Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)

Описание: Anil Varanasi is the co-founder and CEO of Meter, which provides full-stack networking infrastructure as a service for businesses. Since founding Meter with his brother Sunil in 2015, Anil has been playing a distinctly long game in one of the most entrenched markets in technology, betting on vertical integration, business model innovation, and a multi-decade time horizon. In this conversation, he unpacks Meter’s origin story, from four-plus years of heads-down R&D, and shares how his unconventional approach to planning, management, and pace keeps him excited to run the company for decades.

In today’s episode, we discuss:
• Why Anil thinks in 25-year horizons
• How operating in a monopolistic market shaped Meter’s approach
• Why Meter scrapped a year of OS work during the R&D phase
• How Meter is rethinking networking’s business model
• Surviving COVID, Apple’s M1 transition, and “a thousand bad days”
• Anil’s contrarian views on planning, OKRs, and management
• How founders can build companies they’ll want to run for decades

Where to find Anil:
• LinkedIn:   / anilcv  
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/acv

Where to find Brett:
• LinkedIn:   / brett-berson-9986094  
• Twitter/X:   / brettberson  

Where to find First Round Capital:
• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter/X:   / firstround  
• YouTube:    / @firstroundcapital  
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

References:
• ADT: https://www.adt.com
• Alex Honnold: https://www.alexhonnold.com
• Alex Tabarrok: https://x.com/ATabarrok
• alarm.com: https://www.alarm.com
• Apple: https://www.apple.com
• Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com
• Bryan Caplan: http://www.bcaplan.com/
• Cisco: https://www.cisco.com
• Coca-Cola: https://www.coca-colacompany.com
• George Mason University (GMU): https://www.gmu.edu
• Intel: https://www.intel.com
• Julia Galef: https://x.com/juliagalef
• Martin Casado:   / martincasado  
• Meraki: https://meraki.cisco.com
• Meter: https://www.meter.com
• Michela Giorcelli: https://x.com/M_Giorcelli
• Nicholas Bloom:   / nick-bloom-stanford  
• Raffaella Sadun:   / raffaella-sadun-3a182225  
• Sanjit Biswas:   / sanjitbiswas  
• Sunil Varanasi:   / sunil-varanasi-662a01253  
• Tyler Cowen:   / tyler-cowen-166718  
• Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv


Timestamps:
(01:27) Meter’s unusual timeframes
(04:06) “We don’t do OKRs”
(06:32) How to plan without planning
(08:31) Track your unhappy customers
(11:43) How Meter’s journey began
(15:02) Dissecting the 2010s SaaS boom
(17:06) The networking industry trap
(21:44) Meter’s first roadblock
(22:07) Why Shenzhen accelerated Meter’s progress
(26:29) The process to get a sales-ready product
(31:02) Why you should own the full stack
(32:45) The surprising thing you should innovate
(35:03) Avoiding the one-trick pony trap
(37:39) The secret to finding an excellent market
(43:48) How COVID’s constraints propelled growth
(48:25) Why founders need to know their customers
(49:34) Why Meter didn’t sell via traditional channels
(51:44) You need “seller-market fit”
(54:51) The danger of meta-work
(56:25) Decoupling management from authority
(1:02:17) When the person is the problem
(1:05:05) The inherent value of going slowly
(1:09:41) Running a company for as long as possible