The Neon Show

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 after 7 years at Apple. These three chapters of his career shape this conversation. We focus on how to build and operate teams as a company scales. Matt explains...

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 process, pricing leverage, and stakeholder management. Neon backed Zenduty in 2020, when the founders had been bootstrapping profitably for two years and were alrea...

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, Indians were known and hired for technical and mathematical skills, not as founders building companies on US soil. But Kanwal and his co-founders decided to bet on the...

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, from clothes and vegetables to spices and peanuts. Along the way, he brought his three brothers to Bangalore. Even with huge losses in business, they never stopped...

Best of 3500 Minutes in 45 Minutes 2025 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 Founders scaling companies across the world, sharing the real challenges behind building high-growth startups; Investors on how they spot opportunities and make bold bets; and...

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 150+ year-old institution. The conversation begins in 1991, the year Ratan Tata took over as Chairman, a role he would hold for 21 years. Harish explains how Rata...

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 again. Arpita is a second-time founder, now building Mysa. Her first startup, Mech Mocha, was acquired by Flipkart. Ananda is the Co-Founder and CTO of Astra...

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 leadership roles in India and has witnessed three key phases in India’s growth: the closed economy in the 80s, the post-liberalisation era, and the rise of tech entrepreneu...

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, uncomfortable, high-potential zone Aditya Agarwal calls “minus one.” In this episode, Aditya and Prateek Mehta breaks down what happens in this “figuring out” st...

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 Zuora shares that nearly 80% of the startups he evaluates are found through outbound - while researching solutions, through peers, or even on LinkedIn. For many startups, t...

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+ years at some of the most important Silicon Valley tech companies before moving into venture capital as a Partner at 8VC. After completing his PhD in computer science...

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 than 20 years. We start with something we are both passionate about, building in the US-India corridor. Somesh talks about the group of people who put the s...

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 understand the real pain points. The interviews gave Shreesha the insight that though payments were a problem, it was neither big enough nor urgent.  But it was very d...

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 simply unmatched. Even after five successful exits, he still builds like a first-time founder. He studies every new domain from scratch, speaks to 60 or 70 people befor...

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 investors, universities and an environment where people dreamed to come live and work. And, in the last 25 years India has been going through the same transformation....

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 lessons hidden in mistakes, and the emotional ride of backing founders through years of uncertainty. With Pratik, we dive into some of the biggest names in the Nex...

When RateGain went public, it made history as India’s first SaaS listing Founder 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 its global presence before turning to India, and why he bet big on a $250 million acquisition. Today, travel is changing faster than ever with travellers planning...

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, from the mindset required to the qualities that define people with a fighter’s instinct. Shiv explains why commitment and curiosity often matter more than degrees or pedi...

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 managing massive data systems during the Super Bowl taught him how data could drive real business decisions. Joining one of Y Combinator’s early batches, Viral recalls...

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: classifieds, Groupons, and Facebook apps. That email made him quit his job, but as Ashish says, it took him and YML 14 years to become an overnight success. YML he...

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 billion market cap. Elon Musk brought him in to build Tesla’s own ERP system at a time when most companies would have chosen ready-made solutions like SAP or Oracle. To...

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 startups joins Neon show. Thomas talks about how Switzerland’s startup scene has changed over the past decade from a cautious investor community to one that now has 58...

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 users across 1,200 brands. A decade-long  journey of MoEngage from its early years to becoming a category leader in customer engagement.  He shares how the company...

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 India has officially fallen from 27% to 5.3% in just over a decade, yet real wages have been shrinking, especially for rural workers. If fewer people are poor on paper, bu...

“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, are together the founding stakeholders of Google. In the late 1990s, they came to the United States as most Indians, as students. From being part of Google’s ear...