Minus One

What does it actually take to become an astronaut? Shubhanshu Shukla, the second Indian to travel to space after more than four decades, joins South Park Commons general partner Aditya Agarwal to share the answer.  During Axiom Mission 4, Shukla became the first Indian aboard the International Space Station (ISS). An astronaut with ISRO and a Group Captain in the Indian Air Force, he shares what i...

Nato Saichek, cofounder and CTO of Longshot Space, joins South Park Commons Partner Jonathan Brebner to explain why rockets won the space race for the wrong reasons—and why a 15-kilometer space gun may be the most rational path to cheap access to orbit.  Nato traces Longshot's origins from garage experiments with his cofounder Mike Grace, through building the world's largest operational ca...

Amit Jain, cofounder and CEO of Luma AI, joins South Park Commons Partner Finn Meeks to explain why the most defensible AI companies aren't just building tools—they're developing systems that can understand and simulate the world. Amit traces Luma's path from a free 3D capture app designed to gather training data, through an early bet that video generation was finally viable, to the un...

Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks, joins South Park Commons partner Aditya Agarwal to discuss the cybersecurity crisis currently unfolding—and why AI is both the threat and the only viable solution. Nikesh traces his own unlikely journey from Google's Chief Business Officer to leading one of the world's most critical cybersecurity companies with no prior cybersecurity experience, sha...

Amjad Masad and Haya Odeh, cofounders of Replit, join South Park Commons Partners Aditya Agarwal and Ruchi Sanghvi to share what it really took to build one of AI’s most important platforms, and how it’s now enabling a new wave of million-dollar founders. Amjad breaks down why traditional ideas like ICP are breaking down in the age of AI, what’s actually changing under the hood of modern models, a...

As AI models become more powerful, safety is emerging as one of the defining challenges of our time.  Rahul Patil, CTO at Anthropic, joins SPC Partner Ankit Chowdhary to discuss why they prioritize AI safety above all else, how the company thinks about building reliable and trustworthy AI models, and the tradeoffs between speed, scale, and responsibility in the age of exponential growth. Rahul als...

Elad Gil, investor and author of High Growth Handbook, sits down with South Park Commons Partner Aditya Agarwal to challenge some of Silicon Valley’s favorite startup myths. He talks about why you might not actually need a cofounder, why data alone isn’t much of a moat, and how the strongest companies build real defensibility while others quietly fall behind. Elad also walks us through his approac...

Grant Lee, cofounder and CEO of Gamma, joins South Park Commons General Partner Jonathan Brebner to discuss how his AI storytelling platform is taking on PowerPoint and Google Slides. Grant shares how Gamma survived the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, how they stayed lean while scaling to a $2B valuation, and why he believes “different beats better” when competing against entrenched incumbents. He a...

When Tony Xu cofounded DoorDash 13 years ago, he was rejected by more than 100 investors. Today, it’s a $70B+ behemoth dominating the delivery industry.  Tony joins SPC General Partner Aditya Agarwal to reveal how DoorDash won the delivery war and answer the burning question of whether AI agents pose a threat to his company. He also shares why customer obsession became the company’s guiding princi...

In 2018, Andrew Yang warned that automation would destabilize society by displacing millions of jobs. Eight years later, he says the crisis is no longer hypothetical—"you're already seeing it." Andrew joins his early mentor, SPC General Partner Mark Jacobstein, and Aditya Agarwal to unpack where we go from here: what UBI looks like in practice, why white-collar workers are more expos...

"I think the mission basically doesn't matter." Waseem Daher, CEO of Pilot (and South Park Commons alum), has a contrarian theory about what actually drives startup success—and it's not passion for the problem you're solving.  Waseem joins General Partner Aditya Agarwal to unpack the real patterns behind building companies: why his "thinking time" after Dropbox was...

What does it feel like to bet your company on AI when everyone's talking about a bubble? Anurag Goel, CEO of Render and former employee #8 at Stripe, joins SPC Partner Jonathan Brebner to share why he's going all-in on AI infrastructure. The SPC alum breaks down the honest debates happening inside his company, why vulnerability builds more trust than the "always confident" founde...

Most things Kunal Shah says, turn into quotes that are shared across a cross-section of worlds — whether that is the startup and tech ecosystem, or simply among people looking to better understand human behaviour.  First with FreeCharge and now with CRED, he has truly traversed a journey of what it means to build for as diverse and complex a market, as India. On Minus One, he shares why technology...

This is the story behind all the IPO headlines.  In this episode of Minus One , Vidit Aatrey talks to Prateek Mehta about the high-conviction journey of building Meesho — from early uncertainty and brutal trade-offs to cracking scale in one of the hardest consumer markets in the world. We talk about why most startups fail to truly understand India, what Meesho got right (after getting a lot wrong)...

If there’s one person to listen to truly grasp the scale and intent of technology and where we’re headed, it’s Kevin Scott. The Microsoft CTO joins Aditya Agarwal to discuss navigating his Minus One days, the partnership with OpenAI, why the most valuable problems to solve are often the ones others ignore, and why building great things has never been easier, cheaper, or faster. Tune in now. Apply...

Having been a key part of building Google and Meta, and helping scale DoorDash and Block, Gokul Rajaram joins Aditya Agarwal to share his principles and patterns for deciding what’s truly worth building. Together, they draw on real stories from Silicon Valley and reflect on what it will take to unlock India’s deep tech potential. The investor gives crucial insight into the mindset, the team, and t...

If you want to know what it’s like to be the architect of nations, not just platforms - you ask a man like Nandan Nilekani . In this episode of Minus One, Nandan breaks down the ideas, effort and intent behind building Aadhaar for 1.4 billion people, his next chapter in using AI to drive social impact across India, and what his vision of the future looks like. Connect with us here: ​ Nandan Nileka...

SPC alum Tuhin Srivastava sits down with Aditya Agarwal to break down how a failed four-year startup, plus early chapters in finance and biotech, shaped the way he is scaling Baseten into one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies today. His approach is simple: kill what doesn’t work, don’t scale before you’re ready, and stop pretending you can see past three months in AI. Apply to SPC...

Rahul Chari is a leader in India’s tech evolution, from building Flipkart’s foundations, to architecting PhonePe’s planet-scale platform. Simply put, there are very few people in a country of over a billion, who have not used what he built. In this episode of Minus One, he reflects on forming lasting partnerships, building for the future, and building to last. Connect with us here: 1. Prateek Meht...

After years of operating at scale at companies like Facebook and Dropbox, Ruchi Sanghvi , founding partner of South Park Commons , and Aditya Agarwal , General Partner, turn the mic on each other to revisit the early days that grew this community to over 1,000 founders and technologists. They reflect on what it takes to build something enduring together, and why the best ideas rarely emerge from c...

Akshay Kothari has built tools that transform the everyday by making technology feel effortless, like Pulse and Notion. He joins Aditya Agarwal to share the counterintuitive lessons behind enduring products, why selling can sometimes be the braver choice, and how constraints often spark lasting creativity. Connect with us here: 1. Akshay Kothari- https://www.linkedin.com/in/akothari/ 2. Aditya Aga...

Tarun Mehta , co-founder and CEO of Ather Energy, joins Prateek Mehta, to unpack how Ather lived the “minus one” philosophy. By taking risks, locking in on what they truly wanted to build for the next 10 years, and then proceeding to just doing it - with India’s first smart electric scooter. Connect with us here: 1. Tarun Mehta- https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarunsmehta/ 2. Prateek Mehta- https://ww...

Facebook’s early culture was chaotic, fun, and fueled by a belief that "you can just do things." Andrew Bosworth, Meta CTO, joins Aditya Agarwal to revisit that foundational energy. He covers the creation of News Feed, the grit behind the pivot to mobile, and how Meta is tackling long-term hardware innovation for the AR/VR future. Apply to SPC: https://www.southparkcommons.com/apply Conn...

After building companies that made their mark, Joe Lonsdale launched 8VC to tackle institutional decay, backing ambitious startups and encouraging the next generation to build what’s missing. Now overseeing $6B+ in assets, he joins Aditya Agarwal to break down where the Valley lost its way, and what real builders must remember. Connect with us here: 1. Joe Lonsdale- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtl...

What does it take to build great companies? Mukesh Bansal, founder of giants like Myntra and Cure.fit, and now building at the frontier of deep tech with Meraki Labs and Nurix, joins Prateek Mehta in a chat at SPC Bangalore. He shares lessons from his early Silicon Valley “startup MBA”, the pivots that defined his journey, and how culture, trust and health have shaped his approach to building gene...