Saying yes to everything: How customer obsession built Samsara | Kiren Sekar (CPO)

Kiren Sekar is the CPO of Samsara, a company that brings real-time visibility, analytics, and AI to physical operations. Before Samsara, Kiren was an early leader at Meraki, which was acquired by Cisco for $1.2B. In this episode, he walks us through Samsara’s origin story: from hardware hacking in a basement to scaling a cross-industry IoT platform. He shares how early customer feedback loops led to the company’s first product, why starting with the mid-market was a deliberate choice, and how Samsara kept a startup mindset even as it scaled. In this episode, we discuss: • Lessons from Meraki’s acquisition by Cisco • How Kiren hires for intrinsic motivation • Why Samsara was built for operations industries • The early hardware prototype and the Cowgirl Creamery insight • Building broad vs. niche from day one • The shift from founder-selling to a scalable sales motion • Organizing product teams around revenue vs. experience • How Samsara uses LLMs and AI today • What Kiren learned from longtime co-founder Sanjit Biswas Where to find Kiren: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirensekar/ Where to find Brett: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/ • Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson References: • Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ • Clay: https://www.clay.com/ • Cowgirl Creamery: https://cowgirlcreamery.com/ • IBM: https://www.ibm.com/ • Meraki: https://meraki.cisco.com/ • Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/ • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/ • Samsara: https://www.samsara.com/ • Sanjit Biswas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjitbiswas/ • Uber: https://www.uber.com/ Timestamps: (01:27) Meraki’s growth and acquisition by Cisco (03:25) The "evaporating" exit strategy from Meraki (04:42) Identifying the IoT market gaps (07:38) The early keys to success at Samsara (09:39) What does quality mean to Kiren? (10:54) Building a customer-centric roadmap (17:34) Early customer research and the failed fridge monitoring idea (20:57) How a cheese producer helped create Samsara’s first prototype (28:06) Balancing depth and breadth in customer profiles (33:45) Developing customer trust to build feedback loops (40:27) How “ease of use” became a growth secret (44:23) Pricing strategies and market positioning (51:51) How Meraki influenced Samsara’s GTM strategy (57:19) Helping customers navigate change management (1:00:48) How Samsara’s team evolved during rapid growth (1:04:03) What AI means for an IoT giant