# The Neon Show: the investor podcast, by episode

> The Neon Show: Indian founders and venture investors on building and funding companies there. 400 episodes, each linked to the investors in it.

Source: https://millionrounds.com/podcasts/neon-show (Millionrounds; every figure on the page links to its filing or article)

Investors · new episode 23 Oct 2026

# The Neon Show

Hosted by **Siddhartha Ahluwalia**

Indian founders and venture investors on building and funding companies there.

Follow on Apple PodcastsBrowse the episodes

**400** episodes

**182** investors heard as guests

**55 min** an average episode

64 in the last 12 months

## The regulars

Investors named as guests in the most episode titles on The Neon Show.

[AG *3* **Ashu Garg** Foundation Capital](https://millionrounds.com/person/ashu-garg)[AS *2* **Amit Somani** Prime Venture Partners](https://millionrounds.com/person/amit-somani)[AS *2* **Ashmeet Sidana** Engineering Capital](https://millionrounds.com/person/ashmeet-sidana)[BG *2* **Bhaskar Ghosh** 8VC](https://millionrounds.com/person/bhaskar-ghosh)[JV *2* **Jay Vijayan** Tekion](https://millionrounds.com/person/jay-vijayan)[KB *2* **Khadim Batti** 2 episodes](https://millionrounds.com/person/khadim-batti)[PC *2* **Paras Chopra** Wingify](https://millionrounds.com/person/paras-chopra)[PP *2* **Pratik Poddar** Nexus Venture Partners](https://millionrounds.com/person/pratik-poddar)[SS *2* **Sanjay Swamy** Prime Venture Partners](https://millionrounds.com/person/sanjay-swamy)[SA *2* **Shripati Acharya** Prime Venture Partners](https://millionrounds.com/person/shripati-acharya)[SD *2* **Somesh Dash** IVP](https://millionrounds.com/person/somesh-dash)[AG *1* **Aarti Gill** 1 episode](https://millionrounds.com/person/aarti-gill)

## Every episode 400 · page 1 of 14

- 400 **Ex-Meta VP: ChatGPT Is Just the Trailer for What’s Coming Next** 23 Oct 2026 · 1h 25m [Sovereign AI](https://millionrounds.com/fund/sovereign-ai)[Manohar Paluri](https://millionrounds.com/person/manohar-paluri)[Yann LeCun](https://millionrounds.com/person/yann-lecun) About this episode Why would a top AI leader leave Meta at the peak of the AI boom? Manohar Paluri is the co-founder and CTO of Warp Sciences. Before that, he spent years at Meta, where he worked closely with Yann LeCun. He started his career as an intern, and his alma mater includes IIIT Hyderabad, SRI and Georgia Tech. In this episode… ▶
- 399 **Burning $8M on Open Source, Hitting $100M ARR and the $250 Billion Market | Harjot, CodeRabbit** 15 Oct 2026 · 1h 2m About this episode We live in strange times where AI is turning every problem into a coding problem but no one is reading the code solving those problems. On this episode of the Neon show, we have Harjot, Co-Founder & CEO CodeRabbit. Harjot explains why they didn’t go after code generation, the infinite demand for software that is… ▶
- 398 **How AWS, AngleList and Now AI Killed The Old VC Playbook | Nakul, Audacious** 9 Oct 2026 · 1h 26m [Nakul Mandan](https://millionrounds.com/person/nakul-mandan-2) About this episode From a boutique industry of ~20 firms to today where there are specialised funds for every stage, geography and category, Venture Capital has changed radically. On this episode we have Nakul Mandan from Audacious Ventures. Nakul came to Silicon Valley at 28 expecting to be fired. He left Lightspeed in 2020, spent 14… ▶
- 397 **Which SaaS Companies Will Survive Anthropic and OpenAI? | Tim Guleri, Sierra Ventures** 1 Oct 2026 · 1h 10m [Tim Guleri](https://millionrounds.com/person/tim-guleri) About this episode Tim Guleri has spent 25 years in venture capital. Before that, he built companies with $3.8B in combined exits. And before that, he was a Punjabi guy selling Bibles door to door in the US. In this episode, we go deep into AI, venture capital, fundraising, SaaS, Silicon Valley and how great investors actually make… ▶
- 396 **“Yes.” Building Claude Code for Marketing | Kashish, Hightouch** 25 Sept 2026 · 56 min About this episode Now, everyone’s talking about building AI harnesses and context layers. Kashish has been building these for years and Hightouch has now reached a stage where they are challenging giants like Adobe and Salesforce while crossing $100M in revenue. In this episode we discussed how and why LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini are… ▶
- 395 **Anthropic, Sequoia Investor: 55x Returns in 18 Months, Is Anthropic Worth Trillions? | Vishal Verma** 22 Sept 2026 · 1h 6m [Compound](https://millionrounds.com/fund/compound-4)[Kleiner Perkins](https://millionrounds.com/fund/kleiner-perkins) About this episode How do investors(LPs) invest in investors(VCs) when the world is changing so fast? Vishal Verma has invested in 20+ VC(Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed, General Catalyst) funds and has seen 4 market cycles. Vishal has spent decades investing in and alongside some of the biggest venture funds in Silicon Valley. In… ▶
- 394 **Why OpenAI Has No Moat & LLM Prices Will Collapse | Avinash Lakshman, Weilliptic** 18 Sept 2026 · 1h 6m [Avinash Lakshman](https://millionrounds.com/person/avinash-lakshman) About this episode What if we are looking at the wrong layer? Avinash helped build Dynamo at Amazon, created Cassandra at Facebook, two of the most widely used distributed systems in the industry. Later he founded Hedvig, which was acquired for $225M with a team of under 15 engineers. Now with Weilliptic he is building the… ▶
- 393 **The Big Problem with GPUs and How To Solve It | Randolph and Kandan, MantisGrid AI** 15 Sept 2026 · 43 min About this episode We don't want the industry to fall apart, that's why we started this company. 6 months ago, everyone was talking about model deployment. Now everyone has moved on to agentic AI deployment and autonomous agent swarms. But all of this is running on an infrastructure that itself is not automated. And this underlying… ▶
- 392 **Why The Next $100B AI Opportunity Is Context Engine| Prukalpa Sankar, Atlan** 10 Sept 2026 · 1h 9m About this episode Context has become one of the busiest categories in AI. Every CIO now wants context Engine. Every legacy data catalog and knowledge graph platform has started calling itslef a "context platform”. At the same time reports say that 60% of CEOs say they’ve got $0 benefit from AI. To understand the nuances, on this… ▶
- 391 **The Unusual Strategy That Helps ArmorCode Grow 100% YOY | Nikhil Gupta** 8 Sept 2026 · 50 min About this episode “You have to take crazy risks” Nikhil Gupta got fired at 42, made his first VC pitch in 2000, got the idea for ArmorCode while buying toilet paper during the pandemic and received his first VC cheque in 2020. Today ArmorCode has raised $81M, grown 100% year-over-year, and counts some of the world's largest… ▶
- 390 **Why Even a $100 Billion Company Wouldn't Be Big Enough | Tanay Tandon** 3 Sept 2026 · 1h 3m About this episode How do you fix a $5 Trillion Industry which wastes $500 Billion on mouse clicks every year? By not considering even a $100 Billion company a success. By hiring people who are heat-seeking missiles for pain. By questioning every default. By solving hard problems, then choosing even harder ones. By moving with an… ▶
- 389 **The AI Moat Everyone is Ignoring | Phalgun Kompalli, Founder UpGrad and Bodhium Labs** 27 Aug 2026 · 50 min About this episode When brands can't figure out how LLMs are ranking them, what do they do? upGrad raised close to $800M, made year long online degrees mainstream in India when everyone said it wasn't possible, and in the process became a trusted brand in Indian education. Phalgun Kompalli is the co-founder of upGrad. Now, on his second… ▶
- 388 **Anthropic & OpenAI Have Changed What Moving Fast Means | Krishna M, Elevation Capital** 22 Aug 2026 · 59 min About this episode When frontier labs can build everything, when moving fast doesn't mean what it used to, and when what was impossible can now be done in days, what do you build and how do you build it? Krishna M is an AI Partner at Elevation Capital. He has seen the 0-to-1 journey twice as a founder and has also experienced what… ▶
- 387 **ChatGPT Killed My $50M ARR Business Overnight | Swapnil Jain Observe Al** 14 Aug 2026 · 1h 8m [Swapnil Jain](https://millionrounds.com/person/swapnil-jain-2)[SoftBank](https://millionrounds.com/fund/softbank-2) About this episode Observe AI raised $125M from SoftBank at an $850M valuation, went on to cross $50M ARR, and worked with some of the world's largest enterprises. But after 10 months everything changed. From a growth stage startup, Observe became an early stage startup, not because they did anything wrong, but because world changed… ▶
- 386 **The Al Lab Founder Who Sees The Future First | Karan Goel, Founder & CEO of Cartesia** 7 Aug 2026 · 59 min About this episode Karan is the co-founder and CEO of Cartesia, an AI model lab building the next generation of real-time voice intelligence. In this episode, Karan explains what all goes into building an AI Lab company; from massive datasets to pre-training to post-training to inference engines, plus a heavy dose of relentless… ▶
- 385 **Is Your Startup Model Proof? Vijay Krishnan Turing Founder & CTO On What Startups Should Build to Win** 31 Jul 2026 · 1h 19m [Vijay Krishnan](https://millionrounds.com/person/vijay-krishnan)[Google](https://millionrounds.com/fund/google-assistant-investments) About this episode What if the company quietly making OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta's models smarter was founded in India? Turing is one of the companies shaping how AI is advancing. It started in 2018 as a talent platform that found the top 1% of the world's engineers, became a unicorn in 2021, and then made a bet almost nobody… ▶
- 384 **How 1% Stay Rich - What India's Richest Families Do With Their Money That 99% Don't | Rohit Sarin, Client Associates** 28 Jul 2026 · 54 min [Deutsche Bank](https://millionrounds.com/fund/deutsche-bank) About this episode How do India's wealthiest families actually manage their money, and why does the man who looks after roughly ₹50,000 crore of it own zero stocks himself? Rohit Sarin is the co-founder of Client Associates, which he started in 2002 as India's first multi-family office and has grown into the largest in the country,… ▶
- 383 **Why Even With Great Products AI Startups Lose with 3x Founder Mahesh Ram, ex-Zoom AI** 24 Jul 2026 · 1h 12m [Mahesh Ram](https://millionrounds.com/person/mahesh-ram)[Eric Yuan](https://millionrounds.com/fund/eric-yuan) About this episode What does a founder learn from watching the CEO of a 32 billion dollar company make his biggest AI bets from the inside? Mahesh Ram has built and sold three companies. Thomson Reuters acquired his first, GlobalEnglish went to Pearson after teaching English to more than ten million people at companies like IBM and HP,… ▶
- 382 **The #1 Mistake Killing B2B Startups | Arun Penmetsa, Storm Ventures** 21 Jul 2026 · 1h 17m [Arun Penmetsa](https://millionrounds.com/person/arun-penmetsa)[Storm Ventures](https://millionrounds.com/fund/storm-ventures)[Google](https://millionrounds.com/fund/google-assistant-investments) About this episode Can the biggest AI labs simply walk into any market and replace the software companies already sitting there? Storm Ventures has spent 26 years building an answer for B2B founders. The firm has made close to 200 investments, backed 11 unicorns, and produced some of the cleanest enterprise exits in Silicon Valley, from… ▶
- 381 **Gaurav Jain on Building $500M Fund, Missing Ramp and Backing Irrational Founders** 17 Jul 2026 · 59 min [Gaurav Jain](https://millionrounds.com/person/gaurav-jain)[Afore Capital](https://millionrounds.com/fund/afore-capital)[Anamitra Banerji](https://millionrounds.com/person/anamitra-banerji) About this episode Gaurav Jain has seen more than 10,000 startups, built the world's largest pre-seed fund, backed startups like Gamma, Hightouch and Goldcast and has missed Ramp(you can't be a great investor without having a great anti-portfolio:)) A decade ago, when Gaurav started Afore Capital, pre-seed wasn't even a recognized… ▶
- 380 **And How Matic Sold 6000 Robots with Zero Marketing | Navneet Dalal & Mehul Nariyawala** 14 Jul 2026 · 1h 7m [Mehul Nariyawala](https://millionrounds.com/person/mehul-nariyawala)[Navneet Dalal](https://millionrounds.com/person/navneet-dalal)[Google](https://millionrounds.com/fund/google-assistant-investments) About this episode What does it actually take to build a robot that cleans your home when everyone before has failed? Matic is a home robot that sweeps and mops your floors, navigating entirely with cameras, no LIDAR. It shipped its first unit in 2024 and has since sold 6,000 units at ~2,000 a month, almost entirely by word of mouth.… ▶
- 379 **How to Solve AI's Biggest Problem | Atin Sanyal, Galileo** 9 Jul 2026 · 1h 10m About this episode How do you know whether an AI agent is doing its job or quietly failing in production? Galileo is building the trust layer for AI. Its evaluation and observability platform is how enterprises measure whether the output of an LLM or an agent is good or bad. Galileo started before "LLM" was even a word. When Atin showed… ▶
- 378 **Beating SBI, 1% NPAs & India's Massive Loan Gap I Victor Senpaty Co-Founder Propelld** 7 Jul 2026 · 55 min About this episode Who is funding the students that India's banks won't touch? Propelld is one of India's largest education-focused lenders, giving loans to roughly 1.5 lakh students every year, matching SBI, with a team a fraction of the size and no branch network. In a single financial year it now disburses more education loans than… ▶
- 377 **Lessons From India's First Unicorn Founder on Building Large Businesses | Naveen Tewari** 3 Jul 2026 · 1h 3m [Naveen Tewari](https://millionrounds.com/fund/naveen-tewari)[Kleiner Perkins](https://millionrounds.com/fund/kleiner-perkins)[Ram Shriram](https://millionrounds.com/fund/ram-shriram) About this episode Most founders build one unicorn. Naveen Tewari built two. InMobi started with a simple bet: mobile would become the world's most important computing platform, and advertising could make it free for everyone. Every Indian VC said no. Naveen flew to San Francisco on a maxed-out credit card and returned with a $7… ▶
- 376 **How to Beat a Competitor With 100x Your Funding | Palash Soni, GoldCast Founder** 30 Jun 2026 · 1h 21m About this episode How do you get an inbound from OpenAI and Anthropic? Goldcast is the video content platform behind companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, GitHub, Uber and Airbnb, before it was acquired by Cvent in a nearly $300 million deal earlier this year. Palash Soni (Co-Founder and CEO, Goldcast) joins the Neon Show. Goldcast entered… ▶
- 375 **How 3 Friends From Coimbatore Ended Up Running American TV | The Untold Amagi Story** 26 Jun 2026 · 1h 23m [Warner Bros](https://millionrounds.com/fund/warner-bros)[Baskar Subramanian](https://millionrounds.com/person/baskar-subramanian) About this episode Who powers the cloud infrastructure behind NBC, Warner Bros. Discovery, Olympics, and the Super Bowl? Amagi, built out of an office on Bannerghatta Road in Bengaluru. What started there grew into a company that went public at an $825 million valuation and today has a market cap of over $1.3 billion, earns 73% of its… ▶
- 374 **How A 23-Year-Old Solo Founder Is Disrupting India's On-Demand Labor Market | Anjali Sardana, Pronto** 23 Jun 2026 · 1h 8m [Lachy Groom](https://millionrounds.com/fund/lachy-groom) About this episode Why did global VCs invest $60M into India's most operationally heavy marketplace problem? The early bet was undoubtedly on the founder, Anjali Sardana. A 23 year old biology graduate from Georgetown University who is today the solo founder of Pronto. The company founded on 2nd April 2024 is at a $200 Million… ▶
- 373 **Why Coding is the Fastest Path to AGI | Turing CEO Jonathan Siddharth** 18 Jun 2026 · 1h 11m [Google](https://millionrounds.com/fund/google-assistant-investments) About this episode Who is teaching the world's most powerful AI models to think? Turing is one of the largest data partners to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia. At a $2.2 billion valuation it has become one of the most important infrastructure layers in the AGI race. Jonathan Siddharth started Turing in 2018 with a… ▶
- 372 **Questions Every Founder Must Answer Before Taking an Acquisition Offer | Shashank Saxena, VNDLY & Pantomath** 11 Jun 2026 · 1h 32m [Shashank Saxena](https://millionrounds.com/person/shashank-saxena)[Michael Jordan](https://millionrounds.com/fund/michael-jordan) About this episode Most AI failures won't come from a bad model. They'll come from bad data. Shashank Saxena spent most of his career on the buying side of enterprise technology before founding VNDLY which was acquired by Workday for $510 million. He then joined Sierra as a Managing Partner before going full time as Co-founder and CEO… ▶
- 371 **94% CAGR: What the Inference Boom means for your AI costs | Vamshi Ambati** 9 Jun 2026 · 52 min About this episode Vamshi Ambati has spent more than two decades in AI, through the symbolic era, statistical era, and the neural wave we're experiencing today. A CMU PhD, founder of LatentStructure and Predera (which was acquired), now an investor at Virama Ventures, he's one of the sharper voices on what's actually happening under the… ▶

## Who the show talks about

Firms named in its episodes, and people named in descriptions: talked about, rather than on the show.

[**Google** *17*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/google-assistant-investments)[S **Siddhartha Ahluwalia** *9*](https://millionrounds.com/person/siddhartha-ahluwalia)[**Blume Ventures** *6*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/blume-ventures)[**Nexus Venture Partners** *5*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/nexus-venture-partners)[**Stellaris Venture Partners** *5*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/stellaris-venture-partners)[G **Gaurav Munjal** *4*](https://millionrounds.com/person/gaurav-munjal)[**Bessemer Venture Partners** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/bessemer-venture-partners)[B **Better Capital** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/better-capital)[**Elon Musk** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/elon-musk)[**India Quotient** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/indiaquotient)[**Revolution** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/fund/revolution)[S **Sanjeev Bikhchandani** *3*](https://millionrounds.com/person/sanjeev-bikhchandani)

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