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Mohammad Eshan is the CEO and Co-Founder of GhostEye (YC S25), an AI-powered security awareness platform that uses cognitive security principles to simulate realistic social engineering attacks and strengthen human defenses. He holds a Bachelor's and Master's in Cybersecurity from RIT and has previously served on BlackRock's Red Team and conducted offensive operations at MITRE. Eshan has been an active member of NYC Founders Club since 2025.

“Yeah. I’m Eshan, and my company does a lot of things... starting with protecting your brain. I don't know how to put this, but, you know, we're operating in the space of cognitive security, and it's very different from what people are used to. So, you know, you're spending a good chunk of your time on social media. You're getting your news from social media. You know, your dopamine receptors are getting fried, and you are not able to pay much attention to anything anybody is saying. So, you know, you kind of become a zombie with your thoughts, and, you know, if somebody says, ‘Hey, let's go do this,’ you're gonna mindlessly say, ‘Yes, let's do it.’”

“Yeah, man, I'll tell you this story. So we had built very early stages of GhostEye back in YC, and we were about to go on our fundraise, and I get on this call with a CISO. And the CISO's like: ‘Hey, man, I wouldn't pitch it as this. I'd pitch it as that.’ And, you know, I was very stressed out, and I was like, he knows what he's talking about. He's in the job. He's the buyer. And, he didn't buy it, and I pitched... So I had product A built out. We had traction on product A, but I was pitching product B.

And product B did not line up with anything we were doing, like, nothing made sense. So, I mean, we walked out of the gate with, like, zero dollars, basically.

And respectfully so, honestly. Like, if it looks like I don't have a grasp on it, I probably didn't, and the biggest lesson I took out of that was just genuinely, like, unless they're paying for it, don't listen to them.

It's just the mentality you have to have.

And I guess I got that lesson the really hard way.”

“So I am a very firm believer of brain points and, you know, setting yourself up for the next day, the day before.

And the entire thing goes into just, like... I have a whiteboard that I line up in front of my desk, and I write down everything I need to do.

As a CEO, you have so many things to do. What do you have to do on development? What do you have to do on outreach? What do you have to do with your team? What does your team need? Where do you unblock your entire company? ‘Cause for me, leadership is making sure everybody is able to sit down and do their jobs without blocks.

So, you know, what I wanna do is just, I wanna sit down with you. I wanna figure out what's blocking you, and I wanna figure out how to unblock that and how I can help do that.

Because I think that at the end of the day, that's my job.”

Read our full interview with Eshan here.

Can’t believe it’s been almost a month since we brought 175+ founders up to Plattekill Mountain in the Catskills for NY(SKI) Vol. 2. Check out our NY(SKI) recap video here!

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