20VC: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon on How To Approach Effective Decision-Making in Leadership, When Is The Right Time To Hire Recruiters and Heads of People, Balancing the Expectations of Wall St with Long Term Vision and What Truly Successful Board Management
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2021
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Todd McKinnon is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Okta, the identity layer for the internet, providing one trusted platform to secure every identity, from customers to your workforce. Prior to their IPO in 2017, Todd raised over $229M for the company from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, a16z, Greylock, Khosla and Floodgate to name a few. Prior to founding Okta, Todd was VP of Development @ Salesforce.com where he spent an incredible 5 years and before that enjoyed an 8 year run in the software development team @ PeopleSoft.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Todd made his way into the world of startups with PeopleSoft and Salesforce? What was the a-ha moment for Todd with the founding of Okta? What were the biggest management takeaways from his time with PeopleSoft and Okta? How did Todd convince his wife that leaving a safe job with Salesforce to found a company was the right decision?
2.) How does Todd approach decision-making today? What frameworks does he use to optimise his decisions? How does Todd analyse reversible vs irreversible decisions? How does Todd know when he has done enough work and is ready to make the decision? Who does he debate the most important decisions with?
3.) What does Todd believe makes for a truly great enterprise software entrepreneur today? What were the first elements to break in the scaling of Okta? When is the right time to hire your first recruiters and Head of People? What should you look for in those people? How did Todd make mistakes when it comes to hiring recruiters?
4.) What are Todd's biggest lessons on successful board management? How would Todd describe his style of board management? How has it changed over the years? What can CEOs do to extract the most value from their board? What were the biggest mistakes Todd made in the early interactions with his board?
5.) How does Todd balance the growth expectations of Wall St on a quarter by quarter basis with the long term vision and strategy? Why does Todd believe that Okta has been able to make the transition from unsexy to one of Wall St's most loved companies? What is the secret to investor relations as a public company?
Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode
Todd’s Favourite Book: Slaughterhouse 5
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm very excited for our show today because not only |
| 0:04.4 | is he's CEO of one of Wall Street's darling companies, he's a fitness machine, he's an incredible |
| 0:08.8 | leader, and so with that I'm delighted to welcome Todd McKinnon, co-founder and CEO at Octor, |
| 0:13.7 | providing one trusted platform to secure every identity from customers to your workforce. |
| 0:18.9 | Prior to their IPO in 2017, Todd raised of $229 million for the |
| 0:23.5 | company from some of the best in the business, including Sequoia, Andresen Horrors, Greylock, |
| 0:28.3 | Coessler and Floodgate, to name a few. Prior to founding Octor, Todd was VP of Development |
| 0:32.6 | at Salesforce.com, where he spent an incredible five years, and before that, enjoyed an eight-year run in |
| 0:37.9 | the software development team at PeopleSoft. I do also have to say a huge thank you, though, |
| 0:41.9 | this schedule was a total team effort, so huge thanks to Frederick Carrest at Octor, Ryan Coulson |
| 0:46.5 | at Octor, Pat Grady at Sequoia, Vinod Kostler, and Neil Bushery. My word, such a team effort, and I so appreciated your help there. But before we dive into the show state, did you know that more than 80% of US public stock |
| 0:57.8 | is owned by just 10% of Americans? |
| 1:00.0 | This divide is even greater in the private markets. |
| 1:02.5 | Carter makes it as easy to issue equity to your employees as it is to issue payroll. |
| 1:07.0 | And for employees, as easy to accept it too. |
| 1:09.6 | More than 16,000 companies issue equity to their |
| 1:12.5 | employees through Carter, whether you're just getting started or getting ready to go public, |
| 1:16.5 | the team at Carter can help. Check them out at Carter.com. And then another incredible product you |
| 1:21.2 | have to introduce is Secureframe. Secureframe helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining |
| 1:26.7 | SOC2 and ISO-271 compliance. Secureframe helps companies get enterprise ready by streamlining SOC2 and ISO-271 compliance. |
| 1:30.4 | Secureframe allows companies to get compliant within weeks rather than the painful months that is today. |
| 1:35.5 | Join companies like Stream, Hussura, Benapos, and unlock more sales with Secureframe. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.