OKTA

Todd McKinnon was SVP of Engineering at Salesforce and Frederic Kerrest was VP of Business Development at Salesforce. They left in 2009 to start Okta.

Their insight was that the shift to cloud computing was creating an identity crisis — literally. Companies were adopting dozens of cloud apps (Salesforce, Workday, Slack, Zoom), and employees needed separate logins for each one.

IT departments were drowning in password resets and security vulnerabilities. Microsoft had Active Directory for on-premise identity, but there was no cloud-native solution.

McKinnon and Kerrest built Okta as the identity layer for the cloud — a single sign-on system that lets employees log in once and access everything. They launched in 2010 and grew quickly as cloud adoption accelerated.

Okta is a SaaS platform charging annual subscription fees based on the number of users and products deployed. The Workforce Identity Cloud handles employee access management (single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, lifecycle management).

The Customer Identity Cloud (based on the Auth0 acquisition) handles customer-facing identity for applications. Revenue exceeded $2.4 billion in fiscal year 2025.

The subscription model creates strong recurring revenue with high retention rates.

Okta's Workforce Identity Cloud provides single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), lifecycle management, and API access management for employees. The Customer Identity Cloud (Auth0) provides authentication, authorization, and user management for consumer-facing applications.

Okta Identity Governance manages access policies and compliance. Okta Privileged Access manages admin and root access to infrastructure.

Over 18,000 customers use Okta, including FedEx, Nordstrom, T-Mobile, and Siemens.

Okta grew by positioning itself as the neutral identity layer that works with everyone. Unlike Microsoft (which has its own competing products), Okta integrates with 7,000+ applications regardless of vendor.

They grew bottom-up — IT teams adopted Okta to manage cloud app access, and usage expanded as companies added more cloud apps. The Auth0 acquisition for $6.5 billion in 2021 added developer-focused identity and expanded the addressable market to customer identity, not just employee identity.

Microsoft is the constant threat. Azure Active Directory (now Entra ID) is Microsoft's identity product, bundled with Microsoft 365 at no extra cost.

Competing with a free product from the world's largest software company is structurally difficult. Okta was also breached via its support system in 2023, and a separate incident in 2022 involved the Lapsus$ hacking group accessing Okta's internal systems.

For an identity and security company, being hacked is reputationally devastating. The Auth0 integration has been complex and slower than expected.

Andreessen Horowitz led the Series A, with Greylock Partners also investing early. Sequoia Capital, Khosla Ventures, and Jericho Capital Management participated in later rounds.

The IPO in 2017 raised $187 million. The Auth0 acquisition in 2021 for $6.5 billion in stock was the largest in Okta's history.

Notable board members have included Ben Horowitz (a16z) and Pat Grady (Sequoia).