Fireside Chat at the University of Washington, May 2025

Jeremy Zaretzky: Thanks everyone for joining us today. We are thrilled to have Samir Mehta here. Samir has had a fascinating career, from founding his own company, Keetli, to working at giants like Amazon, and now advising startups and serving on boards like CarAdvise. Samir, maybe we can start with some of those key inflection points along the way?

Samir Mehta: I think it’s like being in the eye of the hurricane; you don’t realize sometimes you are in the middle of it. But I think that every single time, there was a major shift in how the technical paradigm was shifting. I came from an engineering background, doing everything hands-on. Every time it shifted, I was working on the new piece of technology already.

In 1995, I was working with Microsoft and at InstallShield; we were building the installation tools for Microsoft. In fact, the company I was part of had a meteoric rise because we ended up going on the cocktail of the Windows 95 installation tool. I knew Windows 95 way before it became popular. It felt like a very big shift. Then, I wrote a WAP browser before moving to Java. Java had started slowly entering the space, and because I was working heavily with Sun Microsystems, I got into Java pretty early on. It felt like it was going to take root in enterprise early on, and that ended up being a shift to Java.

When you are working with someone like LG Telecom and they say, "We would love to do some download of content," it had nothing to do with technology transfer; it was like, "Hey, this is an opportunity." As a startup guy, of course we’re going to do it. So, we went and built a server.

Samir Mehta: When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I learned it the hard way. When you fall in love with a problem space, it literally becomes a hammer. You feel like you must find a way to solve that, not always thinking about whether it really requires to be solved and if somebody is going to end up finding the value in what you are solving. Especially from a startup perspective, it’s not that you cannot do something that has value, but you want to find whether somebody would adapt and see the value the same way you are seeing it. Otherwise, it doesn’t become a startup; it becomes you solving a problem that other people don’t see value in.

Samir Mehta: My mom played a pretty big role in how I ended up thinking about what I do today. One of the things she taught me pretty early on was, and I’m saying this verbatim, that "the future is full of possibilities for those who know how to prepare themselves for it." I didn’t understand it in the beginning. I used to ask her, "If I don’t know what my future is, how can I prepare myself?" But as I started progressing through my journey, I realized that every single opportunity you get, it is up to you to really see it as an opportunity or as a problem you want to complain about.

When my company got acquired the first time by Motorola, I realized within probably less than 90 days that they had no clue what to do with us. This is what happens in a large company. We had investment from Motorola, which eventually led to us getting acquired. We had become, at Fourthpass, the largest footprint globally for content delivery systems: China Mobile, China Unicom, Telefonica, O2. Motorola’s investment arm and the Chief Strategy Officer invested in us because they saw us as the future of the mobile space. This was five years before Apple did anything for downloading content.

Samir Mehta: I’ll tell all of the students here that irrespective of the situation, you probably want to step back and think about where you are. When my company was acquired, I was so proud, but then I got to Motorola and realized you are nobody there. You come from your own startup where you are king of the hill (we had completely created a new industry) and then there was no respect for what I had done.

I was in one of the first meetings and I lost my cool. Somebody was saying that software is not going to go anywhere, and I said, "You are an idiot." Turned out that guy was an SVP, one of the very well-known SVPs at Motorola. He looked at me and said, "Who are you?" I said, "I am so-and-so." He goes, "So, somebody coming from a startup... how much was your revenue? And how much our revenue is? And you are coming and telling me I’m an idiot? You are the idiot."

I don’t recommend you stand up and tell anybody they’re an idiot. It created animosity; it took a while for me to get over, and it always haunted me while I was there because that guy literally became my enemy. He tried to make sure that everything I did failed because he wanted to come back to me saying that I was the idiot for telling him that in the middle of all those folks.

Samir Mehta: At Fourthpass, we were building an obfuscator, and we had 80% of our revenue coming from it. We were a profitable, small company making a decent amount of revenue. When we got the opportunity to build the content delivery system for LG, we had to decide between the three founders. We decided to shut down our biggest revenue-generating product, which was the obfuscator.

There was no other reason than focus. As a startup, it all comes down to focus. When you are a small team, you try to hedge your bets, saying "I’ll do this and I’ll do that." It could have been risky; we could have completely lost our company by shutting down the product bringing in 80% of revenue. But in hindsight, it turned out to be the right thing to do. Even if one person is working on the product to support it, that means that one person is not working on the product that is going to take us into the next area.

It comes down to signals. What type of market is it? What type of opportunity? We looked at the TAM (Total Addressable Market) and SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) for a tools market, and the outcome was going to be much smaller than if we ended up doing it for the larger TAM/SAM with LG Telecom. Because we were spending time with LG and they had already committed, that became a pretty big point. As a startup founder, you’re always looking for the bigger opportunity. We had to do every single thing we could; either we go bust or we end up really being in the market.

Samir Mehta: In large organizations, you immediately get thrown into a silo very quickly. It’s not that you should disregard what you are asked to do, but genuinely taking interest and building your network inside the organization is key. If you are in engineering, don’t limit yourself to only doing engineering. Think about which other groups are responsible for driving that particular business: product teams, business development, or sales.

I always reached out to every single person I thought was playing a role in making the product successful. If you just go and say "I want to talk to you," they might wonder why. But when you reach out with a thoughtful question or a way to add value, you’ll be surprised how many people say "Yes, I’m going to spend time with you."

Samir Mehta: When I was a developer at InstallShield, the development team was in a silo, just heads down developing. What I did differently was I reached out to BizDev, who was working with Microsoft. He was surprised: "Why are you talking to me? Aren’t you part of the new developers?" I had a big question: "How do you think they’re using our product?"

When communication starts passing hands, things end up changing significantly. From the time Jeremy tells me something, I tell Austin, Austin tells Francis... things change. By talking to different people at the source, they shared the unrolled version of the problem they were seeing with the customer. I ended up coming back and pushing back on my Product Manager, saying, "I don’t think that feature you’re saying is going to help the customer, because this is what I heard from BizDev." When we built that product, the BizDev guy said, "Oh my goodness, I’m always going to come and talk to you." My PM was mad that I bypassed him, but my point was that I was trying to understand and learn.

Samir Mehta: Francis, that’s a great question. As I have grown through my career, I still go back to saying technology is meant to a business end. What it really means is that for any founder, especially if you’re not coming from an engineering background, you absolutely must spend enough time to understand how the technology is solving a problem. You cannot simply say, "It’s written in Java," and that’s all I need to know.

You must truly try to understand why that technology is the right technology to solve the problem and how you are solving it. For example, when I started building the very first content delivery system, I had no idea. I didn’t even know how to write a server, yet we became the largest company to write a server. But understanding the business was about how a telco company could offer a way to download content; that was the key. My partner’s role was talking about business development and talking to other companies, so he needed me to help him understand what the key differentiators were so he could give enough insight to a potential customer or partner. If you don’t know the technology, you are just waving your hand at 50,000 feet, and people will see through you.

Samir Mehta: Today, things are quite different. When I started, there were no AI tools to help you develop. However, I will also caution on one end, and this could be a little bit controversial: everybody is saying you should start developing the code yourself because Cursor is there. That may be a way to do it, but when you truly understand a business problem, you still need a very strong technical co-founder.

I’m a big believer that if you are not technical, you should still have that partner. Cursor and other tools will take you to a particular point, but not understanding why some things need to be done is a risk. Also, it depends on your strength. If your biggest strength is communicating with your customers and engaging them, that’s where you should spend most of your time. Partner with somebody who can really accelerate development. Understanding technology is not the same as understanding how to develop code.

Samir Mehta: I’m officially advising two different startups right now at different stages. One thing I consistently find challenging with founders is this notion that because you are the founder and the startup is your baby, you feel like you know more than anybody else. That can make you a little bit myopic. It manifests into not listening or not being open-minded to what other people are saying, especially when you are running into a wall over and over.

As your company starts growing, you have to step back and really talk to your customer. Founders are often execution-oriented, which is fine, but you have to figure out how to manage your teams. You’re really good at what you do with two friends, but when you start scaling and adding people, you have to put yourself in the shoes of other people in your team. I see founders struggling because they don’t really know how to manage teams in a way that makes them feel like one of them, rather than alienating them.

Samir Mehta: Everybody’s individual, and you need to figure out what works best for you. As you continue to grow and scale (this applies in personal life too) we meet different people with different habits. Finding a way to connect to them in an individual style plays a big role. I used to be impetuous in my early days: "No, I know what I’m doing, go get it done." I had to learn to listen more and realize this person works differently, so how can I work a little differently so I can still get my point to them? Developing a skill to evolve yourself to work with different people ends up helping you really grow your startup.

Samir Mehta: Founders who scale from 2 friends to a real team must learn to put themselves in others’ shoes. The shift from execution mode to people mode is one of the hardest transitions. You’re really good at what you do with two friends, but when you start scaling and adding people, you have to put yourself in the shoes of other people in your team. Making people feel like one of you, rather than alienating them, is the difference between a team that ships and a team that quits.

Samir Mehta: Thank you, Jeremy, it’s a pleasure. And again, I always tell the team: please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m always happy to answer any questions you may have, and especially if you’re thinking of anything specific on the startup side, very happy to help in any way I can. So, Jeremy, it’s always a pleasure talking and working with you and talking to the students.

Samir Mehta: Thank you.