Feb 22, 2025 · 1h 27m · neon-show
2X SaaS Founder: How To Sell Global Tech Products From India | Sharath Narayana | Neon Show
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In this episode of The Neon Show, two-time enterprise SaaS founder Sharath Narayana discusses his journey scaling Observe.ai and Sanas past tens of millions in ARR. He breaks down founder-led sales, market-product fit, raising preemptive venture capital, and leveraging Indian engineering talent to build global enterprise powerhouses.
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 2.9 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 0.6 Siddhartha pushing back 0.5
speaking balance: gold is Siddhartha, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 56:50 Rejecting traditional PMF doctrine
Sharath directly dismisses conventional startup advice around product-market fit, arguing that founders get too emotionally attached to products rather than starting from market demand.
Hardest push from Siddhartha ▶ 43:52 Questioning greenfield budget feasibilitySiddhartha presses Sharath on the inherent paradox of greenfield software sales, pointing out that having no competitors also means enterprises have zero allocated budget line items.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:01:00 How accent tech reverses global BPO migrationSharath delivers deep industry domain knowledge detailing why call center jobs originally migrated from India to the Philippines and how real-time accent neutralization will bring those jobs back.
Siddhartha holds their own ▶ 1:23:25 Synthesizing authentic founder qualitiesSiddhartha demonstrates his seasoned venture perspective by identifying authentic vulnerability and likability as Sharath's true competitive sales moats.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Siddhartha as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Siddhartha pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transitioning to the US Market with Unbxd | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sharath recounts taking Unbxd to the US market and discovering that US enterprise ACVs were nearly triple Indian deal sizes with shorter sales cycles. Siddhartha prompts with helpful clarifying questions regarding timelines and roles. | |
| The Genesis of Observe.ai and Call Center Focus | 2 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Sharath explains pivoting away from sales intelligence to focus on the 20-million-agent contact center market. Siddhartha tracks the narrative and asks when Sharath joined the company full-time. | |
| Y Combinator Experience and Observe.ai Growth | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Sharath describes the spontaneous Y Combinator application in-flight, meeting Sam Altman, and raising an eight-million seed round from Nexus. Siddhartha adds perspective on the valuation jump from three to twenty-five million. | |
| Discovering Sanas and Real-Time Accent Harmonization | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sharath outlines discovering Stanford founders Max and Sean and recognizing the technical breakthrough of real-time phonetic speech synthesis. Siddhartha interjects to clarify round structures and check sizes. | |
| Sanas Mission, Thesis, and Rapid Growth | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sharath shares the founding thesis of Sanas ('spear within a spear') aimed at eliminating cross-border accent bias. Siddhartha listens as Sharath explains their rapid growth to twenty-two million in ARR. | |
| Selecting Greenfield Markets and Founder Vulnerability | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Siddhartha asks how to validate enterprise readiness without getting bogged down in bureaucracy. Sharath advocates embracing startup vulnerability and asking enterprise executives directly for help rather than pretending to be a mature vendor. | |
| Comparing Scaling Playbooks: Observe.ai vs. Sanas | 4 | 5 | 1 | 3 | Siddhartha pushes Sharath on greenfield market challenges, noting that selling where no previous budget exists requires creating line items from scratch. Sharath acknowledges the difficulty and emphasizes customer proof points and founder-led sales. | |
| Challenges in Enterprise Scaling, Hiring, and Culture | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sharath discusses operational friction points during scaling, such as retaining early employees, maintaining capital discipline after large rounds, and instilling mission alignment across remote teams. | |
| Fundraising Strategies and Investor Relationships | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Sharath explains why he maintains constant informal contact with investors, sharing vulnerabilities openly rather than running formal orchestrated fundraises. Siddhartha asks what concrete operational preparedness entails. | |
| Market-Product Fit Over Product-Market Fit | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Sharath flips conventional product-market fit wisdom by advocating a top-down 'market-product fit' framework, identifying immense macro problems first before engineering the solution. Siddhartha asks him to break down the concept for lay listeners. | |
| Investing in Neon Fund and the Distribution Advantage | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Siddhartha asks why Sharath became an LP in Neon Fund. Sharath highlights Neon's podcast platform as an unfair distribution flywheel for early-stage portfolio founders in an AI-accelerated market. | |
| Ecosystem Dynamics: Silicon Valley vs. India | 3 | 5 | 2 | 1 | When Siddhartha asks which startup ecosystem is superior between Silicon Valley and India, Sharath refuses the binary choice. He contrasts Indian engineering rigor with American storytelling and GTM aggressiveness. | |
| Mastering Founder-Led Sales and Storytelling | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Sharath details practicing his pitch daily in front of a mirror and argues that delegating sales before hitting five million ARR is setting reps up for failure. Siddhartha cites mutual peers praising Sharath's enterprise sales mastery. | |
| Enterprise SaaS Pricing and Defending ROI | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Siddhartha asks why Indian SaaS founders chronically underprice themselves in US sales cycles. Sharath explains how proving a 10x ROI and targeting 80% gross margins provides the leverage to stand firm on pricing. |
Statements from this episode (26)
Ahluwalia: Narayana co-founded two companies with $20M+ ARR and $500M+ valuations
“You are one of the very few founders that I know who has built like two companies, which are Make more than twenty million in revenues. Each one of them almost more than five hundred million in valuations in each of these companies.”
Narayana: Unbxd grew from under $500K to $6M+ in 18 months
“In those 18 months we went from sub half a million in revenue in India to about six plus million in revenue in the US.”
Narayana: Contact center workforce is 10x larger than sales intelligence market
“SDR functions, people would use gong or potentially about a million to two million people, but contact center has over twenty million people, right? There's an industry, which is 10 X.”
Narayana: Observe.ai raised an $8M seed out of YC before demo day
“Before demo day, we actually raised, at that time, outside Justin Khan's big round, because it was, we raised the largest seed round out of YC. An eight million seed round was the largest seed round.”
Narayana: Observe.ai hit $20M ARR with 50 customers before SoftBank investment
“March of 2019 is when we went to market and there was this great good story when zero to almost two two to almost seven, seven to almost 18 when SoftBank came in and invested at almost a billion dollar valuation. So three years of extraordinary growth. Our ave…”
Narayana detailed his $50K angel check before assembling Sanas' $5M round
“So me and Steve who's from DN Capital wrote the first checks at Sanus. ... No, initially we just wrote a 50 K check each. But then we helped them construct a five million dollar round. And then that's when we had general catalyst, quiet capital, human capital,…”
Narayana: Sanas raised $30M at $150M valuation while pre-product and pre-revenue
“Insight wrote a twenty million dollar check. ... So we did a thirty million round overall at a hundred and fifty million post. We were pre-product, pre-revenue”
Narayana: Observe has 300+ India staff, Sanas reaching 200
“I think Observe today has over 300 people in India. Sanus is getting up to 200 people in India.”
Narayana: Enterprise $500K ACVs are easier to scale than small SMB accounts
“Getting every customer who will add half a million dollars in revenue it's much easier to scale than scaling, adding 5000 dollars, 200 dollars customers.”
Narayana: No company had built call center speech analytics since CallMiner
“When we started Sanus and got into contact center, the last company which built a speech analytics in the call center space was CallMiner, which was two decades ago.”
Narayana: Founders win Fortune 500 deals by showing vulnerability, not scale
“I've always believed in showing yourself as a startup, show that you are vulnerable, ask for help. I think people don't understand. It's one of the most powerful ask you can do where you can go to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and say, I'm young. I'm naive. I…”
Narayana: Observe.ai and Sanas hit $5M ARR purely through founder-led sales
“I don't think we had a actual go-to-market rep for the first five million at either companies, right? As founders, we went and rolled up our sleeves and sold the first five million dollars.”
Narayana: Sanas scaled from zero to $23M in revenue in 18 months
“In Sanus, we went from zero to 20 to twenty three million in 18 months.”
Narayana: Sanas has still not spent its first $30M in capital
“So we've still not spent that first thirty million even till date, right?”
Narayana: The first 50 Sanas employees were all immigrants facing bias
“Like the first 50 people in the company were all immigrants, and they all felt the challenge of bias, right?”
Narayana offered to return $30M to Insight if unsolved in 90 days
“Even with Sanus, with thirty million raised, about Eight, 10 months into that journey, we were almost questioning, can we even solve this problem? Like I've had a meeting with Insight where where we are like, hey, we'll give it another 90 days. Otherwise, I th…”
Narayana: All seven funding rounds at Observe and Sanas were preempted
“And I think across Observe and Sanus, Every single round we've raised has been a preempted round. We've never prepared a data room, prepared for a formal fundraising process, and I think this is true across almost four different rounds at Observe and three dif…”
Narayana: Philippines call center talent is saturated despite double-digit industry growth
“Today, Philippines has reached its saturation point. There's not many more English speakers available in the country who can support this industry, and this industry is still growing double digits even today, right?”
Narayana: Rapid tech pace makes execution and distribution the only true moats
“Today the pace at which technology is going, it's very hard to have 12, 24, 36 month lead up in the market. Everybody has an idea, right? That whole execution of that idea will make the biggest difference. And if execution becomes your biggest moat, then your …”
Narayana: US founders ship faster while Indian founders obsess over product sophistication
“Indian founders are a lot more obsessed about the sophistication of the product while I've seen founders in the US have the fail fast approach. They're like, hey, build a feature, see if this feature works, then build the next feature, and then finally build t…”
Narayana: Indian founders lack storytelling and go-to-market skills compared to US founders
“US entrepreneurs are much better exposed on going to market. I think that is one thing that I see lacking the most in Indian founders. We are very strong engineers. We can be very strong product people. We are not naturally very good in storytelling. We don't …”
Narayana: Expand GTM only when customers buy the product, not the founder
“I think the first two to three years of your company journey, people are buying you, then they buy your product, right? There is a natural curve when people start buying your product, then they know that you are the founder. That's when you have to expand your…”
Narayana: Sanas grew from $5M to $20M under first sales hire
“I sold the first five million. Right? And now Anand is doing the same thing. He took us from five to 20, and now he's building a team.”
Narayana: Likability is the primary filter when hiring enterprise salespeople
“I have one of the biggest interviewing criteria I have to hire salespeople is I have this factor called likability. That's the first factor I look at. If the person is not likable, I won't hire them. They could be the best salespeople in the world, right?”