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:

Where to find Anil:

Where to find Brett:

Where to find First Round Capital:

References:

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