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