Kiren Sekar

Chief Product Officer, Samsara · 0 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

executiveoperatorLinkedIn ↗

Kiren Sekar leads global product and engineering at Samsara, having directed product strategy from its founding through its IPO and later serving as Chief Strategy Officer before resuming the CPO role. Earlier, he served as Vice President of Marketing at Meraki prior to its acquisition by Cisco.

25statements → 11claims → 0claims resolved → average certainty → average debate potential → 2said about them ↓

1 not yet assessed 5 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 assertions · 11 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 5 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Kiren argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Samsara Closed Its First Post-IPO Quarter at Over $550M ARR
“We just reported our first first quarter as a public company a couple of weeks ago, closed the quarter at a little over five hundred and fifty million dollars in ARR, which was over 60% growth from a year before.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 3:17 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar

Everything Kiren Sekar said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Expanding Multi-Product Early via Adjacencies Accelerates Business Growth
“How going multi-product early through adjacencies can make a really big impact on the trajectory and growth of the business.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 2:05 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Seed New Multi-Product Rollouts With Top Sales Performers First
“Start with a small focused team, even if it's a small ADR team, generate leads that are really laser focused on a product to get the physics of the new product down, to iron out the kinks, to build the playbooks, then to build champions, right? Find the people…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 49:17 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Integrating Hardware Solves Problems Pure Software Cannot Address
“By integrating hardware with our solution, we make it possible to solve different types of problems than we could with software alone.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 1:54 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Supported
Samsara Closed Its First Post-IPO Quarter at Over $550M ARR
“We just reported our first first quarter as a public company a couple of weeks ago, closed the quarter at a little over five hundred and fifty million dollars in ARR, which was over 60% growth from a year before.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 3:17 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Fragmented IoT Architectures Cost Millions and Fail Mainstream Operators
“We'd seen other companies try to build IOT data systems where you have one company building sensors, another providing connectivity, another providing the infrastructure and storage, and someone else building the applications on top. And then you pay an integr…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 16:46 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Samsara Ingested 4.6T Data Points and 85B Video Minutes Last Year
“The 4.6 trillion data points that we ingested last year eighty-five billion minutes of video footage, running AI on that to detect almost two and a half billion AI detections. We're processing billions of API calls as customers connect Samsara with other syste…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 29:56 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Supported
Samsara Has Two Separate Products Generating Over $200M ARR Each
“We now have two products that are over two hundred million dollars in ARR each, both growing well.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 32:23 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Target Established Markets Needing 10x Solutions Rather Than Educating New Ones
“We would really seek out markets where there was an established industry where we didn't have to convince customers for the first time of the value of data or software or a particular solution, but then try to find areas where we saw an opportunity to deliver …”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 34:00 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Chasing Individual Deal Requests Creates Niche Features Lacking Broad Demand
“One is when we weren't disciplined about making sure we were looking for signal across a Broad pipeline. Could get into to deal chasing mode. Build something that we thought was really cool, and actually a customer thought was really cool, but then the broad …”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 36:26 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Expand Product Lines Through Customer Adjacencies Rather Than Unfamiliar Segments
“The second area was where We weren't working through adjacencies. If we tried to build products or features that were for entirely different customers, as opposed to asking our customers, what more can we do for you, and then using that to open up the door to …”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 37:12 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Product Leaders Must Build New Products When It Feels Premature
“I think, you know, as CPO, the thing that I need to be really disciplined about is to work on new products when it feels unnatural and premature.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 38:37 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Disclosure
Samsara Bundles Hardware Into Software Subscriptions Without Separate SKUs
“And in fact, the way we sell our products today, we don't have a separate skew. There's a question about whether we have a separate sales team for hardware, same sales team. In fact, it's a single Let's say the license subscription. You buy a license for, say,…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 41:12 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Sales Engineering Effectively Aggregates Scalable Product Feedback From Direct Sales
“The sales engineering team actually ends up being a really valuable tool in being able to aggregate the feedback from sales, especially around feature or product requests, be able to find the patterns and bring them to our product team. And we found that inter…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 43:08 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Selling SaaS to Operations is Harder Because Operators Run Physical Facilities
“Big difference, I think, between how IT departments bought, which is what we were selling in Meraki, and how operations buy us, which is how we're selling it at Samsara. I think first and foremost, operations departments are really busy operating. You know, in…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 44:06 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Industrial IoT Sales Cycles Mirror Standard SaaS Benchmarks
“In terms of sales cycle, interestingly enough, it ends up looking very similar To many other SaaS products, where a mid-market inside sales deal might be a 90 day, 90 day sales cycle, a small business might be a few weeks, and then an enterprise sale might be,…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 46:56 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Insight
Sales Reps Resist Selling Unproven New Products Over Familiar Offerings
“Sales teams will want to sell the thing that is easy, that is, is, is easy for them, that is familiar, that's proven. And, you know, especially early on, it's harder to get sales mindshare in a brand new product where maybe the revenue impact or the ease of sa…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 48:54 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Disclosure
Samsara Rejects Bespoke Customer Customizations in Favor of APIs
“We really try to not do any features or customizations that are going to be specific to one organization. We really try to find the patterns and when there's something that is one off, we always say, Hey, is there a way that we can build an API endpoint or bui…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 50:10 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Supported
Samsara Serves Over 14,000 Customers Across Five Key Platform Applications
“And our revenue comes from five key applications on our platform. That we're delivering to over 14,000 customers.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 3:31 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Partly supported
Cisco Meraki Reached One Million Networks and Doubled in 20 Months
“As part of Cisco Systems, they had actually grown to a million networks, and then in 20 months doubled again to two million.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 10:18 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Not yet assessed · timeframe Mar 2022
Meraki Surpassed Two Million Active Networks and $2B in Sales
“As they grew to two million active networks, And over the last couple of years they've reported that they've crossed over two billion in sales.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 11:29 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Supported
The Physical Operations Sector Accounts for Over One-Third of Global GDP
“We knew that the world of operations was really big, you know, it's over a third of the global GDP.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 16:17 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Samsara Shipped Its First Prototype to Users in 100 Days
“We started working with some of our friends and family, contacts from Meraki, early customers from different industries, and really had a prototype that we were able to get in real users' hands in about a hundred days.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 18:34 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Disclosure
Samsara Routes All In-App Dashboard Feedback Directly to Product Slack
“First is we actually put a button in every page of our dashboard. It's called the feedback button. It's on the bottom left side. And any user of the system can hit that button and give us a suggestion that basically captures the context of what they're doing i…”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 23:22 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar
Assertion Not checkable as stated
UFP Industries Saves $600K Annually by Digitizing Paper Workflows
“UFP Industries, a transportation logistics and lumber company, they are saving 600,000 dollars a year just by digitizing their paper processes and streamlining their administration.”
Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 ▶ 28:11 Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar

Show 1statements(1 left)

The other half of the tape: Kiren Sekar's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes on the Official SaaStr Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sanjit Biswas 1Kieran Saker 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
00111120232024episodesmentions
01120232024episodes it came up in
000.50.51120232024episodesmentions per episode

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Kiren Sekar was played rather than Kiren taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
Learnings from Innovating in Underserved Markets with Samsara CPO Kiren Sekar Mar 19, 2022 48m aired address
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 400 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.