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The Neon Show
Hi, I am your host Siddhartha! I have been an entrepreneur from 2012-2017 building two products AddoDoc and Babygogo. After selling my company to SHEROES, I and my partner Nansi decided to start up again. But we felt unequipped in our skillset in 2018 to build a large company. We had known 0-1 journey from our startups but lacked the experience of building 1-10 journeys.
Hence was born the Neon Show (Earlier 100x Entrepreneur) to learn from founders and investors, the mindset to scale yourself and your company. This quest still keeps us excited even after 5 years and doing 200+ episodes.
We welcome you to our journey to understand what goes behind building a super successful company. Every episode is done with a very selfish motive, that I and Nansi should come out as a better entrepreneur and professional after absorbing the learnings.
Episodes
354 episodes
When Founders Should Quit Their Startups with Matt MacInnis | COO Rippling
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...
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Season 1
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Episode 356
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1:20:33
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How Buyers Discover Startups, From a 10-Year Founder Journey to an EXIT | Ankur Rawal & Vishwa Krishnakumar
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 pr...
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Season 1
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Episode 355
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1:03:45
From Startup to US IPO in 5 Years: Kanwal Rekhi’s Historic IPO of Excelan
Kanwal Rekhi first came to the US in the 1960s. He took his company public on Nasdaq in 1987. As a young Indian in the US, he was laid off from his first three jobs. That experience pushed him towards entrepreneurship. At the time, ...
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Season 1
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Episode 354
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1:18:15
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What Went Wrong Before iD Fresh Worked | For the First Time Co-Founders Tell Their Story
Where did the journey of iD Fresh start?It began when a 19-year-old Abdul Nazer decided to run away from home to Bangalore with ₹100 in his pocket. He did any job that came his way: cook, cleaner, conductor and sold anything he could, fr...
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Season 1
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Episode 353
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54:41
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What Best Founders & Investors Said in 2025?
Best of 3500 Minutes in 45 Minutes2025 was a great year for The Neon Show. 60 episodes, 72 guests, and thousands of minutes of insightful conversations on everything around building a business.You’ll hear perspectives from Founder...
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Season 1
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Episode 352
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49:57
How Ratan Tata’s Leadership Shaped One of India’s Oldest and Biggest Conglomerates | Harish Bhat
Harish Bhat spent 38 years with the Tata Group, working across businesses that reach millions of Indians every day, including Titan, Tanishq, and Tata Tea.He joins Neon Show for a 3rd time and reflects on what it meant to build inside a ...
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Season 1
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Episode 351
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1:02:35
What It Takes to Build a Company: Life, Risks, and Lessons From Two Founders | Arpita & Ananda
Founders are often seen as superhumans. In this new series, we look at the humans behind the superhuman journey. The thrill of building, the guilt of missing out, the learnings, the failures, and why they still do it and would do it all over ag...
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Season 1
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Episode 350
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1:07:53
How Betting on Myself Led Me from Analyst to CEO? Roopa Kudva, Ex-CEO CRISIL for 8 Years
In 1992, Roopa Kudva walked into CRISIL’s CEO Pradeep Shah’s office without an appointment, starting her 23-year career there. She spent over two decades at CRISIL, rising from analyst to CEO. Roopa has spent over 3 decades in leade...
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Season 1
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Episode 349
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1:12:06
Where Founders Take “Figuring Out” as Seriously as Building ft. South Park Commons |Aditya & Prateek
Most conversations in startups begin at zero: what’s the idea, who’s the customer, how big is the market. But the stage before that, when you know you’re ready to be a founder yet the direction is still completely undefined. That strange, uncom...
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Season 1
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Episode 348
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53:51
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How Startups Can Sell to Big Companies Ft. Karthik Chakkarapani, Zuora
If you’re a startup selling to enterprises, understanding how a CIO discovers and evaluates you can change everything. Most founders believe that cold emails and polished decks drive attention, but Karthik Chakkarapani, CIO of Zuor...
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Season 1
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Episode 347
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1:02:00
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How AI Will Disrupt India’s IT Services Industry And Its 1.5M Engineers/Year | Bhaskar Ghosh, 8VC
After 20+ years at some of the most important Silicon Valley tech companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn, Oracle, Informix and NerdWallet, Bhaskar today leads investment of enterprise infrastructure companies at 8 VC.Bhaskar Ghosh spent 20+ year...
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Season 1
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Episode 346
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1:12:56
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How a 45 Year Old VC Firm Decides to Invest or Pass? | Somesh Dash, Partner at IVP
130 IPOs from over 400 startups. IVP is now in its 18th fund, with companies like Perplexity, Glean, Slack, Figma, Twitter, Uber, and Abridge in its portfolio. Somesh Dash, general partner at the 45-year-old firm, has been part of IVP for more ...
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Season 1
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Episode 345
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1:14:33
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4x Founder Shreesha Ramdas on What to Do Before You Build Your Startup
When Shreesha Ramdas left Medallia after a $6.5B acquisition he decided it was time to reinvent.At his 4th startup Lumber, before writing a single line of code, he hired a sales person and ran 200+ interviews across the industry to under...
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Season 1
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Episode 344
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56:40
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The Founder Who Mastered Timing Ft Sachin Aggarwal | Stackgen
You rarely meet someone who has built and sold five companies. Sachin Aggarwal is now building his sixth, Stackgen. The depth of lessons from someone who has been through that journey five times and still chooses to build again is s...
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Season 1
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Episode 343
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56:47
Learn from Silicon Valley’s Best Companies (Hubspot, Google & Salesforce) w/Avanish Sahai
India is the 2nd largest startup ecosystem now. But, can it be at par with Silicon Valley?With 37 years of experience in the valley, Avanish sahai believes it can. But what made Silicon Valley the ultimate startup ecosystem? It was inve...
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Season 1
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Episode 342
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54:28
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The Game VCs Play and Win | How VCs Spot and Back Exceptional Founders with Pratik Poddar & Brij Bhushan
What makes a great venture capitalist — luck, timing, or the ability to see what others miss?Brij Bhushan (Prime Venture Partners) and Pratik Poddar (Nexus Venture Partners) talk about the long game of venture capital; the waiting, the l...
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Season 1
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Episode 341
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1:13:58
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How One Indian Company Powers the World’s Hotels & Airlines | Bhanu Chopra, RateGain
When RateGain went public, it made history as India’s first SaaS listingFounder Bhanu Chopra talks about what went into that call, how investors saw it, and what it revealed about the Indian capital market. He shares how RateGain built ...
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Season 1
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Episode 340
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40:51
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How a 20-Year CEO Thinks, Prepares & Leaves a Legacy | Shiv Shivakumar, Ex-CEO Nokia & PepsiCo
How do the best CEOs think, prepare, and leave a lasting legacy? Shiv Shivakumar, former CEO of PepsiCo and Nokia reflects on decades of leading some of the most iconic companies. He shares insights on what makes a great leader, fro...
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Season 1
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Episode 339
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1:17:19
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How Viral Bajaria Turned a Last-Minute YC Application Into a $5B B2B AI Giant | 6sense
From a last-minute YC application to a $5 billion Company built on deep technical insight.In this episode, Viral Bajaria, Co-Founder and CTO of 6sense, takes us back to the very beginning. He recounts his early days at Hulu, where managi...
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Season 1
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Episode 338
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1:09:28
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$350M by Building Apps for iphones when IOS was like AI | Ashish Toshniwal, Calcutta -> Silicon Valley
How do you know whether an iOS app you have built has potential to be big? Getting an email from Steve Jobs is probably a strong indicator.Ashish Toshniwal, founder of 10Kr and YML (Y Media Labs), started by trying a bit of everything: c...
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Season 1
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Episode 337
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1:04:13
Tesla’s Former CIO’s $4 Billion Startup That Car Giants Can’t Stop Investing In | Jay Vijayan, Tekion
Jay Vijayan, founder of Tekion, and Tesla’s former CIO, has one of the most remarkable careers in technology and automotive.Jay joined as CIO when Tesla had almost no revenue and stayed through its growth to $5 billion ARR and $35 billio...
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Season 1
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Episode 336
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1:03:57
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What India Can Learn from Swiss Startups ft. Founder of 9 & Investor in 40 Co’s |Thomas Dübendorfer
Switzerland has quietly built one of the world’s most stable and trusted startup ecosystems.Thomas Dübendorfer, founder and president of SICTIC, Switzerland’s largest angel investing network with over 500 members and more than 400 startu...
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Season 1
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Episode 335
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30:31
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Ola, Flipkart & Swiggy use This $800 Million Software to Send Notifications | Raviteja, MoEngage
Ever received a push notification on your phone? There’s a good chance it came through MoEngage.Raviteja Dodda, founder of MoEngage, shares the story of building a SaaS company from India that now sends 80 billion messages to 2 billion u...
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Season 1
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Episode 334
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1:20:13
Is India Making Most of It’s GDP Growth? with Prof. Arun Kumar
This episode with Prof. Arun Kumar is a look at the Indian economy beyond headlines and GDP numbers. We discuss the paradox behind India’s growth story: when GDP rises, does it really reach the people? We explore how poverty in Ind...
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Season 1
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Episode 333
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55:37
The Story of Silicon Valley Legend & Google Founding Stakeholder with Asha Jadeja Motwani
“When I saw Google change the destiny of the planet, I could not imagine doing anything else but working with brilliant entrepreneurs.”-Asha Jadeja Motwani and her husband, Rajeev Motwani, the Silicon Valley legend of technical startups,...
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Season 1
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Episode 332
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30:56
