This week, I managed to grab some time in the (very busy!) schedule ofNeha Narkhede. Neha is an Indian American technology entrepreneur who is the founder & CEO of Oscilar, co-founder and former CTO, and current board member of Confluent (CFLT NASDAQ).

As a software engineer atLinkedIn, she helped develop the open-source messaging systemApache Kafka, now used by more than 80% of the Fortune 500. In 2014, she co-foundedConfluent, which helps organizations process large amounts of data to create transformative real-time products and was listed on the NASDAQ in 2021.

Neha has been listed as one of America’s Top Self-Made Women by Forbes, Forbes’s Top 50 Women In Tech, MIT Tech Review’s Innovators under 35, and Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People. Neha has a Master in Computer Science degree from Georgia Tech.

We talked about everything from the founders' journey to the rise of AI to building a multinational financial risk org atOscilar.