Shikhil Sharma
Co-founder & CEO, Astra Security. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineerLinkedIn ↗shikhil.com ↗
Shikhil Sharma is the co-founder and CEO of Astra Security, a cybersecurity SaaS company providing automated, continuous penetration testing and vulnerability scanning. A former ethical hacker recognized by Microsoft, Adobe, and Yahoo, he also serves as a project lead for the OWASP Autonomous Penetration Testing Standard.
Everything Shikhil Sharma said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Sharma: Astra Would Need One-Fifth Its Headcount If Built Today
“I mean, we've always built Astra in a very lean way in terms of hiring people. Ah, but, ah, I think this would have, we would have done at one fifth of the cost and even one fifth of people along the way that we hired, ah, in a, ah, AI first world.”
Sharma: AI Agents Will Soon Obsolete B2B SaaS Website Buying
“I think all that is going to be toasted very very much in the next few years where how people would be consuming and discovering would be very different, and probably they might not even come to your websites either. They'll just discover you through these int…”
Hidden SaaS Pricing Excludes Startups From AI Agent Searches, Says Sharma
“In a world where agent tech is taking decisions, or even AI is trying to, if someone's asking AI, boss please tell me some let's say pen testing tools which fit in this budget, then you have no indicator of pricing, neither to your customers, nor agent tech, w…”
In the AI Era, Software Products Are No Longer Moats, Says Sharma
“I still believe that products are no more the moat with AI first world, but in, in, but really hard, in really hard startups, which were, which go beyond just products, I feel still, I mean, the problem itself becomes a moat if you are trying to solve somethin…”
Sharma: AI Onboarding Makes Average Engineers Productive Rapidly
“You can, if you've got the correct processes in place, you can actually get a half decent engineer and train them on your processes because AI is very great at even reviewing your entire code base and infrastructure and giving context to a new person and make …”
Brand Storytelling Beats Backlinks for AI-Era Google Ranking, Says Sharma
“Google sees that Astra as a brand is putting out a lot of content on YouTube or other channels, and other people are actually putting a lot of content about Astra and marking it as a top-end test company, and it has nothing to do with backlinks. Then Google wi…”
Sharma: Chat Interfaces Will Soon Become Legacy Software UI
“And I feel that even at some point it would not even chat interface. Also, I feel as a stepping stone, probably it will go beyond that. It would just be wherever they are in an application and it will become that contextual that even chat interfaces would also…”
Western B2B SaaS Buyers Readily Swipe Cards for $10K, Says Sharma
“My challenge to a lot of folks building in this BtoB SaaS space is try putting that five, 10,000 dollar plan on your website, and you'll be surprised how many people, especially in the West when doing B to B buy are comfortable swiping their credit card for th…”
Sharma: SaaS Will Remain the Ultimate Business Model
“So I feel the playbooks are changing, but I feel SaaS is like the ultimate business model for the world. This is how it will continue. It will change and take many shapes and forms, but SaaS would remain the ultimate business model”
Sharma: India B2B Founders Should Raise Maximum $500K Seed Today
“If I was starting today, I'll probably in a seed round, I'll not raise more than half a million. And of course, this comes with the context that I am building out of India.”
Sharma: AI Commoditization Drives Customer Demand for Day 0 Quality
“Since the cost of building a product have gone so down because it's becoming commoditized because of AI, the expectations of consumers have changed quite a bit. They expect a great quality product even at day zero, because in a free market, they don't, a custo…”
Sharma: Astra Closed $50K–$70K ACV Enterprise Deals Exclusively via SEO
“We've gotten some of our, like, top paying customers at 50,060, 70,000 dollars ACV using SEO.”
Sharma: Enterprise trust is borrowed, not bought
“Trust is always borrowed. It's not bought. So you, it's, I mean, so someone lends your trust and in, in, in the West, that's a huge thing. They do not hire people until they do a, Thorough ref check. So references go a long, long way.”
Sharma: Seed Startups Should Raise Up to 33% From Target Customers
“If let's say, if in today's world, half a million is enough for a seed round, considering AI productivity and all that, maybe a good, anywhere between one fifth to one third of that amount can come from you're possibly your ex boss to your Potential customers …”
Sharma: Playing 'Yes Man' to VCs Causes Dangerous Strategic Drift
“I have seen a lot of founders who, when they are raising and they're talking to so many people, they play yes man to VCs. So they might have a different opinion, but they're like, okay, this person is 80% agreeing to what I'm saying. 20%, there's a conflict. C…”
Sharma: AI will prioritize vulnerabilities by pinpointing immediate breach risks
“So here this vulnerability management AI is going to play a huge role where it will actually validate a vulnerability against your infrastructure and tell you out of these thousand vulnerabilities, which three are actually Able to cause a breach within the nex…”
Shikhil Sharma: Hard startups attract better talent and face less customer competition
“I agree to this thing Sam Altman's view that build something which is really, really hard. You'll be able to hire great talent which likes working on hard problems. Just because problem is hard when you're actually going selling to customers, there won't be a …”
The other half of the tape: Shikhil Sharma's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the Neon Show 7
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Shikhil'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, Astra Security | 1 | 17 | — | full record on the Neon Show → |