Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
In Depth
Incumbents Make Early Ramp Hard but Clear Later
Anil observes oligopolies block early entrants but crossing the initial chasm yields much less competition.
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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anilcv/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/acv
Where to find Brett:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@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
- Andreessen Horowitz (a16z): https://a16z.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: https://www.linkedin.com/in/martincasado/
- Meraki: https://meraki.cisco.com
- Meter: https://www.meter.com
- Michela Giorcelli: https://x.com/M_Giorcelli
- Nicholas Bloom: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-bloom-stanford/
- Raffaella Sadun: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raffaella-sadun-3a182225/
- Sanjit Biswas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjitbiswas/
- Sunil Varanasi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunil-varanasi-662a01253/
- Tyler Cowen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/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
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