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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
345 episodes
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
How to Build a Startup in 2025? With 1/5th Cost, 1/5th Team | Shikhil Sharma, Astra Security
Cybercrime is predicted to drain the world of $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, making it one of the greatest threats to modern business.Shikhil Sharma, co-founder & CEO of Astra Security, is building one of today’s most trusted pentesti...
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Season 1
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Episode 331
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57:33
Stories from India’s heartland that tell a different story than GDP headlines | Subroto Bagchi, Mindtree
“Push something a millimetre in the private sector, you make an inch of progress. In the public sector, it’s a mile of progress.”Subroto Bagchi started his career as a clerk in the Odisha government in 1976, leaving postgraduate studies...
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Season 1
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Episode 330
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1:02:19
How Startups Can Survive GPT7 & Win Against Model Providers | Ashu Garg,Foundation Capital | Investor Databricks,Turing,Cohesity
Ashu Garg has backed companies like Databricks, Turing, Cohesity, Jasper, and Eightfold.ai as General Partner at Foundation Capital. Over the years, he’s seen multiple waves of innovation but in his words, nothing in the last 45 years comes clo...
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Season 1
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Episode 329
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50:53
If Big AI Goes Everywhere, What’s Left for B2B SaaS? | 25 Years, 4 Startups, 3 Eras of SaaS w/ Sreedhar Peddineni & Kiran Darisi
A full founder’s arc: starting small, building global SaaS companies from Hyderabad, taking one to IPO, another to a billion-dollar exit, and then choosing to begin again (and again).Kiran Darisi began at Zoho, founding team member of Fr...
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Season 1
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Episode 328
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1:25:12
8 Years Without Funding to $100M Raise & Now A Category Leader | Shivku Ganesan ,Exotel
A 14-year journey from bootstrap to scale.Exotel’s story is one of India’s most remarkable SaaS journeys. Shivakumar Ganesan, started Exotel in 2011, bootstrapping it from the ground up. In 2012, he raised a seed round of ₹2.5 crore, but...
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Season 1
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Episode 327
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1:01:22
7 Myths About Selling B2B SaaS In India Explained By Public Listed Company Unicommerce | ft. Kapil Makhija
The software that powers 25% of India’s e-commerce transactions, processes a billion orders each year, and in 2025 alone fulfilled 20 million quick-commerce orders: Unicommerce sits at the core of India’s digital retail ecosystem. I...
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Season 1
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Episode 326
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1:20:00
This is How GEOPOLITICS Really Works | Rajiv Sikri, Ex-IFS Officer on Power, Trade & War
The 21st century has shattered old assumptions about diplomacy.Relationships between nations are no longer guided by ideology or morality, but driven by pragmatism and national interest.This week, former diplomat Rajiv Sikri who s...
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Season 1
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Episode 325
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1:09:10
From 70% Imports to 65% Made in India, India Now Sells Defense Tech to 85+ Countries | Ashok Atluri, Zen Technologies
Ashok Atluri founded Zen Technologies in 1993, bootstrapping from Hyderabad at a time when India was importing 70% of its defence equipment and private players contributed just 5% of procurements. It took Zen five years to win its first contrac...
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Season 1
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Episode 324
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54:22
From $4.5M for 49% to $700M In The Bank at IPO: Sanjeev & Yashish On 17 Years Of Policybazaar
From idea to IPO and beyond. What does it take to back a company for nearly two decades?There are no written rules to navigate one of the most important relationships in a startup. One between a founder and an investor.Th...
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Season 1
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Episode 323
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52:35
