Sanjit Biswas: Samsara's $18BN Market Cap & $1BN in ARR in 8 Years | E1092

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Sanjit Biswas is the co-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.

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Intro
(00:43) Starting in Tech: The First Project
(03:34) Tackling Early Challenges and Learning Curves
(06:30) Defining a Leadership Role at Samsara
(07:48) Confronting Impostor Syndrome as a CEO
(09:36) Key Lessons from Meraki Experience
(14:46) Striving for Product-Market Fit
(20:02) Listening to Customers vs. Following Vision
(25:45) Transition from Engineering to Sales Leadership
(30:51) Building and Training Sales Teams
(38:19) Insights from Hiring and Team Building
(41:12 CEO's Perspective on Resource Allocation
(48:17) Reflecting on Capital Allocation and Risk-Taking
(53:51) Evolution into a CEO Role
(56:13) Instilling Work Ethic in Children as a CEO
(57:34) Quick-Fire Round

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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?

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