30% Of Network Engineers Are Retiring. What Happens Next? (Anil Varanasi, Co-Founder & CEO of Meter)

[00:00] If you have a manufacturing facility, you need internet, networking, Wi-Fi, cellular to do whatever you want to do in that manufacturing facility. Traditionally, you have to go figure out what hardware you're going to use, who's going to install it, who's going to maintain it, where's the capital going to come from. With Meter, all customers have to do is give us a bunch of addresses and floor plans, and somehow magically networks appear anywhere in the world. If you had unlimited resources and no operational constraints, what is an experiment you would like to run?

[00:30] 15 years of your life. I'm not sure if education works. Today, so much time, energy, and capital is going into augmenting software engineers. You and I could name hundreds of companies trying to do this. Yes. After software engineers, the second highest number of jobs in technology is network engineers. But something like 30% of all network engineers are retiring by the end of the decade without replacement. Yes. Networking is really important. Nobody else is studying this [01:00] Autonomous networks is like the only way to solve this. [01:03] Before Anil Varanasi built startups, he made films.

He and his brother Sunil had a crew, designed theater sets. [01:16] and built their own visual effects plugins. [01:19] Today, the two of them run Meter, a full stack networking company [01:23] that's raised more than $350 million to go head to head with giants like Cisco. [01:28] In time, Meter intends to build what Anil describes as [01:32] fully autonomous networks. [01:34] designed for the AI era. [01:36] In our conversation, [01:37] Anil and I discuss his unusual upbringing in Virginia, [01:40] Japanese vending machines, [01:42] and what he means when he says that hardware could feel like a cathedral.

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Another thing I love. To get started with Granola, head to ai slash mario. [03:42] And for new users, you can get three months free with the code Mario. So go to ai slash Mario and use code Mario for three months free. [03:54] Anil, you have one of my favorite personal websites that I've seen. [03:59] I think the signal to noise in that website is among the highest. You have only a few blog posts, but each of them is extremely interesting. And one of them in particular sort of centers on a topic that I'm.

[04:11] quite obsessed with ever since I discovered it. And I wondered how you sort of became obsessed with it, which is the sort of [04:17] concept of the burden of knowledge, this idea that [04:20] as generations go by [04:23] people are taking longer and longer to make their most significant achievements. When did you sort of stumble upon that, and why is it something that captured your interest? [04:30] I don't think I know the origin of when I discovered it. [04:34] But there's all these people that have done really good work on it.

I think Chad Jones and others. [04:39] But there's this guy named Mac Clancy, who's probably one of the best meta-science researchers out there. So he used to write independently, and [04:47] um [04:48] I think Matt's done some really great work. He has one of the most unique blogs. It's called New Things Under the Sun. [04:54] He works at OpenPhil now. And I think when I first discovered probably the burden of knowledge, probably decade, decade and a half ago at this point. [05:03] I ended up going to George Mason and studying econ there.

So you sort of, [05:07] are always in this web of what's happening and how to think about why the world hasn't gotten better and stagnation and all these things. And I think it's possible, actually, Cowan had it in his book. [05:20] on stagnation as well. Yes, very possible. I think it might be, at the very least, I think it was one of the indices or footnotes. [05:28] in there as well. But it's a very interesting problem, but I think also something like I've personally probably felt [05:35] as well. And then I had [05:39] Friends who were researchers, doctors, etc.

in those fields seemed to [05:43] that being a problem. But then in the last few years, I also see it being untangled in some [05:49] fields as well. So it's sort of an interesting [05:52] a challenge everywhere on burden of knowledge. I'm interested or I'm surprised that you feel like you felt it yourself because you started so early as an entrepreneur in many ways. Does it feel like you've been, I don't know, almost just in preparation mode for the real work to begin now? [06:07] I think we were talking about Kevin Kelly's work before.

You sort of always have this feeling that somehow you're late. And I think Kelly had this great essay saying you're not late. But anytime you sort of discover a field and you try to understand it from the ground up, you always have this tinge of, oh, I arrived at the same solution. Wish I was late. [06:27] So I think especially when you're younger, you're like, oh, man, I discovered this great thing. But it turns out, you know, somebody had already discovered it a decade ago or two decades ago. But I think particularly in computer science, probably the way I felt it is...

[06:40] especially in the early 2000s to early 2010s, it was a deluge of frameworks, [06:49] to different ways of thinking and all these web frameworks and everything that was getting released. And it's just constantly something or the other where if you understood computer science, you could sort of go far. And then I think I also felt it. [07:03] A lot in other areas I'm interested in, like film and research and meta research itself. And it's sort of like a Russian doll thing. [07:11] I think you sort of always feel this...

[07:15] thing of as time goes on there is way more to learn and then you know [07:21] possibly something to do, even if you listen to like Buffett and Munger saying it was like, you know, back in the day, it was like shooting fish in a barrel type thing. And I think that's burden of knowledge too. Yes. Yeah. Then Cowan had actually written this book. [07:39] really great essay that I don't know if traditionally people would call closer to burden of knowledge called The End of Asymmetric Information. I don't think I've read that.

It's really good. Really, really good essay. [07:52] about how most of, quote, alpha, no matter what field you were in, [07:59] was coming from the fact that you had asymmetric information compared to other people. Yes. [08:04] And sort of about a decade, decade and a half ago, the thesis is that there's this end of asymmetric information. I think that has to do something with burden of knowledge as well. So I think, you know, it's just a good topic that's interesting to think about. Yeah, definitely. [08:18] You know, one of the things that I think about with the burden of knowledge and the nature of progress is sort of the idea that, you know, when we talk about it, you know, sort of needing to load yourself up with all of this information and frameworks and all of this stuff to just be able to contribute in the way you want to.

[08:37] In some sense, I feel that a lot of people go through that process and almost become [08:43] denatured in some way or they lose the childishness and the naivety that actually allows you to have a breakthrough like you know you're mentioning film [08:51] I'm sure you have watched the many Orson Welles interviews where he talks about how [08:56] You can learn how to make a movie in a day and a half if you really focus on it. [09:00] And that sort of a child's mind is difficult to [09:06] to square entirely with like that, that need for such deep preparation.

When you, when you think about, you know, the work that you're doing and you seem to have an extremely long time horizon for what you want to do, how do you maintain like the sense of play or creativity or childishness, uh, when you're, when you're in the zone of innovation, because that feels like such a necessary ingredient. [09:26] I don't think our type of business has that problem at all. [09:31] I think if you look at Silicon Valley in the last 25 years, [09:35] Almost everybody was told building a SaaS company was a panacea.

[09:40] for a while. But most SaaS companies end up being about increasing retention and decreasing churn. And I think that's why you lose childlike wonder in life, when your whole life is sort of dissolved into those things. [09:54] But in a business like ours, there's [09:57] Hardware. [09:59] supply chain, firmware, operating systems, routing algorithms, distributed systems, APIs, applications, models, deploying hardware in the real world, the complexities of that to supporting, managing, scaling, all those things. [10:12] By the time you think you've gotten good at something, [10:15] Something else has changed in the world in another part of the stack, where you have no choice but to go try to learn.

And that's consistently been true the last decade of my life. [10:26] I'm sure a lot of people know [10:28] what Meter does and maybe even use Meter at their office. But for those that don't, you know, so that they can sort of frame those different pieces, how would you sort of succinctly summarize this business that you're building? [10:41] Sure. Meter builds networking, hardware, and software. Anytime you have something in a warehouse, manufacturing facility, office, school, data center... [10:51] That could be a robot, a tablet, a computer, an application. When you want to do something, those are packets that are moving back and forth.

[11:00] those packets are moved by networks. [11:03] And networks are powered by networking, hardware, and software. [11:07] And we build hardware and software for networking, and we're vertically integrated. [11:13] which is also new in what we do, which is not only do we build the hard-run software, [11:18] We'll go deploy it and maintain it. [11:20] And then we have an entirely new business model along with it as well. [11:23] So, [11:24] If you have a manufacturing facility, [11:27] You need... [11:28] Internet. [11:29] networking, Wi-Fi, cellular, [11:32] to do whatever you want to do in that manufacturing facility.

[11:35] Traditionally, [11:37] You have to go figure out what hardware you're going to use, who's going to install it, who's going to maintain it, where's the capital going to come from, to the tunes of hundreds of thousands, to millions, to tens of millions of dollars. [11:47] With meter, [11:49] All customers have to do is give us a bunch of addresses and floor plans. [11:53] and somehow magically networks appear anywhere in the world. [11:56] And so we build the hardware, write the software, deploy it and maintain it. [12:01] all entirely end to end.

[12:04] When I think of what you do, often I do think of it in the office environment, but it's interesting to me that you really describe more of the manufacturing aspect. [12:12] side of it has that become you know more of a focus or a bigger piece of how you think of it or is that always sort of you know maybe my conception of where the business sort of centers is is off [12:25] Yeah, you're off. I'm off. Okay, there we go. Easy. So manufacturing has always been really at the heart of it.

Everything from retail, healthcare, life sciences, technology. [12:35] warehouse manufacturing, [12:38] offices, schools are another big part of it too. [12:41] roughly you should think of us as like an index on the economy. Physical world grows in some way in the economy somewhere at any given time. Whenever that happens, we're there. [12:53] So for example, if you take times like COVID, offices went to zero, [12:58] But e-commerce went from 12% of all receipts to 24%. So it doubled. [13:04] And to be able to service that e-commerce, [13:06] You had massive growth in warehousing.

[13:10] So then our business was a lot of warehousing at that time. Offices are about 15% of... [13:16] physical spaces. Yep. So you should roughly have a mental model. That's what percentages of our business too. Mm-hmm. [13:22] Well, now I have my first mistake out of the way. So, you know, I can only, you know, I can't disappoint too much from here. I'd love to start with a little bit of your beginnings because, uh, from everything I read, you really had an unusual childhood in many respects. You sort of, [13:36] Moved from India to the States.

But it really goes deeper than that with just sort of the way that your parents raised you. Yeah. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about the unusual parts of your life. [13:48] of your origins. [13:49] That was such a revealing preference question because now I know what you read. [13:53] and who you talk to, to ask that question. [13:59] I love that your brain is running that algorithm. You're like, okay, now I know, I figured this guy out. I know what you read and who you talk to. But I think so much of life is sort of luck.

[14:12] There's this great interview that Altman did with Cowen about eight or nine years ago. [14:17] And Altman talks about how [14:19] if he could actually work on [14:22] helping everybody have loving, great parents, that would be the ultimate way to actually make things better in the world. So I think fundamentally for us is just, [14:32] You know, I've had a really lucky childhood where I've had [14:36] parents that never had a governor and what I should be doing [14:40] And I had a brother who's one of the smartest people in the world.

[14:43] that [14:44] is the same as me and most people have one brain and I get to have two. [14:50] So I can offload some compute tasks to his brain. Doesn't he try and offload to you, though? How does that? No, no, no. It doesn't work that way. My API is closed. [15:00] But yeah, we moved to the United States when I was 12. He was 14. [15:04] And, you know, especially in the early 2000s when we moved here, [15:08] It was such an amazing time in America, and I still think it is.

You know, as an immigrant, I think always you end up loving the country. You move to way more than the people that live here. And... [15:18] We did have this childhood where I don't, [15:22] remember times where I thought I couldn't try something. [15:27] I think that part is unusual. And sort of the phrase I think comes back to is like "free range kids." [15:33] where you can sort of run around, do your thing, and try to... [15:38] build the world that you want. And I think we sort of had that sort of childhood.

As I get older, [15:44] I realize how unique that is. [15:46] But I think when you're a kid, you're just like trying to live your life. What my question really reveals as a preference is that I've had my first kid in the past year and a half. How old? 16 months. Okay, I have a two-year-old. And you can't help but once that becomes part of your story, think about, okay, well, you know, what made this person this way, right? What were the things that contributed? And that level of freedom feels like a big one that comes up a lot, actually.

Do you think about that with your children? I have a tough time with this. [16:16] Because when you're an academic, you end up also like trying to read long children's studies about this stuff. Yes. And apart from, you know, sort of... [16:25] the really bad cases of like abuse and malnourishment, other stuff, if you remove those things on the margins, net, net parenting doesn't matter. Yeah, I know. This is the only sort of thing that seems to matter a tiny bit is having dinner at the same time or something. It's something incredibly trivial, right?

Other than that, parenting really doesn't matter that much. Yeah. So I think even as I think about the childhood I had, [16:48] I don't think about it influencing directly what I do. I think about it influencing the happiness I had in life. [16:56] to then having the freedom to do it. So it's more, a little bit more fundamental than having a direct impact. I don't think of it as causal. [17:03] But I think it's like an adjacent thing that's there. [17:06] that helped you be happier, be a certain way to then grow up a certain way.

So even with this stuff, even as a parent now, [17:14] I'm still not convinced parenting matters. It's also a, it's both a terrifying and sort of [17:21] somewhat convenient belief for parents, right? It frees you a bit, but also you think, oh gosh, we're like, well, what am I doing here? Could I really left myself off the hook that much? I think the genetic choices have already been made a long time ago. Yes. That's the scary part. Yes. Did you feel like a real sense of culture shock moving from India to North Virginia?

Those are very different places. [17:40] Possibly. [17:42] You know, when I think of these types of questions, it's always hard not to ascribe [17:47] how your mind is today, to in reality, to how your mind was. [17:51] Long time ago. And especially it's so hard to understand a child's mind, even if the child was you. Mm-hmm. Long time ago. Yes. So anything I answer with this, I probably should preface by saying is like, I'm probably making it up. Mm-hmm. I think maybe for like a month. Yeah. Yeah. [18:05] Kids can adapt, right?

I think kids are kids. Yeah. I think kids anywhere want to do as little schoolwork as possible. [18:14] and want to hang out with their friends as much as possible. Yes. And I think that's invariably true both in India and United States. Yes, there you go. These are the universal constants. Your father was a very successful businessman, right? [18:25] Was that what brought the family to the US? Yeah. Did you have a lot of conversations about business around the table and sort of see how, you know, what his work was like and the challenges he was grappling with?

100%. That part, I'm still curious about learning. [18:41] Because I think if your parents were astronauts... [18:44] you probably think that's a normal job. Yes. [18:47] Um, and like, you know, sort of just totally just sort of go. So I think that part has had a heavy influence for us. [18:53] And I think understanding what a business is, understanding the fact that people start businesses, [18:59] you know, you, [19:00] If you didn't grow up in that way, I've heard a lot of my friends describe it, [19:04] In a way that it's other people that start businesses, not you, or other people sort of go do what you want.

But I think whatever your parents end up doing seems so blasé to you because all parents are boring. Yes. By definition. So if a parent does it, it must be easy. Yeah, that's right. Anyone can do this. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know. [19:25] Of course, dad, if you can do it. This guy, yeah. So I think that part actually plays a huge role. That's where I think if any parenting matters, it's just like, what do your kids actually watch you do? [19:37] sort of, you know, do as I say, not do as I do sort of thing, but the opposite of that.

So I think that part's had a huge influence on us. A business or understanding a business, our business gets started, how it scales and what happens to the different tumultuous points of it. [19:53] Um, [19:54] That part's never... [19:56] felt alien to us. Yes. Nor has it ever felt like stress or scary. Mm-hmm. [20:01] And I think that's a big gift in life. [20:04] Where did the love of films come from? Clearly, that's a huge part of Indian culture in a sort of... I think that's a big part of it.

Yeah, unique way. Yeah. Yeah, something more too, I imagine. Again, from my parents. My father used to help make some film in small ways and things like that. [20:20] Where I grew up, [20:22] especially in the 90s. [20:24] It had the highest number of [20:27] movie theaters per capita in the world. In Hyderabad? [20:30] Yeah, in South India. Wow, no way. Yeah. [20:33] No kidding. [20:34] So it's like this, it's hard to explain. I was thinking not in North Virginia. No, no, no, no. It's this fabric of... [20:41] of culture.

Fascinating. And, you know, if you think about American politics where Reagan and Schwarzenegger are sort of anomalies... [20:50] Throughout the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, that was the norm. [20:55] Where you have this sort of pipeline of Bollywood to politics? Yeah, film to politics throughout India. Wow. Especially South India. No kidding. So the cultural influence is fairly high. And there were many filmmakers too... [21:11] that I think were, at that time, some of the best in the world. [21:14] how to think about color, how to think about blocking, how to think about staging things, how to think about sound, music, and how you mix that in.

[21:23] I think it had like a very, very heavy influence on us. This is... [21:28] Purely because I really wanted to ask about it. What is sort of the films that you you come back to most often the ones that you know I wouldn't want to say you have to pick a favorite but the ones that you yeah maybe have a special place in your heart. [21:42] There's this cinematographer named PC Sriram. You know, I probably watched his work numerous times, maybe dozens, some of them. [21:52] I still don't understand how he does what he does.

[21:54] Why? That's so interesting. Because you believe, I know that you believe that anything can be solved, right? That's a sort of fundamental philosophy. His mind is... [22:04] It's incredible. There's a video I'll send you. You can put it in the show notes or something. Yeah. On Instagram. [22:10] how he took [22:12] uh characters and color and made it part of how film happens to how the wind blows to how the clothes blow away when a character is trying to get away from another character [22:25] Everything was so meticulous down to how the colors pop on the screen, what type of film was used.

Wow. I think his stuff, uh, really good. Obviously like. [22:35] Sajid Yatray, who made the Apu series and others. I think it's remarkable. Mani Ratnam made... [22:42] couple of movies, one about politics, and one sort of his own love letter to The Godfather, which in some areas is better than The Godfather, called Naika. And so a bunch of these movies had a heavy influence on us. Wow, how interesting. You seem to spend a good amount of your childhood, teen years making productions of your own. And when I think about that, I think of the home films I did.

But you seem to have done it with a level of seriousness and intensity that seems at a very [23:12] What were you trying to create or what were you creating? I think the problem with Sunil, my brother and I, is, and my parents would describe it this way, [23:22] is somehow anything we try [23:26] we just assume the only way to do it is [23:31] quote, whatever is the best version of that. [23:35] That's a good disease, yeah. So I think like we were... [23:38] trying to really like compete with anyone.

Let's make the best film in the world. Yeah. I think we're pretty unreasonable about that. I love that. I don't think we succeeded at all, to be clear. [23:49] all the stuff we made [23:51] I hope nobody except me and him sees ever. Have you rewatched it anytime recently? Accidentally. Accidentally? [23:59] When going through some old hard drive or some, you know, sort of Glacier S3 thing you have and you're sifting through files to try to find something. Yes. And then it's like one of those things where you try not to remember that you ever made it or were part of.

Yeah, I don't need to see this. Yeah. Why did you not end up becoming a director, producer, a filmmaker in some capacity, given the clear love you have for it? [24:24] It was something we'd consider seriously. Yeah. Very, very seriously. [24:28] We sort of came to this conclusion that the... [24:31] the stories we wanted to tell, [24:34] We could do it [24:36] when we were 80 or 92, because storytelling is storytelling, and maybe the [24:41] you know, the setting would change, [24:44] or the environment would change, or the variables would change, but the story itself, [24:49] Sort of if you believe the trope of there's like five to nine stories you can tell in the world.

We didn't think that would change at all. [24:56] sort of forever. But what we wanted to do in technology, [25:00] felt like it had a half-life. [25:02] Um, [25:03] that [25:04] If we didn't do what we're doing with meter, [25:07] then. [25:08] We didn't think it was possible to do it 20 years from then, 30 years from then. [25:12] So it was this real bargain of, you know, which path do you go on? [25:16] Don't you think that [25:17] to do the story that you would want to do at the level you would want to do it, you would have to devote.

[25:23] all of that time to it? Possibly. [25:26] Possibly. [25:29] But then you also look at great films, even the greatest films can be made in a couple years. [25:35] But a great company takes a couple of decades. Yes, that's true. So maybe it'll happen... Maybe. Maybe it'll happen in 20 years or something. Yeah. I love that idea. Do you notice like... [25:47] parallels or symmetries between the two practices or am I looking for a pattern when one doesn't exist necessarily some good books about this um about [25:56] So much of building a company is a lot like assembling a great, you know, sort of a great crew for a film where, you know, you want to figure out who's the editor.

You want to figure out what's the story and, you know, who's the director and the producer and... [26:14] How do you actually bring culture together to go accomplish something? I do think there's some parallels. [26:19] But maybe another thing that I... [26:21] changed my mind on a little bit as I've gotten older, I think everything is hard. Yeah. And sort of, no matter what you do, it's like that. [26:30] Yeah, that's my philosophy, would be my thinking too. Like if you want to do the best film of all time, maybe you can do it in three years, but also maybe it takes you your whole life, right?

Sure. But I think building anything, like this microphone company, I'm sure there's people there obsessed for a long time on what's the filter, how do you actually capture the gain, what is wire, what's the firmware on it? It's probably the same obsession. Otherwise, it doesn't really happen. [26:56] So I don't know if it's unique to company building and unique to filmmaking. It seemed like filmmaking, from what I read, sort of led you towards software in some way. Were you building software before you started to build things for? Yeah, my brother was.

So my brother wanted to build plugins for 3D animation music, and that's how he started programming. [27:18] And that's how I learned programming from him. Okay, interesting. And also I saw on your GitHub, maybe you were doing sort of different things with Pandora and RDO and things like that. What were those experiments about? I think it was just like an amazing time in the late 2000s, early 2000s where... [27:35] You know, you just try to build... [27:38] different projects. And maybe some of that's coming back now with all the changes in models, et cetera, where...

[27:43] Everybody I knew was building stuff. So I don't know if it was like unique to... [27:48] anything to us. I think we're all just trying to figure out is like, cool, you have software, you now have infinite distribution. [27:55] You can easily get code anywhere. APIs were becoming more periphery than everywhere. So I think we were just like part of that. I don't know if we were doing anything unique. You went to college at sort of your local school, George Mason University, which was nearby, but also feels like in some sense, probably spiritually the best possible school for you, given how interesting a collection of thinkers it has sort of aggregated.

[28:25] beyond just the pure information? I think you can, if you try, there's no limit to it, but you sort of maybe asymptotically get there. You can try to understand how the world works. And I think that's core to the George Mason ethos and particularly what Cowan is. [28:45] has been able to build and that team and the influence they've had, even in Silicon Valley. I mean, I think so much of Silicon Valley's ideas in the last... [28:53] 20-25 years. [28:55] I can trace back to George Mason in so many ways.

[29:00] I think that's actually, you know, I ended up going to college when I was young compared to other people. I was 16 when I got there. You tend to be a bit more impressionable when you're younger. I always felt after spending a couple of years at George Mason is that... [29:14] you can try to understand how the world works. [29:18] And it's not a fool's errand. [29:20] in any way what was it like going to to college that young you know when i've spoken to other people who [29:26] You know, maybe even go when they're even younger than that in some senses.

It can be a very isolating experience. Going to college at like 16 or 17 is not that abnormal in India. [29:37] I want to preface that too. I don't think I thought anything of it. Really? Yeah. You were able to fit in and it didn't feel like, hey, I'm not getting invited to the parties or whatever. I think it's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was fine. You know, I played a lot of sports and yeah, I don't think I thought of it much. [29:53] If anything, I probably thought it was an advantage being young.

What was your sport? Basketball. Okay. Always. When did you and Sunil start to converge on the idea for your first business, which sort of is a prologue to Meter in some respects? Like, how did that sort of seed itself as an idea even? Because it's not a natural... [30:14] interest, I would imagine. I think with us, you know, I've been trying to untangle this now, especially as our current business is growing. [30:21] on how soon I think about things and then [30:24] how to actually dissipate that information. And I don't know if this is true with other siblings, [30:28] But there's no grand overture between us.

[30:32] We're sort of discussing things, discussing things, discussing things, and it just feels natural to go. [30:38] do something, but it's never like a proclamation [30:41] that from this day forward we shall do this, it wasn't like that for us at all. [30:46] That's true of meter, that's true of before, that's true of making film, that's true of anything. I think it's just a very natural progression of our discussions where... [30:54] there's some quote right answer. Just sort of bit by bit progresses and you're, it's sort of, it's obvious. [31:00] Until he got married a few years ago, [31:05] We also lived together.

He wouldn't let you stay with him once he got married? That was tough. I mean, they would have preferred it, I think. For them, I think I'm like their first kid. I don't know of many other people other than prisoners of share to sell. [31:20] that have spent more time together than me and him. You're in for a life sentence. Yeah. So it's just... [31:25] It's hard to describe when you have that tight of a connection with someone. Yeah, everything is probably just at... [31:31] Such high fidelity to the conversation, right?

Even a gesture might carry a lot of understanding to it. It does. I could look at him a certain way and have an entire conversation. I mean, also given the age gap between you, it's almost, I imagine in many ways, more like a twin relationship. Yeah. A lot of the same friends. Then it turned out we had the same interests. Then it turned out we had the same values. [31:54] Though I think I just copied most of what he's done in life and called it my own. So then it's just like, you know, you don't really have a different...

[32:02] paths we're trying to go. Mm-hmm. [32:04] very similar. You described him earlier as one of the smartest people in the world, which, [32:09] I think it's like both... [32:11] really lovely but also a big statement what makes him so so intelligent what makes him so special [32:16] I have yet to understand how he learns things so fast. [32:19] I'm fairly convinced I can put... [32:22] any new thing in front of him. [32:24] various people can learn it faster than he can. And that can be in anything. What do you disagree about most with him?

Are there certain... He's just... [32:32] Priorities. Priorities. [32:34] not the long term what we're trying to do. I think we also agree on what's important. [32:38] we probably sometimes disagree on what's urgent. So if you look at this Eisenhower matrix of what's important, what's urgent, [32:45] We're probably, you know, 99% same on what's important. [32:50] but maybe only 90% same on what's urgent. [32:54] So if any disagreements we have is just which part of it is urgent, [32:58] And especially in a business like ours, [33:01] where if you're talking about a vertically integrated business, [33:04] Where you have urgency has a lot of bearing.

[33:07] Because that's where focus goes, that's where capital goes, that's where resources go. Yep. That's where attention goes. [33:13] So if any disagreement is always just on... [33:16] which part of it [33:17] requires the urgency at this moment. [33:21] But we've never had disagreement on what's important and what we're trying to do long term. [33:25] This episode is brought to you by Brex. If you're a founder, the hardest part isn't the idea. It's scaling fast without getting buried in back office work. That's where Brex comes in. Brex is the intelligent finance platform for founders.

[33:39] With Brex, you get high-limit corporate cards, easy banking, and high-yield treasury [33:44] plus a team of AI agents [33:46] that handle manual finance tasks for you. [33:49] They take care of things like expenses, [33:51] all according to your rules, [33:53] so you can move faster while staying in full control. [33:56] One in three startups in the S. already runs on Brex. You can, too, at com slash Mario. [34:04] Your first business, it's interesting in many respects, it sounds like it was [34:09] Had some sort of shared DNA with meter, but it hasn't been something that is like widely covered.

What was that business? What were the sort of parallel? Yeah, not many parallels, I think. Oh, interesting. Okay. [34:20] I think there's also this overfitting of businesses. I actually don't think you can learn [34:25] from every business for your business. I think people would like to. Yes. Because it's a good story to tell and a good way to like feel good. Yeah. [34:32] But I think there's only a few businesses you can learn from for your business. But Northern Virginia, especially Fairfax County and Loudoun County, where we grew up, [34:42] Something like 40 or 45% of every household has at least one income from the government.

[34:48] So it's sort of like a company town. [34:50] For the US government. Yes. So what we were doing wasn't anything gargantuanly impressive in any way. [34:56] at all, [34:58] We were just answering RFPs for the government. [35:00] And it was just for first the local, then county, then state, then federal. [35:06] It was just a very normal, I wouldn't even call it in traditional parlance, a startup. As foolish as it sounds, it was just a business making money. It was just a, yeah, so boring. Okay, interesting. I actually, I mean, I fully agree with that idea that, [35:19] you can overfit these things.

And, you know, every business is truly unique in some respect, right? What are the ones that, you know, if there are only a few businesses you can learn from, what are the few that, [35:32] you try and learn from for meter. [35:34] I think there's some characteristics of things. [35:37] And that depends on which part of the business you're trying to learn from. [35:41] For example, if you look at something like sales, [35:45] Maybe you actually want to learn from a business where the product wasn't that good and they still were phenomenal.

[35:52] at selling. So this is some kernel of sales that they've understood. [35:55] It to be. [35:56] Maybe when you're looking at something like hardware, [35:59] You want to learn from businesses that were capital constrained. [36:03] yet produced incredible hardware. [36:07] to understand how they did the supply chain, how they did management, how they did actually production and mass production. [36:13] Um, [36:13] And then in complex coordination, [36:16] Which is what we have to do. [36:18] I think the old industrial America, Ford and all of those, [36:25] are actually great precursors.

And I think there are also types of businesses nobody starts today. Nobody wants to take... [36:34] complex disparate systems. [36:36] and make them into one company. [36:39] Those sort of companies really don't get built anymore. So I think it also depends on the problem you're trying to learn about and what solution you're trying to come across. And I think every one of them, [36:48] Maybe if I try to articulate every part of our business, there are some... [36:53] characteristics I look for when I look for businesses to go learn from, but usually ends up being [37:00] a non-axiom answer.

[37:02] I think... [37:05] Almost everything that's assumed... [37:08] as like... [37:10] common knowledge. [37:12] or uh that's the way things are done it's likely wrong yep i i think that's a good heuristic to have with uh in general have you spent a bunch of time like studying ford or i don't know toyota i know is a big inspiration for [37:27] for Elon from those I've spoken to. Maybe I'm taking a bit of a shot here in that respect, but I'm curious what you maybe... [37:35] I've tried to take from them.

[37:36] I think complex coordination. Whereas if you look at Ford, [37:40] You wouldn't really say the... [37:43] the body of the car was that different than other car companies at that time. [37:47] the tires, the steering wheel, etc. [37:50] Being able to take that entire supply chain [37:53] and then figure out how to do the assembly line. [37:55] and actually produce and [37:57] coordinate, you know, these 20, 30, 40, 50, 100 different things into one thing that a customer cares about. Yeah. I think it's remarkable. [38:08] to be able to do that.

They probably didn't call it vertical integration back then because it wasn't cool enough to call it that. Yes. But I think it's like a true form for some of these businesses. I think it must be in, maybe it's in Paki's piece, speaking of virtual integration or perhaps it's in the Ashley... [38:23] Vance, uh, profile of, of, of meter. But, uh, the sort of founding story is that, you know, you, you sell your, your company, uh, your first company, and then you spend a bunch of time in Shenzhen studying all, all different pockets, including Japanese vending machine logistics and all these things.

I'm so interested in the Japanese vending machine logistics piece of this. Why was that a fascination? [38:46] So part of what we do with our business today [38:49] is historically how networking happens is you go to one of these legacy vendors and you say i'd like to buy hardware [38:57] and they sell you hardware, [38:59] And they're trying to make hardware every year with ever so imperceptible changes so they can sell you hardware every year. Yeah. Because that's their business. Our business model is entirely different. [39:10] We don't sell hardware.

[39:12] We take on all the risk for the hardware instead of our customers. [39:16] and we install our hardware for customers, and it's our responsibility to maintain it, [39:20] But also, one of the, you know, sort of, [39:23] responsibilities and agreements we have with our customers is that as we build new hardware [39:28] We will upgrade all of them. [39:30] to the latest and greatest hardware. And we sort of looked at the logical extrapolation of that, which is... [39:38] As Meter becomes more successful, [39:41] Every time we build new hardware, [39:43] The task is a bigger task to upgrade all of our customers.

[39:48] Um, so that's like something I was fascinated by your model. Okay. So I'm glad we're getting into it. Yeah. So, so, so then we started looking at, are there other parallels in the world that are very similar? [39:58] And vending machines are like that. [40:00] Because you have to figure out this complex coordination where you have... [40:05] product or inventory with you. But the only way you can continue to get paid is if you go to every physical site [40:14] and refresh the inventory [40:16] to be able to continue your business.

And so we started looking at vending machines a lot and how that's happened. [40:22] And have you been to Japan? Yeah, just once. Okay, so if you've been to Japan, you know, somehow vending machines are just perfect. Yes, they really are. So that's why we started looking into how... [40:33] companies in Japan, [40:34] maintain this incredible supply chain and keep the inventory up, [40:42] of all the vending machines everywhere, you know, you sort of are walking somewhere in a random street and there's a small vending machine. Even that's perfect. [40:52] So how is that possible?

Wow, that was such a deeper answer than I anticipated. I thought this would be, I don't know, we found it so interesting. So you had even at a very early stage that model in your mind. [41:03] Almost nothing about what we want to do meter has changed since we started it. Wow, that's so interesting to me. I would have assumed that was much, much later down the line. Huh. [41:11] One thing that seems like it did change was in, you know, as the story goes, you spent sort of a year working on, you know, the V0 story of meter and then had this.

[41:22] encounter at first round review, you, you'll have to remind me of where you have, you met this networking person who basically told you, Hey, everything you've been working on, we're about, uh, you know, release. Maybe you can remind me of that anecdote because I think it's such an interesting look. Yeah. Nothing to do with the startup world. I actually don't think Silicon Valley knows anything about networking anymore. So it's a whole separate topic. Oh, interesting. So this was some meetup down in Santa Clara, uh, that I think Intel and a bunch of people were having.

Okay. Um, [41:48] We had spent a year... [41:50] sort of writing a type of operating system. And for the operating system nerds out there, we were trying to use unikernels to write every part of the network on top of a hypervisor. Anyway, it was as bad as it sounds. We were writing this operating system. It was going okay. It wasn't going poorly. It would crash a lot. It didn't work as well as we wanted it to work. [42:12] That was about a year, year and a half of our work. We randomly went to this meetup down in South Bay, Santa Clara, in the Bay Area.

[42:19] And, um, [42:21] Some guy was writing this open source project that was part of Intel and they had hundreds of people... [42:26] working on this, on how to do this one part that was the unlock, better than how Sunil and I were thinking about it. And it was one of the most painful times of our lives because we literally scraped everything we did for about 18 months. Oh, my gosh. [42:41] I... [42:42] I think there must be many founders who experienced some version of that. Maybe it wasn't 18 months.

Maybe it was three months. Looking back at that moment, like, did you feel the urge to quit? Were you, did it feel? That I've never had. I just, I don't know that feeling at all. [43:00] I don't know what that means. Come on. I honestly never, ever felt that. You've never felt like this isn't worth it or I should do something else? No, I studied this for so long before deciding to start it. It was like, whatever happens, this is the thing. Yeah, this is what we wanted to do. Why would I not have the courage of my own convictions?

I don't understand that ever. Isn't there such a thing as you might find information that you didn't discover? [43:30] at the outset want to do it for decades. [43:33] We had spent years prior [43:35] to starting meter, to deciding to start meter. [43:39] And it was years worth of these conversations between Sunil and I. [43:43] And in our minds, it was always crystal clear. That's why... [43:47] The pricing's never changed. [43:49] What we build's never changed. How we want to do the vertical integration's never changed. [43:53] how we wanted deliveries never changed.

The business model has never changed. [43:57] That arc has been very, very true. But nonetheless... [44:02] It was very painful at that time. [44:04] incredibly painful at that time. But it's really interesting because I think that says something about the way that [44:09] You and Sunil clearly build, right? Like you almost de-risked it in your minds through conversation and research over a huge time before deciding, okay, this is actually worth our time. And the whole de-risking was just between the two of us. I don't think we ever even... [44:26] really [44:27] like look for permission from others.

That's also very interesting because clearly... [44:31] Some part of your brain may be realized, [44:34] I don't know if we open this to other people, it's going to be more noise than signal. I don't know. Possibly. We do try to ask people some of these legacy companies like, why aren't you doing this? [44:46] Because I think at the outset, when you have an idea about something, [44:51] even before you realize you want to do it, [44:54] Maybe one of the first things you end up feeling is you just want it to exist.

[44:58] So I remember having conversations with folks at these legacy companies saying, like, why aren't you guys doing this, et cetera, et cetera. [45:04] But I think once we probably heard that they had no interest and then our convictions started growing... [45:10] I think after that, we... [45:11] Yeah, I... [45:12] I take it as input for sure. When somebody says something, especially people I respect and, [45:17] people that understand our industry and understand how to build businesses and all that, it's definitely an input. [45:22] But even if somebody were an order of magnitude more intelligent than I am, [45:28] Let's assume that's true.

I have spent two to three orders of magnitude more time thinking about it. Yeah. [45:34] So I don't know if I trust somebody else's opinion. I fully ascribe to that. I think... [45:41] We give too much credence to advice from authority figures and many other, you know, such characters in our lives. I think the irony of that is as you get older and you get to meet your heroes and they become your friends. Yeah. [45:56] There's nothing behind the veil. Yeah, you're like, oh, this is just a normal person too, right?

What was the... [46:02] I don't want to say miscalculation because that's not... [46:05] Maybe fair or the view of the world that was slightly off that meant you thought, hey, for the first 18 months, this is really important for us to do. But you there was some difference in the calibration of the vision versus the. [46:18] The world. The vision was the right vision, I think. But man, computer science is fickle. [46:24] I just didn't think we arrived at the right... [46:26] solution for the problem. [46:28] The problem was right, what we wanted to do, where we should build it.

[46:32] But we just didn't arrive at the right answer. [46:34] And I am immensely grateful that somebody else did because then it helped us. Yeah. It saved you some time. Yeah. I think you've said maybe in another interview that, uh, [46:45] You know, you think that companies roughly have a thousand hard days in their life and you just happen to have a thousand at the start because you started and then COVID really hits. What was, you know, clearly it sounds like you didn't think about quitting because that was out of the question.

But what was that experience like? [47:03] It was really brutal. Really brutal. Yeah. I think you start a company because you want to make progress on something. [47:11] you want to sort of surround yourself with people that you respect and you enjoy working with [47:17] and learn from, and you want to make progress as a business. [47:20] None of that was happening. [47:22] during COVID. [47:23] It was really hard. [47:25] And as a matter of focus to your original question, we were only selling to offices when we were a dozen people.

That was the place to start because you can go boil the ocean. Yep. [47:35] And... [47:36] Ironically, we started selling to customers fall of 2019. [47:40] And by March 1st of 2020, our entire 10 went to zero. [47:45] Yeah, tough. And that's when you start thinking, how do we serve e-commerce stores and the, I mean, the associated infrastructure. We always knew we would do those later on. Yep. [47:57] But, [47:58] You don't get data from CPI and other things much... [48:03] X post. So we actually didn't know how much growth was happening.

[48:06] The way we got sucked in is meeting customers that wanted our... [48:10] product and service that were in these other segments. [48:14] It was always a plan we would go do all segments. [48:17] As a matter of focus, we started with offices. [48:20] But then during COVID, customers came and asked for it. Then we ended up doing it. We were like, okay. But I don't think we knew the data at that point. E-commerce was going from sort of 12% of the economy to 24%. I don't think we knew that.

Maybe implicitly we felt it as consumers ourselves. [48:36] Because we're like ordering things online or whatever, like instead of going anywhere. [48:40] But it was more like customer driven. [48:43] You know, I think these... [48:44] near-death moments or existential moments for a company always end up producing [48:48] some kind of new muscle that gets built yeah uh clearly that was you know also serving different types of customers but even at a [48:55] maybe more fundamental level, what do you think it changed about some part of the nature of meter or the way that the team operates or some of that skeleton almost?

The other thing I was very resistant on in the beginning is I was adamant that we should only sell to customers in the Bay Area in the beginning for a long time. Because I had it in my mind that we should go visit every customer. We should... [49:19] sort of shake every customer's hand and grow with them. [49:22] The other muscle that happened because of this is we started deploying in all sorts of places in the country because... [49:30] e-commerce, warehouses, other things were everywhere. In some places, COVID was strict, in some places wasn't.

Some people were going in offices or not. But, [49:40] flying from Bay Area to these other places was still very restrictive. We ended up building this muscle where we could deploy networks anywhere. [49:47] Whereas my original was I was stopping the company from doing anything outside the Bay Area. [49:52] just as a matter of focus and other things. And it turns out, you know, my brother and a bunch of colleagues were right, and I was entirely wrong about that. You talk a lot about... [50:01] building a company and building hardware with sort of almost the splendor of a cathedral.

I think you like that analogy, which I... [50:09] really speaks to me. I love when we try and think of these parts of our world with [50:14] equivalent reverence and care. [50:16] What are the parts of the meter product that you think to the right eye this shows? [50:22] true craft, true beauty, you know, the right amount of splendor. [50:28] To the right eye, I think there's about a dozen things like that at Mita. [50:33] And that's what keeps the job really fun. [50:36] across hardware [50:38] software, [50:40] operating systems, [50:42] APIs.

[50:43] how we do deployments, how we handle ISPs, [50:48] how we take all this data and train models to