In Depth Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
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Dec 10, 2025 
Anil Varanasi, Co-founder and CEO of Meter, offers a fascinating look at building a sustainable networking infrastructure company. He shares his unconventional approach of thinking in 25-year horizons and discusses the lessons learned from scrapping a year of R&D due to open-source alternatives. Anil highlights the importance of business model innovation, emphasizes avoiding excessive planning methods like OKRs, and reveals how surviving challenges like Apple's M1 transition shaped their strategy. His passion for thoughtful, long-term growth inspires founders to consider their company's endurance.
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Long Horizons With Daily Urgency
- Anil runs Meter with a 25-year horizon while obsessing over the next clear step each day.
- He calls this a barbell approach: long-term ambition plus relentless short-term execution.
Plan By The Next Clear Step
- Don't rely on formal annual planning or OKRs if they slow you down; instead ask, "What's the clear next step?".
- Use daily fog-of-war clearing to convert long-term goals into immediate, high-impact work.
Track Unhappy Customers Religiously
- Track unhappy customers as a key objective metric and aim to reduce that percentage weekly.
- Use hands-on product use and direct customer issue visibility to spot problems early.
