SS New Delhi, India
shikharsahdev@gmail.com
01

Goldcast

Founding Engineer & Product-Focused Engineer

Employee number two at a pre-product startup. I built the events platform from nothing, it became the company’s primary revenue engine at $20M ARR, and in December 2025 Goldcast was acquired by Cvent.

Period
Chapter
Zero to acquisition
Outcome
Goldcast was acquired by Cvent in December 2025
Focus
Founding Engineer
The Goldcast events platform, showing a live multi-speaker stage with chat and agenda panels
Goldcast’s events platform — live stage, chat, agenda and breakouts running on WebRTC.
Acquired
by Cvent, Dec 2025

the platform I built from zero became the reason for the deal

$20M
ARR from zero

the company’s primary revenue engine

2nd
Employee

joined pre-product — there was no product to work on yet

Overview

I joined Goldcast as the second employee, before there was a product. I designed and built the entire events platform — from UX through to implementation — and it became the company’s primary revenue engine, carrying it from zero to $20M ARR.

In December 2025 Goldcast was acquired by Cvent, the event-management company backed by Blackstone that serves around 30,000 customers and most of the Fortune 100. The platform I built from nothing is what that deal was for. Along the way Goldcast was named to Deloitte’s 2025 Technology Fast 500, and the product ran events for teams at OpenAI, Canva, Mailchimp, Box, Intercom, LG and Zuora.

The core of the work was real-time: architecting audio/video systems on WebRTC that hold up for thousands of concurrent attendees, including inside locked-down enterprise networks. Alongside that I designed a fully customizable theming architecture no competitor offered, letting organizers match their own brand end to end.

Over the past two years I moved into a broader leadership role — guiding multiple teams, mentoring engineers, and shaping architecture and product strategy across business lines.

What I built

  1. Real-time AV infrastructure

    Architected WebRTC-based audio and video supporting thousands of concurrent attendees, with reliable streaming inside enterprise networks.

  2. Theming architecture

    A frontend system allowing complete event-brand customization without a performance cost — a capability no competitor offered.

  3. Hybrid events

    Infrastructure supporting virtual and in-person attendees in the same event, interacting seamlessly.

  4. Digital check-in

    Authenticator- and code-based check-in systems for on-site attendees.

  5. AI initiatives

    A transcript-aware AI Video Editor and a Generative Page Builder Agent.

  6. Recording Studio

    Extended the platform beyond live events into asynchronous video creation.

Hard problems

  1. Enterprise networks block AV

    Solved streaming inside restrictive corporate firewalls using the Agora SDK plus cloud proxy solutions.

  2. Customization vs. performance

    Built a theming system permitting complete UI customization while keeping render performance intact.

  3. Two audiences, one event

    Architected hybrid infrastructure so virtual and physical attendees share a single coherent experience.

  4. Editing video automatically

    Developed an AI pipeline that analyses transcripts and makes automated editing decisions.

Takeaway

How to take a product from an empty repository to an acquisition — building the thing, scaling it to $20M ARR, and leading the teams that carried it there.

What I worked with

  • React
  • WebRTC
  • Agora SDK
  • Node.js
  • Real-time systems
  • Frontend architecture
  • AI/LLM tooling