The Neon Show

What if the biggest mistake you can make as a founder is signing Apple as your first customer?Manish Jindal spent 10 years at Cloudflare as employee #45, helping take the company from $10 million revenue to a $60 billion public company. Manish breaks down the Cloudflare playbook: why they intentionally said “no” to Fortune 500 companies early on to protect their product, and how a single phone call from a CIO birthed their entire enterprise motion.Throughout his career, Manish has joined companies that already showed early product–market fit in large markets, allowing him to spend a decade helping scale them. Now as the President at Arize, he is building the “plumbing” that allows giants like Walmart and Uber to move from building AI agents to real-world production.We discuss why “boring” infrastructure is a more durable bet than flashy AI apps, and why owning the data remains the ultimate competitive edge. Manish also shares insights on building Go-To-Market (GTM) teams in the Cloudflare era and how that strategy has shifted in the AI era.If you are a founder or leader trying to scale a startup, this episode with Manish Jindal is for you.00:00 – Trailer01:00 – How Manish chose companies with early PMF03:45 – Founder’s belief is most important04:35 – Entering dev tooling when it wasn't popular08:20 – Never leave a Co. you believe in for wrong reasons09:45 – The “boring” industries that do well in Long run12:40 – It’s easy to build an agent, but hard to scale one15:06 – Why infra won’t be winner-take-all18:02 – The keepers of data will win20:20 – From million to billion in Cloudflare’s journey21:32 – The “holy sh*t” moment happens fast for Cloudflare24:30 – The CIO call that led to Cloudflare’s enterprise plan27:04 – $50M and $100M ARR path of Cloudflare28:33 – Build enterprise motion slowly or aggressively?29:51 – Why Cloudflare didn’t want Apple as customer32:10 – Early PMF at Splunk, Cloudflare, and Arize35:40 – Choosing only decade-long stints39:01 – Why Manish didn’t start his own company43:37 – How GTM has changed in the AI world54:25 – What agents need to work well in production01:00:51 – Which enterprise use cases qualify for AI?01:03:52 – What went wrong with Air Canada Agent?01:04:52 – How customers are discovered01:09:01 – Claude & Cursor are the most powerful agents today01:10:55 – How Manish chooses companies to invest in01:15:15 – Why acquisitions will become the Norm01:18:35 – Technology is not a moat anymore-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

What does it look like to run the same playbook across five venture funds?That is the bet Ashmeet Sidana has made at Engineering Capital. From Fund One to Fund Five, he has written the first check into founders solving problems with Technical insight.His portfolio includes Rubrik, now a public company, SignalFx which was acquired by Splunk for $1 billion, and CodeRabbit, last valued at $550 million. Ashmeet runs Engineering Capital as a solo GP and the fund has been oversubscribed since Fund One.Ashmeet says that the most common way technical founders fail is by “playing house.” Founders who build beautifully organized systems and clean processes, but don’t obsessively seek product market fit. His view is that founders should ruthlessly prioritize finding PMF above everything else.Ashmeet is an investor who has seen enough cycles to know what actually compounds, and is still early-stage enough to care about the details that most people have moved past.00:00 – Trailer01:15 – Where does Engineering Capital place its bets?10:07 – How the VC landscape has evolved11:20 – Are technical founders the norm in AI?16:23 – Why the name Engineering Capital?16:50 – What every VC looks for in a founder21:34 – Why Founders Choose Your Term Sheet26:26 – Rule of 1-2 in-person meetings daily with founders31:42 – Does AI give younger founders an edge?32:59 – Founders must ruthlessly prioritize35:58 – The trap of “playing house”37:40 – PMF can change overnight, Ex: Facebook40:13 – 1 in 10 companies fail due to lack of PMF43:17 – The most valuable skill a founder can have44:19 – Why have a Chief Engineer at a VC firm?45:44 – The job of every CEO is to learn46:09 – Solo founders are much riskier48:15 – An accidental entry into VC49:52 – Solo GP: risks and rewards53:34 – $250M across funds54:43 – Why solo GPs work better in the US58:25 – Where Ashmeet’s portfolio companies are located01:00:57 – Be very careful of vanity metrics01:02:15 – Vibe coding will change the face of software01:03:36 – Don’t chase trends in how companies are built01:05:58 – $100M ARR is the outcome of a strong package01:06:35 – How affordable is Bay Area for young founders?01:11:32 – AlexNet, not ChatGPT, was the real AI inflection point01:12:57 – US Public Companies Are Down 50% in 40 years-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Over 1 Trillion AI tokens pass through Portkey every single day.Every AI product eventually runs into the same problem. The prototype works, but once it goes live the system has to manage multiple models, rising token costs, unpredictable latency, and infrastructure that was never built for AI workloads.That is the problem Rohit Agarwal is solving with Portkey, an AI gateway that sits between applications and the models, whether that’s GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini.With 24,000 companies routing their AI through Portkey, Rohit sits on ground-level data on how AI is actually being used in production. Which models enterprises are betting on. Where costs are quietly climbing. How usage patterns shift as companies move from pilots to real products.When AI spend surpasses cloud spend, and Rohit believes it will, the infrastructure running underneath it becomes one of the most important bets in tech. This episode explores what it takes to run AI systems at that scale.00:00 – Trailer01:05 – 500 billion AI tokens every day04:05 – First to call an "AI gateway"07:26 – Where did the Gateway insight come from?12:08 – How Portkey is winning this space13:05 – Picking the right gambles over wrong ones14:16 – What are LLM endpoints?15:21 – AI will 100% surpass cloud spend19:00 – Hype is coming from people still in Q&A mode19:33 – AI employees over humans in customer support?23:00 – For AI startups, traffic > revenue24:43 – The bubble is in valuations, not utility26:05 – How Rohit built his personal automations28:38 – Costliest model is most used now33:21 – What's going right and wrong for AI companies37:49 – Hiring a VP of sales after $15M is possible today39:57 – What edge does Claude have over other models?43:35 – Founders need a "why me vs. why Anthropic" story52:56 – What if Anthropic or AWS builds a gateway?55:41 – Predictions for the next 12 months59:40 – How big is the opportunity in Agents?01:00:48 – Startups now have to prove it's not a weekend project01:01:54 – Is Build v/s Buy no longer a Debate?01:03:50 – What would Rohit build if starting up today?01:05:58 – How Portkey is different from an API gateway01:08:26 – MCP / tool calling enables agentic workflows01:12:00 – Portkey's Community-driven early GTM01:13:34 – Startups have only 2 reasons for Open core-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Is the best grocery platform one that decides what it WON’T sell?That is the bet Ayyappan is making with FirstClub. Fewer products. Stricter rules. While most quick commerce apps are trying to deliver orders faster, he is asking a different question. What if consumers need not “faster or cheaper”, but a retail platform where they can trust every item listed on it?A place where you do not have to read every label, check multiple reviews, or wonder if the top result is there because a brand paid for it. FirstClub is trying to solve a harder problem. It is trying to define what “quality” means for everyday products we consume, starting with groceries.India has received the highest quick commerce funding of any country in the world, at $9.24B over the last 10 years. Yet only 1% of Indians use quick commerce services today. With a large market still open for expansion and the possibility of better unit economics over time, FirstClub is building a countertrend to the hype around Indian quick commerce.Ayyappan brings eleven years of experience at Flipkart, and has also served as SVP at Myntra and CEO of Cleartrip. This episode is the story till here and the plans ahead for Firstclub.00:00 – Trailer01:01 – The Costco of Indian quick commerce04:32 – Building a counter-trend company06:15 – What consumers say v/s what they actually want09:37 – The only retail platform to Ban 200 ingredients12:34 – Why can’t the big players solve this?13:21 – A simple rule of thumb for food16:03 – Brand stories from FirstClub19:20 – Is the problem access or income?21:29 – Who are the 20 million FirstClub consumers?24:14 – Only 1% of India uses quick commerce26:04 – What does “quality” mean in grocery?32:34 – How will FirstClub monetize without brand sponsorships?34:53 – Do consumers behave differently across categories?39:30 – Why is Myntra so powerful in fashion?42:24 – What Myntra taught Ayyapan that Flipkart didn’t?43:53 – Unlearning to build for Quick commerce48:25 – Why Indian consumers are very experimental today50:59 – Is India one country when it comes to quality?52:43 – If Ayyappan was a product, what would he be?54:47 – The hardest belief to defend while building FirstClub56:26 – Akshayakalpa & The Whole Truth57:48 – Not niche, but premium-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neon-fund/X: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Nansi on:LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/nansi-mishraX: https://x.com/nansi_mishra-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Will smaller AI models win over large language models?Sudarshan Kamath grew up in Mumbai, taught himself AI before most Indian companies were even hiring for it, and bought the domain "smallest.ai" for $100 in 2022, two years before the company existed. Today, he runs Smallest AI, a startup focused on real time voice AI.He started with self-driving cars, training large models and compressing them to run on vehicle hardware in real time. That's where he first saw what small models could do: a hundredth of the size, almost no loss in accuracy.Two years later he put in his own $150K, got some GPUs, and started training. Eighteen months later he had a seed round, a Series A, a seven-figure enterprise deal, and a $150M acquisition offer he turned down.Most of the data that goes into large models is noise. Strip it out, train small, and you get a model that matches a giant at a fraction of the size and runs in real time. That insight is what Smallest AI is built on.00:00 – Trailer 00:51 – Sudarshan's journey before Smallest AI 05:00 – Arjun Jain & Yann LeCun 08:20 – Why build in voice AI in 2024? 15:09 – Why move the company from India to the US? 17:25 – Hiring talent via LinkedIn and X 18:49 – What large US funds actually bring to startups 21:03 – Raising a seed round with zero revenue 26:06 – Strong intros from US VCs 28:23 – What the first enterprise customer teaches you 31:50 – Raising Series A with Seligman Ventures 32:19 – The $150M acquisition offer 34:32 – When should founders sell secondaries? 36:24 – Who are Smallest AI's customers? 38:28 – What are state space models? 40:16 – Are GEPA models closer to AGI? 41:23 – Growing 10× in three months 48:03 – This is not a winner-takes-all market 49:32 – Why this is a trillion-dollar market 50:08 – Why large AI labs are not building in voice 51:26 – What it takes to reach $100M ARR 54:21 – The biggest goal for 2026 57:11 – Voice costs 1000× more than text 01:02:04 – How Smallest AI cracked large enterprises-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

What if AI can learn the “why” behind decision making of humans?Ashu Garg and Jaya Gupta recently wrote one of the most discussed articles on AI this year. Their idea drew public responses from Dharmesh Shah, Aaron Levie, and Arvind Jain.Enterprise software has always captured what happened. It records the order, the ticket, and the approval. But it has never captured why it happened. It does not store the reasoning, the exception, or the past decisions that shaped the outcome. Ashu argues that this missing layer is the biggest opportunity in enterprise AI right now, and that the startups that capture it will be the biggest winners in AI.In this episode, we go deeper into what context graphs really are, how they get built, why startups have an edge over incumbents, and how close we are to seeing this work in practice.00:00 – Trailer 00:32 – What are context graphs? 02:48 – Why agents haven't lived up to the hype? 05:18 – The "why" of Decision Making 08:17 – How agents will store data for context graphs 10:38 – What will be possible for Digital twins? 14:02 – Can context graphs reveal a company's moat? 15:50 – Guardrails on Access for agents 19:50 – Managing agents vs being managed by agents 23:01 – Will winners be vertical or horizontal players? 25:56 – The future is agent swarms 28:43 – Finding PMF is what makes a great CEO 31:40 – What will set apart successful enterprises of 2030 33:44 – Where Foundation Capital is investing 35:16 – Why AI won't be winner-takes-all 37:38 – Where will the context graph reside? 40:45 – Will systems of record be replaced? 42:42 – Human in the loop → hands-off execution 44:46 – A reality check on where we are today 46:43 – Where startups will win in orchestration-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Samay Kohli spent 12 years at GreyOrange, scaling it to over $100 million in revenue and a $3 billion valuation at its peak, making it one of the world’s largest warehouse robotics companies. Two years ago, he started again with Budy, this time in the US senior care industry.In this industry, decisions are emotional, sales cycles can run for years, and multiple stakeholders are involved. While the market sits at the intersection of real estate, healthcare, and hospitality, most sales still depend on manual follow-ups and scattered tools.Budy builds digital workers for sales teams: AI teammates that handle follow-ups, scheduling, and lead management across CRMs, calendars, and inboxes. Instead of adding another layer of software, Budy went zero UI-UX and focused on enabling sales teams in an industry with 99% inbound leads to manage their cold leads better.Today, Samay joins Siddhartha (Partner at Neon Fund, and a proud investor in Budy) and shares his journey from building robots to building digital teammates for a very non-traditional industry.00:00 – Trailer01:00 – What Budy is building for senior care05:15 – Real Estate × Healthcare × Hospitality06:25 – Zero UI UX technology10:09 – AI teammates not assistants12:03 – How sales teams operated before Budy12:51 – A ninety nine percent inbound industry13:45 – The real cost of senior care homes15:35 – Can a CRM alone solve this17:55 – Direct benefits of a digital worker20:49 – Two founder archetypes22:06 – Can lights out operations become real24:49 – What Samay underestimated about the market25:58 – The largest players in the industry29:07 – Treat your customer’s company like your own30:52 – Entrepreneurship as a profession35:36 – Unlearnings as a second time founder37:30 – What digital workers actually are39:47 – The original promise of SaaS42:04 – The next decade of digital workers45:25 – Digital workers that read best selling books47:26 – Will Claude build CRMs49:38 – Business etiquette across the world55:18 – How a second time founder chooses investors01:01:00 – Why every team member should track the P and L01:02:14 – How Samay’s view on growth evolved-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Do startup valuations today make sense?Umesh Padval, an early investor in Cohere, now valued at about $7 billion shares why Cohere stood out at the time of his investment. He shares what he saw early that made him believe this was not just another AI model company.Umesh is the Founding Managing Partner, Seligman Ventures and previously at Thomvest and Bessemer Venture Partners. He brings experience from investing across multiple tech cycles, from chips to cloud to AI. Umesh talks about how deals are really done in venture capital and what he looks for when everything feels noisy and crowded in AI.He also shares why many strong companies are choosing to stay private and what has changed in the IPO market. Public markets now demand cash flow and durability, not just fast growth.Umesh talks about why open source has become a powerful sales funnel for modern AI companies. Developers become the first users, and community adoption turns into long-term enterprise revenue.After four decades in Silicon Valley and 20 years as a VC, Umesh shares what keeps him in building and investing.0:00 – How big is the scope for investing in AI startups?04:04 – Do unit economics justify large AI valuations?06:00 – Thomvest’s LLM investment thesis (Cohere case study)09:18 – Are CTO roles changing in AI11:21 – Traits of the best AI founding teams13:40 – Timeline to find the best founders16:52 – Partnership with Jyoti Bansal19:07 – Where is the IPO market headed?23:40 – Salesforce–Clari acquisition25:18 – Is profitability a prerequisite to go public?26:00 – Can the India–US corridor beat US–Israel?28:53 – Umesh’s investment philosophy31:08 – Open source as a sales funnel33:38 – IIT → Stanford → Startups41:45 – The only CEO with 60 direct reports43:43 – Why Jensen never does 1-on-1s?48:23 – What ultimately drives Umesh Padval?-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

Matt MacInnis spent 6 years as COO at Rippling and now leads as CPO. He joined Rippling in 2019, when there were only 70 people, and has led the company across multiple stages.Before that, Matt was a founder for 9 years, building Inkling after 7 years at Apple. These three chapters of his career shape this conversation. We focus on how to build and operate teams as a company scales. Matt explains how he thinks about speed versus real progress, and which parts of building a company should move fast and which should move slowly. He shares how he decided when to introduce processes at Rippling, when to keep things informal, and how to recognize when a process that once helped the company had started to slow it down.We discuss how his role changed as Rippling grew from around 70 people to 100, then to 500, and now to thousands. He explains what he paid attention to at each stage and which metrics he deliberately did not obsess over.These are practical lessons for founders, from the earliest days of a startup to the challenges of scaling a large organization.0:00 - Trailer01:11 – One thing people get wrong about building a business?04:01 – Great founders find markets that already exist06:36 – What does a “death march” mean at Apple?10:11 – How to build a good team in early-stage startup?12:33 – Learnings from Apple to Inkling18:11 – Processes to set up in startups25:20 – Humans always optimize for comfort (and why that’s bad instinct)33:09 – Why success teaches you more than failure36:01 – How should processes change as company scales?42:11 – How is AI changing the software industry?54:03 – If Matt were starting up today, how would he do it?57:07 – How would Next-gen PM roles look like?01:01:51 – Matt shares about Rippling CEO Parker01:04:32 – Founder instinct vs Data01:06:06 – Over-optimizing for employee comfort01:07:27 – If building a startup feels comfortable, it’s probably dead01:08:36 – One thing only CEO’s should do forever01:11:15 – One piece of startup advice Matt doesn’t trust-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail

This is a special episode from the Neon Fund.In 2025, the US saw $1.8 trillion worth of M&A deals, around 25× more than India. But India’s startup ecosystem is much younger, which makes every acquisition a playbook for founders on process, pricing leverage, and stakeholder management.Neon backed Zenduty in 2020, when the founders had been bootstrapping profitably for two years and were already growing at a pace many VC-backed startups aspire to.Today, founders Ankur Rawal and Vishwa Krishnakumar join Siddhartha, Partner at Neon, to discuss one of the most untalked acquisitions of 2025.Over a 10-year journey, Zenduty pivoted to SRE in 2020. Vishwa and Ankur also share insights on the future of the DevTools space, which they believe will always be a strong choice to build great products, because engineers are among the hardest end users to please.This episode is a founders’ view on how acquisitions work in Indian SaaS.00:00 – Trailer01:00 – Initial years of a decade-long journey07:12 – How Zenduty chose its investors11:04 – How much should founders dilute?12:24 – Building with profitability before & after fundraise14:45 – Six years of survival before the pivot17:01 – Why the pivot to the SRE space?18:39 – How Zenduty differentiated from PagerDuty19:12 – End users are the toughest to please in engineering20:39 – Is market attractive if biggest player is valued only $1.5B?25:22 – Why acquisition and not a Series A?27:18 – The process before acquisition29:23 – How pricing negotiations work31:51 – Should devtool companies build from India or US?34:58 – Three types of connects at physical events37:06 – What physical presence at events signals39:06 – Founders’ feedback on Neon Fund41:41 – “Don’t build in silence”43:50 – How to build a core AI-native company today47:54 – Do first-time founders have an edge in the AI era?52:08 – Cost to PMF has drastically gone down54:48 – What hard problems are startups solving today?55:37 – Why are acquisitions rare in India?1:00:20 – How US investors are facilitating M&As1:01:14 – How to make your brand visible to potential acquirers-------------India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.What is Neon Fund?We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.-------------Check us out on:Website: https://neon.fund/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theneonshoww/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beneon/Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShowwConnect with Siddhartha on:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7-------------This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice.Send us Fan Mail