Decoupling Management from Authority

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