Sep 30, 2025 · 57m · neon-show
How to Build a Startup in 2025? | Shikhil, Co-Founder Astra Security
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In this episode of The Neon Show, host Siddharth Ahluwalia interviews Shikhil, co-founder of Astra Security, on building an AI-first B2B cybersecurity startup from first principles. Shikhil shares actionable strategies on lean team structures, agentic commerce, go-to-market trust channels, and the enduring resilience needed to solve hard enterprise problems.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Siddhartha as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 3.9 Guest disagreement 0.5 Siddhartha pushing back 0.2
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 31:25 Shikhil challenges orthodox VC pitch definitions
Shikhil pushes back on standard VC expectations by asking how investors would react to rejecting standard GTM acronyms in favor of currency of trust, and criticizes founders who play yes-man to investors.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 31:24 Siddharth insists on redefining GTM as Channels of TrustSiddharth directly challenges founders' conventional obsession with GTM metrics, arguing they should tell unaligned VCs they are not the right founders if VCs do not grasp trust channels.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 37:00 Shikhil explains vulnerability fatigue and composite exploit vectorsShikhil methodically schools the audience and host on why raw vulnerability counts are useless noise, explaining how low and medium vulnerabilities combine across APIs and cloud infrastructure to create breaches.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 25:20 Siddharth links Marc Andreessen's power thesis to CIO syndicate investingSiddharth displays strong investor depth by synthesizing Andreessen's theory of institutional VC credibility lending with Vijay Rayapati's practical CIO fundraising model.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Podcast Preview and Highlights | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth introduces the podcast and gives background on Astra Security's growth from first principles. Shikhil shares early naive reflections on building their initial firewall product. | |
| Rebuilding Astra in an AI-First World | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth frames the discussion around building B2B SaaS in an AI-first world. Shikhil details how AI transforms engineering onboarding, lean hiring, and modern SEO through brand storytelling. | |
| Day Zero Capital Allocation and Lean Team Building | 4 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Siddharth prompts Shikhil on seed capital allocation and team sizing. Shikhil breaks down building a lean 5-person team with a minimal lovable product on $500k in India. | |
| Product-Led Growth and Early Growth Hacks | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth asks about building a marketing-first rather than sales-first company. Shikhil explains why technical buyers reject cold outbound sales and shares his Twitter auto-reply growth hack. | |
| The Shift to Agentic Commerce and AI Search | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Siddharth questions the shift from traditional Google search to chat-based search like Perplexity. Shikhil expands into agentic commerce where autonomous AI agents negotiate and purchase software directly. | |
| Transparent Pricing, Case Studies, and Live Events | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth recalls advising Shikhil to use case studies and live demo laptops at events. Shikhil strongly advocates for public SaaS pricing, challenging founders who hide prices behind gated sales demos. | |
| Borrowing Credibility and the CIO Investor Playbook | 6 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth brings up Marc Andreessen's concept of VC power as borrowed trust and cites Atomicwork's 42-CIO round. Shikhil validates the CIO playbook as personal skin in the game. | |
| Channels of Trust and SaaS as a Universal Model | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Siddharth proposes replacing GTM with 'channels of trust,' prompting Shikhil to turn the question back onto VC pitch dynamics. Shikhil then presents his philosophical view that everything in the compounding world is SaaS. | |
| AI in Cybersecurity and Astra's Attack Engine | 4 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth invites Shikhil to break down AI in modern cybersecurity. Shikhil explains vulnerability fatigue, noise reduction via AI correlation, and Astra's proprietary Attack AI engine. | |
| Founding Partnership and Mutual Co-Founder Alignment | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth asks about the founding relationship with Anand. Shikhil recounts their college debates, late-night mess encounters, and long-standing disagree-and-commit partnership. | |
| Hard Startups, Everyday Rent, and Defining True Impact | 5 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Siddharth references Sam Altman's hard startup thesis. Shikhil agrees, citing Naval Ravikant and emphasizing that paying daily rent and uncovering millions of vulnerabilities beats chasing vanity revenue numbers. | |
| Portfolio Synergies and Astra's Ecosystem Presence | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth shares real-world LP inbound examples where Astra's reputation lent credibility to Neon Fund. Shikhil humorously jokes about demanding a stake in Neon's fund in return. | |
| Neon Fund Partnership and Concluding Remarks | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Siddharth closes by asking about Neon's value-add over three years. Shikhil commends Neon's fast conviction, empathetic founder-first patience, and urges them to raise a larger fund. |
Statements from this episode (18)
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: 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: 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: 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…”
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…”
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: 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.”
Ahluwalia: Atomicwork Raised Two-Month Round Exclusively From 42 CIOs
“He did a round where only CIOs invested, like there were 42 CIOs that invested. It took two months of making that round happen, right?”
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: 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: 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 …”
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…”