First time founders think about product. Second time founders think about distribution. Exceptional founders think about both, and how they work together.

An astonishing 90% of Cisco’s revenue runs through its partners.

Painful software plus good distribution and high switching costs is a hard combination to kill.

Put differently, the long-term product and economic impacts of having everything operating on the same plane outweighs the short-term impact of replacing hardware.

There’s something quite deep about the notion of using time horizons as a competitive advantage , in that you’re simply willing to wait longer than other people and you have an organization that is thusly oriented.

Crucially, because Meter is vertically integrated, customers can spend 3-4x as much with Meter as they would with legacy vendors . There are a number of reasons for this:

• Meter sells customers more parts of the stack than a traditional vendor would, so they keep more of the value.


• It can increase margins by cutting out layers up and down the stack.


• Cu

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• Meter sells customers more parts of the stack than a traditional vendor would, so they keep more of the value.


• It can increase margins by cutting out layers up and down the stack.


• Customers get more value from the network – they save time, for example, which has a value that currently sits unmonetized.


• And Meter can continue to add products that fit i

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Meter is building an internet utility by pursuing the Vertical Integrator strategy:

1. Integrate multiple cutting-edge-but-proven technologies.


2. Develop significant in-house capabilities across their stack.


3. Modularize commoditized components while controlling overall system integration.


4. Compete directly with incumbents.


5. Offer integrated products that are be

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Sunil and Anil spent five years, just the two of them, in China and back home, doing R&D. Learning, tinkering, thinking. They didn’t hire Meter’s first employee until five years in, until they knew what they wanted to build, and how.