Podcast · ~65 min
What Startups Can Learn From a $1.7B Company's Chief Information Officer
Siddhartha Ahluwalia (host), Karthik Chakkarapani (guest, CIO of Zuora) · The Neon Show Free Intermediate India
This one flips the seat. Karthik Chakkarapani is the buyer, a CIO at Zuora who has sat through hundreds of startup pitches, and he explains exactly what makes him trust an unfamiliar vendor enough to sign and what makes him tune out in the first thirty seconds. For a founder trying to close a trust gap with a US buyer, hearing it from the other side of the table is worth more than another sales framework.
- Most vendors he actually buys from reach him through outbound, not inbound, so a good cold approach still works.
- A pitch needs a clear time to value answer, not just a feature list.
- Founders who present themselves, not just their product, get remembered after the call ends.
