IITian Who Sold His Company For Rs 2,890 Crore Shares Success Mantra

An IIT Kanpur and Harvard Business School alumnus, who sold his company for $300 million (approximately Rs 2,890 crore), has caught social media's attention after sharing the mantra behind his success. In a short interview with content creator Viraj Ala, Palash Soni, the India-born co-founder of B2B video platform Goldcast, shared the lesson he believes most people overlook when trying to build something from scratch.

Soni, whose company was acquired by Blackstone-backed Cvent in December 2025, previously spent four years at InMobi in Bengaluru.

Quizzed about the one thing that schools never teach the students, Soni said, "It's actually naivety," while sharing an anecdote from his Counter-Strike playing days.

"I used to play Counter-Strike in college, and I was a noob. I would run out in the open field and get headshotted," he said, adding: "The focus was our strength. We didn't have the most money, so everything was kind of against us. It forced focus, and that focus was a blessing in disguise."

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Asked what the layoffs taught him about human nature, Soni stated that he should have done it sooner.

"I believe in being very approachable. Even till the end, when we had 150 people, I think I'd spoken with everyone one-on-one multiple times," he said.

As for the mindset that helped him take his company and turn it into a $300 million venture, he said: "Just the willingness to take a bet on ourselves. We saw something in the market that no one else saw. I always had a very hard time raising money for Goldcast, considering the kind of outcome we had. We believed in something that was very hard for outsiders to see."