In Depth cover art

In Depth

In Depth

By: First Round
Listen for free

About this listen

 Welcome to In Depth, a new podcast from First Round Review that’s dedicated to surfacing the tactical advice founders and startup leaders need to grow their teams, their companies and themselves. Hosted by Brett Berson, a partner at First Round, In Depth will cover a lot of ground and a wide range of topics, from hiring executives and becoming a better manager, to the importance of storytelling inside of your organization. But every interview will hit the level of tactical depth where the very best advice is found. We hope you’ll join us. Subscribe to “In Depth” now and learn more at firstround.com Economics Leadership Management Management & Leadership
Episodes
  • Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)

    Building Meter for decades, not an exit | Anil Varanasi (Co-founder and CEO)
    Dec 10 2025
    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
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 15 mins
  • How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)

    How Harness runs 16 “startups within a startup” at scale | Jyoti Bansal (Co-founder and CEO)
    Nov 19 2025
    Jyoti Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Harness, the software delivery platform used by thousands of engineering teams, and previously founded AppDynamics, which he led from inception to a multibillion-dollar acquisition by Cisco. In this episode, Jyoti unpacks what it really takes to move from mid-market to enterprise, why he thinks in terms of “product-market-sales fit,” and how he structures Harness as a collection of “startups within a startup” to launch multiple “best-of-breed” products. In today’s episode, we discuss: Why companies get stuck in the mid-market and struggle to move up into enterprise Why Jyoti deliberately lost Netflix as their customer The difference between product-market-sales fit, and product-market-fit How to build a scalable, capacity-driven go-to-market machine (instead of chasing deals) Diagnosing whether you have a product problem or a distribution problem How to hire and evaluate your first head of sales and top sales leaders Why Jyoti sold AppDynamics three days before IPO The “binary differentiator” rule for launching new products into crowded markets Why Harness runs 16 product lines under one roof Where to find Jyoti: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotibansal/ Twitter/X: https://x.com/jyotibansalsf 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: Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ AppDynamics: https://www.appdynamics.com/ Barclays: https://home.barclays/ BIG Labs: https://www.biglabs.com/ Carlos Delatorre: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadelatorre/ Charles Schwab: https://www.schwab.com/ Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Citi: https://www.citi.com/ Cloudability: https://www.apptio.com/products/cloudability/ Datadog: https://www.datadoghq.com/ Dynatrace: https://www.dynatrace.com/ Harness: https://www.harness.io/ Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ Nasdaq: https://www.nasdaq.com/ Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/ New Relic: https://newrelic.com/ Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ Splunk: https://www.splunk.com/ Traceable: https://www.traceable.ai/ Unusual Ventures: https://www.unusual.vc/ VMware: https://www.vmware.com/ Timestamps: (01:48) Why do companies get stuck in the mid-market? (05:09) Designing a product for enterprise and mid-market (07:19) Why Jyoti lost Netflix as a customer - on purpose (10:18) Becoming a scalable GTM organization (12:32) The real signs of product-market fit (14:04) Have you delivered the value? (15:46) How to hire your first sales team (19:59) The four signs of excellent sales leaders (23:16) How to interview a sales leader (27:51) Where Jyoti developed his commercial taste (29:37) Why early founders need to learn sales (32:02) How AppDynamics began (36:36) Why Jyoti sold three days pre-IPO (41:55) What does a healthy board look like? (44:23) How Jyoti perceives competition (46:18) Why you need a binary differentiator (49:53) How to launch multiple products (52:00) “We need to be best of breed” (57:38) Why PMs are like mini-entrepreneurs (1:00:20) The startup within a startup (1:02:45) A culture of continuous improvement
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 5 mins
  • How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi)

    How to build a company you’ll run forever | Zack Kanter (Founder and CEO of Stedi)
    Nov 6 2025
    Zack Kanter is the founder and CEO of Stedi, an API-first healthcare clearinghouse. After bootstrapping a wildly profitable auto-parts business, he sold it to tackle "the most complicated problem" he'd ever encountered: business-to-business transaction exchange. He spent years building EDI infrastructure, threw away the entire codebase eight times, and found extraordinary traction in healthcare. Stedi recently raised a $70M Series B co-led by Stripe and Addition. In this conversation, Brett and Zack discuss why venture capital means "going pro," why execution is never actually a moat, and how "eating glass" became Stedi's competitive advantage. In today’s episode, we discuss: How 16-year-old Zack turned $2,500 into a wholesale empire Why bootstrapping means being "constrained by capital" and how VC removes that ceiling Why Zack rebuilt their EDI product eight times before launch The snake swallowing a deer: what extreme product-market fit really looks like What software companies can learn from discount retail and Toyota Why Stedi’s new hires are told "everything’s your fault now" And much more Where to find Zack: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zkanter Twitter/X: https://x.com/zackkanter 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: Aetna: https://www.aetna.com/ Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/ AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/ Blue Cross Blue Shield: https://www.bcbs.com/ Change Healthcare: https://www.changehealthcare.com/ Cigna: https://www.cigna.com/ Clay: https://www.clay.com/ Costco: https://www.costco.com/ Ford Motor Company: https://www.ford.com/ GM: https://www.gm.com/ HIPAA overview (HHS): https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/index.html Jeff Bezos: https://x.com/JeffBezos Kanban / TPS (Toyota): https://global.toyota/en/company/vision-and-philosophy/production-system Microsoft Teams: https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-teams NetSuite: https://www.netsuite.com/ O’Reilly Auto Parts: https://www.oreillyauto.com/ Peter Thiel: https://x.com/peterthiel Porter’s five forces: https://www.isc.hbs.edu/strategy/pages/the-five-forces.aspx "Reality has a surprising amount of detail": https://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail Slack: https://slack.com/ Stedi: https://www.stedi.com/ Summit Racing: https://www.summitracing.com/ Target: https://www.target.com/ Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ Zapier: https://zapier.com/ Timestamps: (01:24) Zack’s first business (08:54) Why the first customer is tricky (10:12) The downside of bootstrapping (11:42) Why venture capital is like “going pro” (14:20) The confusion between ownership vs. control (16:08) Building a company you don’t want to leave (20:46) Do things better than other people (24:49) Stedi’s early years (31:43) Physical vs. digital product-market fit (34:41) How Stedi scaled decision-making (40:08) Stedi’s journey to product-market fit (45:22) Finding founder-approach fit (50:42) “All software is a cascade of miracles” (52:52) The surprising lessons from discount retail (57:50) How the Toyota production system influences software (1:01:31) What it means to be a high-agency person (1:03:09) The core trait Zack looks for when hiring (1:02:57) Maintaining conviction in unconventional practice (1:14:19) When should you start to hire managers? (1:17:42) “Reality has a surprising amount of detail”
    Show More Show Less
    1 hr and 24 mins
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.