Comment by aiwv

Like you said, Meraki got better because the core team, including engineering and sales as well as the founders, stuck around for about two years. Things did go significantly downhill once the founders left but by that point the company was already so successful that the exodus of great people that followed their departure probably didn't even impact their bottom line that much. I will say that I personally found working for a Cisco subsidiary pretty terrible relative to working for a startup but, hey, the checks cleared.