture studio. Clay explores his evolution from selling candy as a kid to running conscious studio-backed startups. He discusses Scaffald, investing in Bowery, navigating AI shifts, brick‑and‑mortar lessons, and building ventures with founder-aligned equity while creating systemic value.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Special Mention(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “You have to be all in; it has to just be your whole world.”
- “Fail early, fail often, fail forward.”
- “Embrace AI; don’t resist it, or you’ll be left behind.”
- “The operators, the people; grit is the number one success criteria.”
- “Take that bad energy, bad juju, into something really productive.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace failure as fuel: Recognize that early setbacks, like failed exits or partnerships, can be reframed into foundational lessons for future ventures. Cultivating resilience gives you a strategic edge.
- Prioritize operator grit over glitzy tech: When evaluating opportunities, focus on founders’ commitment, adaptability, and long-term resolve. Those traits often outlast shifting market trends.
- Adopt an ethical studio model: If you’re running a service agency, consider offering work at cost in exchange for equity upside. This aligns incentives and fosters long-term ownership for you and your clients.
- Leverage AI to amplify, not replace, you: Learn to use AI tools to scale dev output and risk-tested experimentation, rather than seeing it as a threat to experienced engineers.
- Diversify with intention, not ego: If exploring brick-and-mortar or community businesses, validate your assumptions and lean into collaboration. Support systems, advisors, and market testing are critical before diving in.
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
Okay. Today we’re talking about how to build an agency into an ethical venture studio. I’m going to explain what that means in a moment. We’ll explain what that means in a moment, and also especially how to turn broken pieces, which can be relevant in any economy into something positive. My guest today is Clay Unicorn. I’ll tell you more about who he is in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:21
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:38
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I’m the host of the show. And you know, every week we have smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from a variety of different companies. And if you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, Activision Blizzard, LendingTree and many more. And this episode is brought to you by Rise25, where we help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run your podcast. We are the easy button for a B2B company to launch and run a podcast.
We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution. In fact, we invented what some are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot. And so, you know, Clay, what I love about doing what we do through our company is being able to highlight someone like you who’s doing interesting things, building interesting things, and sharing their story with my audience. So I’m really excited about that here today.
And I know that that’s important for you as well, to be able to share your story and pay it forward. So anyone who wants to learn about how you can do that as well, go to Rise25.com or email us at [email protected]. All right. My guest today is Clay Unicorn. He’s the Founder and former CEO of Unicorn, where he served as the CEO and Founder from 2013 to 2023.
He led it through a transition period developing from developing mobile applications and web platforms to focusing more on real world problems. And now he’s got what is basically becoming a venture studio, an ethical venture studio. We’re going to talk about that because there’s other venture studios out there that are operating in a less ethical way. And so, Clay, I’m excited to talk to you here today. And let’s start with you where I’ve got notes and check my notes here. And you were selling warheads as a kid. How did you get into selling warheads? I mean, you grow up in some third world country. No. I’m kidding, it’s a candy. You were selling candy.
Clay Unicorn: 02:31
Selling candy? Selling candy. Okay. Thanks for having me, John. And and. Yeah, you know, it started. I didn’t know what the word entrepreneur was. I don’t think until, like, 21, honestly. And I grew up in a really small town in rural Michigan. And yeah, I just, you know, from a young age, I think middle school, high school, I, you know, people bring in candy. I had warheads and people were like, hey, can I get one? You know, I’ll pay you $0.10. And I’m like, oh, you’re willing to pay? Sure. You know.
And so that turned into, you know, just selling different candies and odds and ends out of my locker in school and to dares, you know, I ate worms on the playground one time, you know, made made a whopping 25 bucks off it, you know, just kept upping the ante with with other people around me. So, yeah, all before I knew what entrepreneurship was, I was kind of practicing it. You know, I got into Pokemon cards, I would trade them and I would buy a pack and broker a deal. So, yeah, I didn’t know what sales one was. Still, don’t call myself a salesman today, but you.
John Corcoran: 03:28
You found a need and you supplied that need. You satisfied that need for people that wanted candy or wanted Pokemon cards. Yeah. And energy drinks as well. Going to Costco eventually. And you actually got suspended for doing this.
Clay Unicorn: 03:41
Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of warnings that I didn’t heed. So, you know, of course it had to escalate to, you know, the in-school suspension and you know that that happened a few times.
John Corcoran: 03:50
So it’s crazy, a good kid. I’ve had a lot of guests on this show that have similar stories where they sold something. I usually joke that it’s often selling candy in elementary school, getting busted by their teacher, and then it’s weed in high school and getting busted by their principal. You know, but there’s so many people that have that kind of experience, and it’s kind of, you know, I mean, I can understand why, you know, schools can’t have kids going rogue and everything. But at the same time, it is kind of disappointing that, you know, look at you now like you’re successful, you’ve started a company, you’ve employed people, you’ve put money back into the economy. You’ve generated real value out there. And yet these activities that you did as a kid were punished.
Clay Unicorn: 04:35
Yeah, yeah. It’s unfortunate. I mean, I think that a lot of schools are improving. Like if you look at what vocational schools are doing in particular, I think it’s they instead of stifling that they’re redirecting, you know, and more into vocations and, you know, they start now, I think, you know, in like eighth grade. And they do these like assessments and tests and help you understand the category of careers you could go into.
And so I think that there’s solutions out there. They’re just not entrenched in the public schools. And I think, you know, for a myriad of reasons. Right. Yeah.
John Corcoran: 05:05
So yeah. So your first company, an adult company, so to speak, was chosen for development. It looks like you started it right around the time of both graduating from college and around the 2008 crash, economic downturn. So how did that come about? How did you end up starting this company shortly after graduating and not getting, you know, a, you know, a job like probably a lot of your peers were doing?
Clay Unicorn: 05:30
Well, I started. I actually had a nice job. I started off as a junior designer, fresh out of college at $8, whopping $8 an hour, and I was making $35 an hour. A year later, I had really quickly risen in this agency I started working for, and I just, I felt stifled. I didn’t know again. Still, I was learning what an entrepreneur was, but I didn’t know fully that that was me.
And so a lot of my friends hadn’t graduated yet. You know, I only did two years in college. I had been quadrupled in high school. So, you know, a lot of my friends graduated a year or two after me, and they were all struggling in 2008, you know, to find jobs. And we said, well, what if we did like spec work together and we did nonprofit work and we did things for our community.
And so we got some local celebrities around, like we did a big dog walk in the city of Lansing, right downtown. You know, everyone’s in their suits on their lunch break. And here’s, you know, 50 college aged kids walking dogs and getting them adopted.
John Corcoran: 06:28
So, wait, so this was just simply an idea, like you didn’t have many jobs. So your idea was, let’s do something that gets a big splash, gets a lot of attention, and maybe it’ll get us a job or get us some attention. Oh, interesting.
Clay Unicorn: 06:40
Resume boosting, resume boosting before it was ever meant to be an agency. And then I quit at the worst time. You know, 2009, I was a little full of myself, young and arrogant and thinking, I’m going to just go out and go solo. I’m going to go all in on this adventure chosen and be the best agency there ever was. And we did good work, but we didn’t.
We didn’t know how to sell ourselves. We didn’t know how to find clients and how to scope things. And so a lot of lessons learned from that, what I would call what was successful is it elevated everyone’s careers. But ultimately it was a failure as a venture.
John Corcoran: 07:14
And so was it. Sounds like it was you and some other people.
Clay Unicorn: 07:17
Yeah, yeah, yeah, basically just a bunch of friends.
John Corcoran: 07:20
A bunch of friends. Okay. And so were there some dark times then when you were struggling to bring in clients and, you know, 3 or 4 of you looking to get paid?
Clay Unicorn: 07:29
Yeah. I don’t think that I would describe dark times.
Clay Unicorn: 07:32
For those couple of years initially. I mean, business will always cost you some friendships at times and misunderstandings. The darkest was I had hired on at an agency, moved out of out to Boulder from Michigan In to Colorado to just be desperate for work. And I was hired by an agency out there and I was fired for the first time and only time in my career because when I hired on, they knew about being chosen. They said, it’s not a 9 to 5 for us.
Do whatever you want to do in your evening hours. So essentially I was moonlighting my own business, but then that was getting some words. I was getting leads and my name was going around town. And that was in kind of direct conflict with my employer at the time. So I would say the darkest of times were, you know, when essentially I’m an ultimatum of being fired and also risking, you know, some, some issues if I don’t, you know, quickly dissolve and reassess my, my path. So.
John Corcoran: 08:30
And what did you decide to do? You decided to stick with chosen or you you or did?
Clay Unicorn: 08:35
I wish I would, I wish I could say I took it on the chin instead I took it more like a bad breakup. Thank goodness for the founder, Jason Cormier. So this company was room 214. And it’s funny, as we tell this story, I’ll come back to this company in particular. But Jason was a great mentor to me. He was very patient with me. We dissolved, chose, and in about a year later, I reassembled what chosen was and the friends and the staff and into a new agency.
John Corcoran: 09:04
Got it. Sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to take a couple steps forwards later. I guess maybe. Is that the lesson from that?
Clay Unicorn: 09:12
Yeah it is. And also realizing that there’s nuances when somebody lets you go that you see as, as a partner or as a friend or as a mentor, that sometimes there’s things that just can’t be spoken yet, you know, there’s underlying things and problems. I didn’t know at the time. They couldn’t tell us at the time. But, you know, room 214 had lost its major accounts.
Travel channels had represented probably a third or more of their revenue. And, you know, and so losing that account, Facebook pages were all the rage back in the day. Facebook was getting rid of Facebook pages or custom tabs you could do. So I didn’t learn that for many months after. And actually a lot of staff were kind of laid off in that same period of time.
John Corcoran: 09:52
That’s hard right? Because like you, you make these life choices and you blame yourself. And behind the scenes there are these other things, these other factors that you aren’t aware of that are contributing to that. And so maybe beat yourself up or blame yourself and it’s not fully your fault then in that situation.
Clay Unicorn: 10:10
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And you just kind of band together sometimes I’ve learned that trauma bonding is a real thing. If you learn, if you look into like PTSD and trauma bonding, you can realize that those psychological things that somehow we think are reserved for veterans and people who have been, you know, at the front lines of warfare that can happen in just everyday life through your business partners you trust, through, you know, friends you trust, and you can suffer some real psychological damage. And the positive is, when you can recognize that and then heal from it, recover from it. Then you have a framework to build upon.