Software engineer leaves Google at 23 to build an AI startup
Quitting a job at Google to bet on a startup might sound crazy to most people.
But that is exactly what Aashna Doshi, 23, decided to do.
A former software engineer at the tech giant in New York, she gave up an enviable salary and all the stability that kind of role offers to dive headfirst into the world of artificial intelligence.
And the path to that decision went through a pretty unexpected place: a podcast.
What started as a side project to escape the technical grind became the bridge between the corporate world and entrepreneurship.
Aashna’s story is a mix of courage, timing, and a healthy dose of restlessness — the kind of combination that usually shows up right before a major turning point. 🚀
How it all started: the offer and the risky bet
Even before leaving Google, Aashna had already shown she knew how to handle risk. Around February 2024, months before graduating from Georgia Tech, she received a full-time job offer from the company. The catch was that the position was based in California, and she wanted to work in New York.
In a tech job market that was already getting tougher for many of her college peers, turning down any opportunity was a bold move. Still, she decided to bet on herself and declined the offer. And the bet paid off. Two months later, she accepted a software engineering position at Google, this time based in New York, exactly where she wanted to be.
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What she did not realize was that her next bet would be even bigger. A side project that was born around the same time would eventually push her out of Google for good.
From Google to the real world of AI
Working at Google is the dream for a lot of people in tech. The pay is competitive, the benefits are generous, the prestige of having that name on your resume is undeniable, and the opportunities for internal growth are real. For most software engineering professionals, landing a spot there would already be the final destination of the journey. But for Aashna, that environment, despite all its shine, started feeling too small for the questions she was beginning to ask about the future of technology and the role she wanted to play in it.
She herself admits she really enjoyed the experience. She was learning every day, meeting brilliant people from all kinds of backgrounds and contexts. But the work of a software engineer is heavily technical, and Aashna missed something more interactive and creative — something that went beyond sitting in front of a screen writing code.
It was during that period of restlessness that she started recording her podcast. The project was born as an outlet, a way to talk with people who were building new things and exploring ideas outside the boundaries of a big corporation. But what she did not expect was that those conversations would completely change the way she saw her own career. With every episode recorded, with every founder or researcher she interviewed, it became harder to ignore the pull of building something from scratch — especially at a time when artificial intelligence was transforming everything around her.
The timing also worked in her favor. The AI startup ecosystem was in full swing, with new projects popping up every week and investors willing to back ideas that, not long ago, would have sounded like science fiction. Aashna had the technical knowledge, she had the network of contacts that the podcast helped her build, and above all, she had the clarity that this was the right time to act. Waiting another year, or two more, could mean missing the window she saw opening right in front of her. 💡
The birth of the 0 to 1 podcast
In early 2025, while still employed at Google, Aashna launched a podcast called 0 to 1 alongside a co-host who was also a software engineer at a major tech company. The name was not chosen by accident. Beyond being a nod to the world of programming, it represented the idea that there is a lot of value between zero — where someone started — and one — who that person is today.
The concept was simple and powerful: interview founders, engineers, executives, and creators about their journeys. The duo believed the market paid too much attention to where people ended up and not nearly enough to the path they took to get there. The podcast aimed to fill exactly that gap.
The first guests came through cold DMs on social media, personal networks, and people in their circles who were willing to participate. Nothing too fancy at first, but the content resonated quickly with the audience.
The podcast as a strategic tool
It is easy to underestimate the power of a podcast as a networking and learning tool, but what Aashna did was use the format in an extremely smart way. By interviewing professionals from the artificial intelligence and software engineering space, she was not just creating content for an audience. She was educating herself in real time about the challenges and opportunities in the market, absorbing perspectives that rarely reach someone inside a big company like Google. Each conversation was, in practice, a private lesson from someone who had already made the leap she was considering.
The results showed up faster than expected. In its first year, the podcast surpassed 100,000 views on YouTube. As it grew, it became easier to reach bigger names, and the duo managed to bring leaders from companies like Amazon and Microsoft onto the show. Without the podcast, as she herself admitted, it would have been nearly impossible to imagine how they could have connected with someone in such a senior role at a company of that size.
Beyond the learning, the podcast built something even more valuable: credibility. When you become recognized as someone who asks good questions and brings relevant content to a specific community, doors start opening in ways no resume can replicate. Aashna was building, episode by episode, a reputation in the AI startup ecosystem well before she founded her own company. When the time came to present her project to potential partners or investors, she was not a stranger. She was someone who was already part of that conversation.
This strategic move, even if it was not planned that way from the start, reveals something important about how careers in tech are changing. The line between creating content, networking, and building a business is getting thinner and thinner, especially for those at the center of the transformations driven by artificial intelligence. The side project became the main project, and the podcast audience became, in part, the startup’s first community. 🎙️
The turning point: building instead of optimizing
There is a fundamental difference between working on a product that already exists and building something from scratch, and anyone who has been on both sides knows that difference goes far beyond day-to-day responsibilities. At Google, even with all the technical complexity involved in software engineering work, you are essentially contributing to an already established system with defined processes, clear goals, and a structure that absorbs most of the uncertainty. At a startup, especially one focused on artificial intelligence, you are dealing with uncertainty full-time — and that is exactly the part that started attracting Aashna.
In her own words, at a big tech company you are one piece of a very large machine. What she wanted was the ability to make decisions, move fast, and see the direct results of her work. On top of that, the AI tools available to builders today are unlike anything that existed before. She had a strong conviction around a specific idea and did not want to look back and regret not trying while the moment was so favorable.
The decision to leave was not impulsive. Aashna spent months evaluating the market, talking with founders through the podcast, and figuring out where there was a real problem she was equipped to solve with her technical background. The software engineering she practiced at Google was not thrown away — on the contrary, it became the technical foundation on which the new company was built. What changed was the context: instead of applying that knowledge to improve an existing product, she started using it to create something that did not exist yet — a challenge of a completely different order of magnitude.
Bounty: the AI startup born from this journey
In May 2025, Aashna left Google to fully dedicate herself to building Bounty, the artificial intelligence startup she co-founded with the same partner from the podcast. The company’s pitch is to function as an outcomes-based marketplace where businesses can post specific tasks — like sourcing candidates for open roles, running outreach campaigns, or generating leads — and pay only for verified results.
It is a model that fits well in the current market, where companies of all sizes are chasing efficiency and only want to pay for what actually works. AI serves as the engine behind the operation, automating processes and ensuring the delivered results are measurable.
For Aashna, having the podcast was essential for gaining the confidence she needed to make this leap. She sees the current landscape as a world where media and distribution are everything for a startup. And having a podcast with an audience already made up of founders and operators — exactly the people the product is being built for — is the perfect distribution channel for what she is creating. 🎯
The financial weight of leaving Google
As much as leaving Google made sense from a personal and business standpoint, giving up the salary was not an easy decision. Bounty is still in its pre-launch phase and is not generating revenue. Aashna is receiving a founder salary, but it is a fraction of what she was earning at the tech giant. The podcast, for its part, is also not generating income yet, although the expectation is that will change soon with sponsorships.
Even so, she stands by her decision. For her, financial security is comfortable but can also be a trap. When you feel a strong enough pull toward something, you have to be willing to leave good behind in the pursuit of what could be extraordinary.
And she puts it in a way that really makes you think: the scariest version of this decision was not leaving Google. It was staying and spending the rest of her life wondering what could have been.
A snapshot of what is happening in the tech industry
What makes Aashna’s trajectory interesting is not just the courage to leave a safe job, but the way she prepared for the transition without it ever looking like preparation. The podcast was the lab where she tested ideas, validated hypotheses, and built the confidence she needed to take the step. Today, with her artificial intelligence startup up and running, she represents a profile that is becoming increasingly common in the tech ecosystem: the engineer who also knows how to communicate, connect, and build a business. And that combination, in the current AI landscape, is worth a lot. ✨
Aashna Doshi’s story is a reflection of a larger movement happening within the tech industry. Highly skilled professionals with experience at companies like Google are increasingly willing to trade corporate security for the chance to build something meaningful in the world of artificial intelligence. The tools available today are more accessible and powerful than ever, which lowers the barrier to entry for anyone with technical know-how and a solid idea.
And more often than not, what sparks that change is not a polished business plan but a series of honest conversations — like the ones that happen on a good podcast. The combination of technical skill, visibility, and the courage to act at the right moment seems to be the recipe defining the next generation of founders in the world of artificial intelligence.
