Author Archives: Todd McKinnon

About Todd McKinnon

Todd is the co-founder and CEO of Okta.

How to Flex Your Leadership Muscle: What I’ve Learned Going from Engineer to CEO

In a post this morning on Fast Company, I reflect on the management lessons I’ve learned since leaving salesforce.com to start Okta. Building and running a successful company, as a CEO, takes a completely different set of skills than running … Continue reading

Great Sales and Engineering Teams Share the Same DNA — For the Most Part

Last week, I welcomed Adam Aarons and Hector Aguilar to the Okta team and offered some thoughts, culled from my time as an engineer, on what constitutes a great engineering team. It was meant as a bit of advice (for … Continue reading

Lessons on Building a Great Engineering Team (and Why Rockstar Sales Teams Aren’t All That Different)

With Adam Aarons (SVP of worldwide sales) and Hector Aguilar (VP of engineering) joining the Okta team, I thought I’d reflect on what makes a great engineering team — and how that philosophy also applies to building a rockstar sales … Continue reading

What a Year It’s Been!

This morning, we announced the results of our business over the past year.  We have some incredible momentum. Reflecting on the numbers, it sunk in just how much we’ve accomplished since launching in January 2011. Our growth proves the hypothesis … Continue reading

Placing My Bets: A Year of Firsts in the Cloud for 2012

Today, in Forbes, I offer my predictions for what’s to come in cloud during 2012. It will be a year of firsts: major acquisitions, rapid cloud adoption, a new class of cloud employees and major security breaches are all in … Continue reading

20/20 Hindsight: A Look Back at My 2011 Predictions

It’s that time of year again. With 2012 upon us, industry leaders, writers and analysts are all placing their bets for what’s to come during the next 365 days. I’m expecting this to be a year of first for the … Continue reading

Okta on Stage at BoxWorks

I was thrilled to appear with Box.net CEO & co-founder Aaron Levie yesterday during his keynote at BoxWorks, the company’s user conference. What better place to talk about our vision for a cloud-first world, lead by a new generation of … Continue reading

Talking Cloud with our Investors

I recently sat down with two of Okta’s investors, Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz) and David Weiden (Khosla Ventures), to talk all things cloud: the biggest opportunities they see in the space, what it means for business, what’s next and why … Continue reading

Thoughts on Okta’s Series B Funding – Why Our Investors Participated and How We Pitched Them (Part 2)

Yesterday, I posted about how we pitched our investors for this latest round of funding on our disruption of the IT industry and why our solution is necessary for cloud to work in the enterprise. Today, I’d like to talk … Continue reading

Thoughts on Okta’s Series B Funding – Why Our Investors Participated and How We Pitched Them (Part 1)

As I’m sure you’ve seen, we announced today that we’ve closed our series B financing.  Khosla and Greylock, David and Aneel all bring invaluable experience as investors and operators to our team. Needless to say, we are excited. This investment … Continue reading

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