If data is gold then what are Databases?

Rajkumar Sen built Arcion Labs on an H-1B, nearly shut multiple times and then sold to Databricks. In this conversation Raj shares behind the scenes details of his 8 years journey from idea to starting up to fundraising to exiting and every challenge faced in between.

We explore what makes Ali Ghodsi a very unique CEO in enterprise tech, why AI agents are about to break today’s database architectures, why specialized AI inference could outgrow the $500B cloud market and where the next generation of AI infrastructure companies will emerge.

Watch this episode to learn about the future of AI, Data and Databases.

0:00 Trailer
00:42 Why Big Tech is Buying Data Startups For Billions
03:50 When Non-Humans Start Writing Software
06:33 What’s Next After Oracle, Mongo, Postgres?
07:22 AI Agents Don’t Have Patience
10:08 Warehouse Just Wanted CSVs
11:20 The 400-Node MongoDB Problem
13:51 “Every Buyer Wants to Pay $0”
17:06 We Would Have Gone Bankrupt
18:04 Starting up on H-1B
22:43 Raising a $13.5M Series A
24:37 “When Databricks Calls, You Don’t Say No”
31:20 From 20 Customers to 1000s
32:27 “Post-Exit Chill” Is a Myth
33:32 Leaving Databricks to Learn AI
34:03 Reading Llama’s Source Code in Free Time
36:07 If Anthropic Exists, Why Does Baseten?
39:10 Will Inference Outgrow Cloud?
41:45 Don’t Judge Startups By Early Revenue
43:27 Is Ali Ghodsi Better Than Larry Ellison?
45:28 Databricks Buys Vision Not Revenue
52:37 What’s Left to Build in Data?
56:09 Biggest Opportunity Is Inside Enterprise Data
01:00:16 The Texas Oil Rig Problem
01:02:32 Same Question, Same Answer, Every Time
01:04:08 Models Need Business Data to Grow Now

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India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.
What is Neon Fund?
We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.
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Check us out on:
Website: https://neon.fund/
Instagram: instagram.com/theneonshoww/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/neon-fund
Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

Connect with Siddhartha on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
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This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice

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Open source is under attack, AI code is more hackable and the things a founder can control now are very very few.

Varun Badhwar is a 3x security founder, his last startup was acquired by Palo Alto networks where he grew the business from $5M ARR to $100M ARR. Now he is building Endor Labs to add controlled chaos to world of AI written code.

Varun explains how nation-state actors are exploiting defenseless open-source repositories, how AI agents invent open-source libraries, why super intelligent models write super dangerous code and how we live in strange AI world where no one is control.

Watch this episode to learn about the business and tech of securing billions (and billions lines of code).

00:00 Army Kid Turned Serial Founder
02:28 Bored at Salesforce, Built CipherCloud
05:13 Nothing Prepares You to Be CEO
08:02 $12M Raised, $250M Exit
09:47 “You’re My Biggest Competitor”.
12:40 Did RedLock Sell Too Cheap?
15:06 Why Leave Palo Alto?
18:37 Securing Code From Prompt to Deploy
20:36 Why AI Writes Hackable Code
24:41 Your Moat Can Vanish in 90 Days
29:58 Darth Vader in the Office
31:04 Things Founders Can Control
33:13 Win Customers Before First Sales Call
34:53 My Research is My Distribution
39:53 Without Trust Your Sales Funnel is Leaky
44:33 A Security Bug Can Wipe $40B Overnight
46:06 $9K Fix for a $90K Problem
49:05 War Between Engineering and Security
51:15 Hire Salespeople in Pairs
55:35 Inventing Cars vs Going Electric
58:30 100x Code, 100x Vulnerabilities?
01:02:04 Don't Build in the Bubble
01:03:02 Claude Isn't Done Until Endor Says So
01:04:25 AI Agents Make Up Libraries
01:06:09 Your Job Is to Be Bought
01:09:00 Why 90% of Startup Acquisitions Fail
01:11:42 Why Palo Alto Wins at M&A
01:14:10 Rapid Fire: AI Tools, GTM Hacks and More

-------------
India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.
What is Neon Fund?
We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.
-------------
Check us out on:
Website: https://neon.fund/
Instagram: instagram.com/theneonshoww/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/neon-fund
Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

Connect with Siddhartha on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
-------------
This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice

Send us Fan Mail

Why would a top AI leader leave Meta at the peak of the AI boom?

Manohar Paluri is the co-founder and CTO of Warp Sciences. Before that, he spent years at Meta, where he worked closely with Yann LeCun. He started his career as an intern, and his alma mater includes IIIT Hyderabad, SRI and Georgia Tech.

In this episode Manohar explains why the magical personal assistants are just the trailer for AI, why physical intelligence is the hardest bottleneck in tech, the truth behind open-weights vs. closed models, and why he wants to build scientific superintelligence when he could have worked on anything.

If you are interested in solving the hardest problems, watch this episode.

00:00 Why Leave "Center of the Universe"?
00:57 Frontier Models and Plane Wi-Fi
03:40 AI Has Conquered Bits Not Atoms(Yet)
07:13 Why Real World Is AI's Hardest Loop
11:29 AI Assistants Are Just the Trailer
14:01 Will Frontier Eat All Software?
17:43 Open Source Isn't Truly Open?
26:28 What If Hardware Gets 10x Better?
29:58 Is Sovereign AI Needed?
38:04 Why Zuckerberg, Sundar and Elon Launch on X
42:07 Perception Drive Reality Until It Doesn’t
43:20 Spot, Learn, Leap, Build
47:46 What Yann LeCun Taught Him
50:56 Zuckerberg and $1B Instagram Bet
54:51 Finding The Bottleneck is The Hack
57:40 The Super Hard Problem To Solve
01:03:30 How to Accelerate Scientific Discovery
01:05:44 Can You Make the Elephants Dance?
01:11:10 Silicon Valley Is a Mumbai Local Train
01:14:55 The World Will Beat Pessimism Into You
01:19:14 How to Keep Going When Things Get Hard
01:23:45 Macro Optimist and Micro Pessimist

-------------
India’s talent has built the world’s tech—now it’s time to lead it.
This mission goes beyond startups. It’s about shifting the center of gravity in global tech to include the brilliance rising from India.
What is Neon Fund?
We invest in seed and early-stage founders from India and the diaspora building world-class Enterprise AI companies. We bring capital, conviction, and a community that’s done it before.
Subscribe for real founder stories, investor perspectives, economist breakdowns, and a behind-the-scenes look at how we’re doing it all at Neon.
-------------
Check us out on:
Website: https://neon.fund/
Instagram: instagram.com/theneonshoww/
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/neon-fund
Twitter: https://x.com/TheNeonShoww

Connect with Siddhartha on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/siddharthaahluwalia/
Twitter: https://x.com/siddharthaa7
-------------
This video is for informational purposes only. The views expressed are those of the individuals quoted and do not constitute professional advice

Send us Fan Mail