EP19 Hadley Harris

🎙️ The Human Unicorn Podcast — Episode: Hadley Harris (ENIAC Ventures)

In this episode, Nihal Mehta sit down with Hadley Harris, Founding General Partner at ENIAC Ventures, one of New York’s most respected seed-stage investors backing transformational founders from zero to one.

Before becoming a VC, Hadley was a builder himself — leading at Vlingo, an MIT-born AI startup that sold to Nuance for $225M, and serving as Chief Business Officer at Thumb, a social app once ranked just behind Facebook in engagement. That builder DNA defines his work today, where he invests across AI, developer tools, SaaS, and healthcare — and helps founders avoid the traps of scaling too fast before product-market fit.

We explore:

• The mindset shift from operator to investor (and why most VCs don’t really understand startups)
• The AI wave beyond the hype — what’s truly investable vs. what’s just “agentic theater”
• The early lessons from Vlingo and Thumb that shaped his approach to founder support
• Why discipline, humility, and iteration matter more than valuation in the seed stage
• And a personal side of Hadley — from yoga and music to his advocacy for individuals with intellectual disabilities inspired by his brother Traves

Hadley also shares why ENIAC’s founding team went four years without taking a paycheck, how fake parking tickets helped him start his first company at 13, and how he occasionally manages to beat Nihal in tennis.

This is a conversation about longevity in venture capital, the craft of early-stage investing, and the human side of building — from startups to family to purpose.

🎧 Listen now to hear what makes Hadley Harris a true Human Unicorn.