Shashank Saxena
Co-Founder & CEO, Pantomath. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Shashank Saxena co-founded and served as CEO of VNDLY, which was acquired by Workday in 2021 for $510 million. Following roles at Kroger, Citi, Workday, and Sierra Ventures, he currently serves as co-founder and CEO of Pantomath.
1shows
1appearances
36statements
2resolved
2supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
Everything Shashank Saxena said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Saxena: Major enterprise AI failures will stem from bad data feeds
“So at some point, you're going to start seeing front page headlines in the Wall Street Journal saying, this healthcare company or insurance company rejected one million claims, which it shouldn't have because the AI agent went rogue, or this credit card compan…”
Saxena: AI startups are hitting $100M ARR in two years under 50 people
“Today with AI, we are seeing companies. It's not impossible to see a company that gets to a hundred million ARR in two years with less than 50 people, right?”
Saxena: Fast-scaling AI founders are generally young grads, not enterprise veterans
“Today, in this bucket that I mentioned is a company that gets to a hundred million ARR in two years with less than 50 people. That founder persona is generally not a 1520 years experienced veteran in the enterprise. It's generally a much, much younger persona …”
Saxena: Hyper-growth AI startup revenue may not have traditional SaaS stickiness
“These days that this persona of the company you're talking about that get to a hundred million ARR real quick, it's not necessarily the same stickiness of revenue and time will tell.”
Saxena: The classic T2D3 SaaS growth playbook is obsolete in the AI era
“There used to be like, Battery and Neeraj had mentioned whatever the three triples, two doubles kind of a thing triple, triple, double, double, double, or whatever that, whatever the norm used to be that playbook's out of the window, right? Like right now with…”
Saxena: Enterprises will demand autonomous AI resolution within two years
“At some point, I bet you, 12 months, 18 months, two years from now, the customer will come and say, Shashank, this is very dumb. I'm unhappy. Why? Because you've already done the whole resolution plan. Why do I have to come in and manually hit approve? Just do…”
Saxena: AI infrastructure startups must be built in the Bay Area
“A company like Pantomath, infra company, playing in the AI wave, Has to be built in the Bay Area.”
Saxena: AI startups are one Anthropic press release away from obsolescence
“Now, in the AI wave, I feel if you're heads down and you're focused, you don't know what's going to come hit you from the left or right. You are one anthropic press release away from not having a business ahead of you.”
Saxena: Traditional Enterprise Rep Models Cannot Reach $100M ARR in Two Years
“Because the traditional model of, like, enterprise reps doesn't get you to a hundred million ARR in two years. You have to do something drastically different for that, right? In fact, a lot of these hot AI startups aren't doing the traditional model. Be it for…”
Saxena: In AI, Only 20% of Startup Playbooks Are Replicable
“So yes, there's, so instead of like, 80% of the playbook being replicable, now in the AI world, only 20% of the playbook is replicable. So I don't know if being a repeat founder has that much of an advantage in this narrow time frame where it's AI.”
Saxena: Founders who cannot demo their own product are unfundable
“I will never back a founder who can't do a sales demo themselves. If you have to rely on your AE and SE to do a demo, I wouldn't, as a VC, I wouldn't fund you.”
Saxena: Enterprise data operations will adopt cybersecurity-level rigor
“We feel that data is going to start running with that same amount of rigor because that one incident puts you In bad light on the front page of a publication and it's not a good look for the company.”
Saxena: Data is too crowded for new pre-seed or seed startups
“Data is a very crowded category. I don't know if that's the category. If someone's thinking of starting a seed, raising a seed round or pre-seed round to start a company, I don't know if that's the category I'd look at today, mainly because right now over the …”
Saxena: AI will not cut enterprise headcounts in half
“The human identities, like in terms of the headcount of most companies will become half that. I don't know. I don't think it will be that drastic”
Saxena: AI automation moves faster for white-collar work than robotics
“Right now automation is moving faster for white collar work and office work and knowledge work than it is for blue collar work in terms of robotics.”
Saxena: Founders Do Not Need to Relocate for Tier-One Capital
“So, overall, like, listen, investors and capital follows where Entrepreneurs or companies are doing well. So if you build a meaningful company and you're doing well, you can build that anywhere in the world. And as long as you're building it well, like investo…”
Saxena: Traditional enterprise software category swim lanes are completely abandoned
“So basically the traditional like swim lanes have all been abandoned. And everyone is just all over the place and you never know who's going to enter in your category.”
Saxena: AppDynamics could have reached a $50B-$70B valuation like Datadog
“Datadog was a much, much smaller company when AppDynamics was out there killing it. And Datadog today has, what, a 50, 60, seventy billion market cap. I don't even know. I haven't tracked it. That could have been AppDynamics.”
Saxena: Rejecting an acquisition offer commits founders for 5 to 7 years
“If you don't take this offer, don't assume the next offer is six months out. Yeah. Assume for the next five years, seven years, you're basically signing up for the next five, seven years of this journey saying, if I don't sell right now, assuming it's a very g…”
Saxena: VNDLY was acquired by Workday mainly due to its connectors
“Once Workday approved it, like, I think three months after Workday approved it, they made an offer to acquire us. So we got acquired mainly because of the connectors that we built with Workday and how good they were.”
Saxena: Enterprise data customers will demand automated remediation over mere alerts
“Because I believe, and this is one of the thesis we have, is customers won't just want to know what happened, they're like, fix it, and then tell me what happened, right? So the ability to fix it is going to be the key and most critical piece of this whole equ…”
Saxena: Broken enterprise BI dashboards are rarely visualization tool issues
“And very rarely is it a Tableau Power BI issue. It's something upstream somewhere that has failed, but no one knows what.”
Saxena: Pantomath scaled to Series B with half the headcount but 10x software tooling
“When we raised our series B for this company, revenue wise, we were almost the same, almost identically the same number as when we raised our series B for my last company. Yeah. At my last company, at that stage, we were 75, 80 employees. Let's call it 85, may…”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Shashank's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 NEON SHOWLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Pantomath | 1 | 36 | 100% 2/2 | full record on the Neon Show → |