Recently, I spoke recently with Todd McKinnon, co-founder and CEO of Okta, a cloud-based enterprise management system that helps companies securely merge and control the identities of their users across multiple applications and devices. Todd shared his experience of starting the company, which now has more than 120 employees and explains that the first thing he learned was how to be CEO of a self-started company:
“Being the CEO when you have zero employees basically means that you have to solidify the vision. You have to be able to come up with and articulate to first your co-founders, and then the first few employees you hire, the vision of why you should exist. Because everything is against you when you have zero people.”
He continued by stressing the importance of ignoring the minor details, being tactical, and trying to figure out what works in the early days of a startup. McKinnon suggests that when looking for advisors and investors in these early stages to look for people with different backgrounds and experiences that you can lean on for advice. He also shared insight on how to modify the employee interview process and hire the right people.
Editor’s Note: Michael Abbott is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously Twitter’s VP of Engineering, and a founder himself. Mike also writes a blog called uncapitalized.
Todd McKinnon is the CEO and co-founder of Okta, an enterprise-grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and delivered with an unwavering focus on customer success. With Okta, IT can manage access across any application, person or device. Whether the people are employees, partners or customers or the applications are in the cloud, on-premises or on a mobile device, Okta helps people become more productive and IT more secure. Under Todd’s leadership, Okta has...
Okta is an enterprise-grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and designed to address the challenges of a cloud, mobile and interconnected business world. Okta integrates with existing directories and identity systems, as well as thousands of on-premises, cloud-based and mobile applications, to enable IT to securely manage access anywhere, anytime and from any device. More than 200 enterprises, including Allergan, BMC Software, Clorox, LinkedIn, T.D. Williamson and SAP, use Okta to increase security and...
Mike Abbott joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers as a partner in 2011. He focuses on investments in the firm’s digital practice, helping entrepreneurs in the social, mobile and cloud computing sectors rapidly scale teams and ventures. Mike serves as an expert resource on enterprise infrastructure, cloud computing and “big data.” He also helps entrepreneurs win the race for talent in a hyper-competitive recruitment environment. An engineering leader, entrepreneur and investor, Mike led the building of innovative, high-performance applications and...
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