How a podcast with 100,000 YouTube views gave Aashna Doshi confidence to quit Google

Aashna Doshi, worked as an engineer at Google but the 23-year-old walked away from one of the most coveted paychecks in Silicon Valley. Her decision to leave the Search giant wasn’t spurred by corporate dissatisfaction instead she was fascinated by the growth of a creative side project that transformed her from a corporate engineer into an ambitious AI startup founder.According to a report by Business Insider, in February 2024, amid a brutal tech job market, Google offered her a full-time engineering position. However, the job was located in California and Doshi wanted to live and work in New York City.“I took a big risk to get my Google job. Now I'm taking another one by leaving it,” Doshi told Business Insider. The gamble paid off: two months later, Google offered her a software engineering role based directly out of Manhattan.The side project that changed things for young engineerWhile Doshi enjoyed the day-to-day learning and the brilliant minds at Google, she found herself craving a creative, people-centric outlet outside of writing technical code at a desk. In early 2025, she teamed up with a fellow Big Tech software engineer to launch the “0 to 1” podcast. The show focused on interviewing tech founders, engineers, creators and executives about their personal trajectories.“The name for the show, in addition to being a nod to our backgrounds in software engineering, came from the idea that there’s so much value between zero (where someone started) and one (who they are today),” Doshi explained.What started as a networking experiment fueled by cold direct messages quickly took off. Within its first year, the podcast surged past 100,000 views on YouTube. The side project became a bridge to the upper echelons of tech, allowing the young duo to easily secure interviews with high-level executives from legacy giants like Amazon and Microsoft.Doshi’s leap into Agentic AIThe distribution power and audience of the podcast shifted Doshi’s career trajectory. In May, Doshi officially resigned from Google to go all-in on her new AI startup, Bounty, which she co-founded alongside her podcast partner.Bounty is positioned as an outcome-based AI marketplace. Instead of paying flat subscription fees, businesses can use the platform to deploy AI agents to handle specialised corporate operations. The most important thing is that companies utilising Bounty only pay when the software delivers verified, real-world results.Leaving Google meant sacrificing financial security, Doshi said.“Leaving Google was a risk, but I've always believed that if you feel a strong enough pull toward something, you have to be willing to walk away from good in pursuit of something that could be great," Doshi said, adding, “Financial security is comfortable, but it can also be a trap. The scarier version of this decision wasn't leaving Google. It was staying and always wondering what could have been.”Bounty is still in its pre-revenue, pre-launch phase, Doshi has traded a premium tech salary for a modest founder’s stipend. The podcast, while growing, does not currently generate direct income, though the team is actively pursuing corporate sponsorships.Get the latest technology news and updates. Download the TOI App.