20VC: $18BN Market Cap and $1BN in ARR in 8 Years; Samsara | How to Find Product Market Fit Reliably | How to Create a Multi-Product Company | The Pros and Cons of Serial Entrepreneurship with Sanjit Biswas, Founder & CEO @ Samsara
Sanjit Biswas is the Founder and CEO @ Samsara, allowing businesses that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data. Over the last 8 years, Sanjit has scaled Samsara to $1BN in ARR and a public company with tens of thousands of customers. Before Samsara, Sanjit was the CEO and co-founder of Meraki, one of the most successful networking companies of the past decade. Sanjit grew Meraki from his Ph.D. research into a complete enterprise networking portfolio. Meraki's sales doubled every year from inception and in 2012, Cisco acquired Meraki for $1.2 billion. Huge thanks to Doug Leone for some fantastic question suggestions pre this episode.
In Today's Episode With Sanjit Biswas We Discuss:
1. From Founding to $1BN in ARR in 8 Years:
- What was the founding a-ha moment for Sanjit with Samsara?
- Sanjit sold his prior company Meraki for $1.2BN, what worked with Meraki that Sanjit took with him to Samsara? What did not work that he left behind?
- What does Sanjit know now that he wishes he had known when he started Samsara?
2. The Man Who Found Product Market Fit Time and Time Again:
- What is the one single moment that Sanjit believes you know you have product market fit?
- What are the biggest mistakes founders make when chasing product market fit?
- How does being a bootstrapped company change how a company approaches chasing PMF?
3. Mastering a Multi-Product Company:
- How do you know when it is the right time to launch a second product?
- Does the second product have to make the first product better?
- What are the biggest mistakes companies make when going multi-product?
4. The Art of Great CEOship:
- Does Sanjit believe that the best CEOs are the best capital allocators?
- What has been the single best and single worst capital allocation decision in Samsara's journey?
- What are the biggest mistakes Sanjit has made in leadership? How did he learn and grow from them?
