From PhD to CEO: Sahil Agarwal of Enkrypt AI Shares Essential Lessons for Aspiring Founders

I typically interview founders who are looking back after raising a Series A, but I invited Enkrypt AI co-founder Sahil Agarwal on Fund/Build/Scale because his journey spans several compelling topics.

As an immigrant to the U.S. and an academic turned CEO, Sahil transitioned from pursuing a PhD to leading an enterprise security startup with an international team. A skilled technologist, he’s also a strong advocate for the power of storytelling and confidence when attracting investors.

“ Don't pitch a technology, pitch a story,” he said. “That story would be exciting: what are the problems that you're solving and how are you different?”

Sahil and co-founder Prashanth Harshangi first met during their PhD program at Yale. Years later, when they were building models for large enterprises at separate companies, they decided to team up to start a company that could address AI’s bias and security issues.

Their mission is increasingly relevant in today’s AI landscape. We’ve already seen bad actors manipulate AI chatbots for their own purposes, but an innocent prompt can also cause a model to misbehave, like the time an Air Canada’ AI agent offered a non-existent bereavement discount to a grieving customer.

“We saw this opportunity that there's a problem that needs to be solved,” said Sahil. “We're solving it at a small scale. How about we solve it for everyone?”

Earlier this year, Enkrypt AI raised a $2.35 million round. I asked Sahil about their ongoing customer discovery process, managing and scaling an international team, the challenges of managing co-pilot and proof-of-concept programs, and the kind of CEO he aspires to be after spending much of his career in academia.

“I see leadership as not the top of the pyramid, but the bottom of the pyramid or the inverted pyramid, where it's not that everyone's responsible and accountable to you — you're accountable to everyone else in your company.”

“If they are risking their careers to trust me, that's a huge responsibility on my shoulders,” said Sahil. “That's something that I'm trying to inculcate in the team as well.”

(1:46) Sahil describes Enkrypt AI use cases that “ensure equitable and safe use of AI for everyone.”

(3:36) How a background in applied mathematics led to a career in enterprise security.

(6:45) “You work until two in the morning whether that's PhD or a startup, and you wake up and you start again.”

(8:34) “It took us some time talking to prospects and talking to people in the space to really hone in on the problem.”

(11:42) Sahil’s path to obtaining the green card that would let him launch his own company.

(15:31) “There has to be some sort of confidence that we have to project in front of investors and in front of enterprises or prospects.”

(17:19) “You're accountable to everyone else in your company. That's my principle of leadership.”

(20:26) How Sahil and co-founder Prashanth Harshangi approach work-life balance.

(24:27) Setting expectations with investors and leading Enkrypt AI’s GTM strategy.

(29:18) His advice for anyone pitching a seed-stage AI startup: “don't pitch a technology, pitch a story.”

(31:17) The one question Sahil would ask an early-stage CEO if he were interviewing for a job.

Thanks for listening!

– Walter.