StepOne

Mohit Aron has spent nearly 20 years watching technology shifts play out, and his read on AI moats is blunt: the fundamentals of competitive advantage haven't changed, the tools just have. Most founders are asking the wrong question entirely. With AI agents increasingly acting as the primary interface between users and software, Mohit breaks down exactly where durable value lives, why the "SaaS is...

Most CTOs talk about AI productivity gains in the abstract. Mohit Aron, Founder of Cohesity and Nutanix, has a concrete system — one he built by taking his pre-AI coding methodology and mapping AI directly onto every phase of it. He still writes unit tests, runs two coding agents in parallel for different tasks, and has a firm view on why hiring for AI fluency before engineering fundamentals is a...

Mohit Aron has built two companies past $10B+ valuations and is now on his third. In this episode, he walks through the exact go-to-market playbook he has run each time, starting with why the founder has to be the primary seller early on, a practical necessity before messaging has been proven in the field. He also shares the three-scorecard hiring framework he uses across every go-to-market role,...

Most founders delay culture work until later. Marcus Ryu made it foundational at Guidewire when they had no customers—because no one would talk to them about a non-existent product. That decision became their survival mechanism through a product failure, an existential lawsuit, and multiple breaking points. In this episode, Marcus distinguishes between moral values that matter under pressure and o...

Most founders approach board meetings like performance reviews: exhausting themselves trying to look good while board members gradually encroach into operational decisions. Marcus Ryu reveals this is a failure mode. In this episode, he reframes the board relationship from governance to advisory, explains why you have more power than you realize through "the power of agenda," and shares the specifi...

Marcus Ryu built a $20 billion insurance software company by answering a question most founders never ask: why has this problem persisted unsolved? In this episode, Markus walks through his framework for strategic coherence —  defining your market attack with enough precision to build an excellent product while capturing enough market to fuel your next round. From writing testable propositions abo...