Investor who hasn't Changed His Thesis in 5 Funds & Saw the AI Wave Before ChatGPT Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital

What does it look like to run the same playbook across five venture funds? That is the bet Ashmeet Sidana has made at Engineering Capital. From Fund One to Fund Five, he has written the first check into founders solving problems with Technical insight. His portfolio includes Rubrik, now a public company, SignalFx which was acquired by Splunk for $1 billion, and CodeRabbit, last valued at $550 million. Ashmeet runs Engineering Capital as a solo GP and the fund has been oversubscribed since Fund One. Ashmeet says that the most common way technical founders fail is by “playing house.” Founders who build beautifully organized systems and clean processes, but don’t obsessively seek product market fit. His view is that founders should ruthlessly prioritize finding PMF above everything else. Ashmeet is an investor who has seen enough cycles to know what actually compounds, and is still early-stage enough to care about the details that most people have moved past. 00:00 – Trailer 01:15 – Where does Engineering Capital place its bets? 10:07 – How the VC landscape has evolved 11:20 – Are technical founders the norm in AI? 16:23 – Why the name Engineering Capital? 16:50 – What every VC looks for in a founder 21:34 – Why Founders Choose Your Term Sheet 26:26 – Rule of 1-2 in-person meetings daily with founders 31:42 – Does AI give younger founders an edge? 32:59 – Founders must ruthlessly prioritize 35:58 – The trap of “playing house” 37:40 – PMF can change overnight, Ex: Facebook 40:13 – 1 in 10 companies fail due to lack of PMF 43:17 – The most valuable skill a founder can have 44:19 – Why have a Chief Engineer at a VC firm? 45:44 – The job of every CEO is to learn 46:09 – Solo founders are much riskier 48:15 – An accidental entry into VC 49:52 – Solo GP: risks and rewards 53:34 – $250M across funds 54:43 – Why solo GPs work better in the US 58:25 – Where Ashmeet’s portfolio companies are located 01:00:57 – Be very careful of vanity metrics 01:02:15 – Vibe coding will change the face of software 01:03:36 – Don’t chase trends in how companies are built 01:05:58 – $100M ARR is the outcome of a strong package 01:06:35 – How affordable is Bay Area for young founders? 01:11:32 – AlexNet, not ChatGPT, was the real AI inflection point 01:12:57 – US Public Companies Are Down 50% in 40 years ------------- 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.

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Investor who hasn't Changed His Thesis in 5 Funds & Saw the AI Wave Before ChatGPT Ashmeet Sidana, Engineering Capital is an episode from 100x Entrepreneur by Siddhartha Ahluwalia.

This episode is 82:51 long.

This episode was published on Mar 26, 2026.

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