[00:00:00] Matt: Welcome to Mistaken Identity. Unexpected lessons for building great products that customers love. As a product leader, knowing your customer's identity is essential in developing and delivering products that really hit the mark. But there are a lot of myths surrounding customer identity that can lead to misguided product decisions. We're here to bust those myths and share strategies for product leaders on how to leverage customer identity to your advantage.

[00:00:28] Get ready to dive into the world of product leadership with today's guest, Casio Samia. Casio has LED hardware and SaaS product teams at some of the biggest names in tech, including Apple Digital, ocean and OK Zero. Casio is currently senior Vice president of product at Okta for the customer Identity Cloud, formerly zero with Cassio at the helm.

[00:00:50] Okta is helping organizations worldwide. Bring their applications to life while navigating the complex world of customer identity and access management or Siam. Stay tuned as Cassio shares his insights and expertise and offers valuable advice for aspiring product leaders in today's ever-evolving tech landscape.

[00:01:10] This podcast is brought to you by Okta, the world's identity company. With Okta, build the next era of identity into your tech stack. Learn more at okta.com. 

[00:01:21] Matt: And now in the studio today, welcome Cassio Sampaio. Cassio, welcome to the show.

[00:01:26] Cassio: Hey Matt. It's great to be here today.

[00:01:27] Matt: Really excited to have you. Really excited to get into, you know, your background and experience. But maybe before we get that, uh, into that a little deeper, maybe tell us how did you get into your role? Tell us a little bit about your role and how you got into it.

[00:01:40] Cassio: Yeah, so, uh, I think I'm the typical case of that accidental product person. Um, I ended up in product management after a decade, maybe a decade ish, long career, like in very technical roles, engineering, management, et cetera. Um, I always cared a lot about talking directly to my users and customers about why do you need the thing that my team is building right now? And because of that, of course I always got more of that, uh, customer exposure, which led me into more of a product role. I think you combined that also with the fact that very early my career, um, I was fortunate to be exposed to the business side of technology, like cost, like efficiency, like margins, pricing, et cetera. And because I worked very long hours, I became a product manager. So here I am.

[00:02:27] Matt: That's the key. That's critical. Uh, maybe could you explain a little bit about what Okta does and, you know, I'm familiar with it, but maybe for the listeners of the show who aren't and what's your role as Senior Vice President of product actually entails?

[00:02:39] Cassio: so our vision at Okta is to free everyone to safely use any technology. What that means is that we provide identity solutions for all use cases, right? Roughly. Workforce, customer use cases, like include, like all the different needs. That's identity, authentication and authorization, uh, typically require. Uh, and that's what, uh, what we do here at, uh, at Okta. Now talking a little bit about my, my, my role here, like in the, in the organization. So I currently run, uh, the product team for, uh, customer identity cloud, uh, at Okta. So roughly at Okta, we divide the, the world of identity into, uh, workforce employee identity and customer identity.

[00:03:18] And the latter is what, uh, my team, uh, takes care of. This is essentially the technology that became part of Okta through the Alt Zero acquisition. I had joined out zero, uh, uh, surrounded long a year prior to the acquisition. So I've been here for over three years now. Uh, and what Customer Identity Cloud does is that enables any company that's building consumer digital experiences or SaaS applications to very rapidly integrate our identity stack into that technology to make those apps more secure and more convenient to, to users.

[00:03:48] Matt: So pretty much every single application in the world.

[00:03:51] Cassio: Maybe 99.99% of them.

[00:03:55] Matt: I love it. Um, well that's great. Thanks for that background. Can you, can you tell us a little bit more about your experience working for Digital Ocean, maybe Apple and Okta as well, and, and what specifically stood out the most from each experience?

[00:04:09] Cassio: I think we have, this is episode one of like a four like season series. Like is we gonna need like a little bit of extra time to talk about this?

[00:04:16] Matt: we'll get your Netflix documentary all, all loaded here for sure.

[00:04:21] Cassio: Oh, clearly not. Um, so, uh, maybe chronological order like to, to help with this, uh, starting with, uh, with digital ocean. So prior to that, most of my career had been in, um, infrastructure, like mission critical technology. Uh, I never really worked in like purely consumer, uh, technology companies, but this was my first exposure to a fully product led growth company. So no sales reps. No direct sales force. Everything happens like through a website. You like the product, you sign up, credit card, boom, right? So that's fascinating. Hundreds of thousands of developers like on the platform, the number, just the sheer scale of it and all of that being done in this like super efficient way where it's basically a very direct relationship, like in between the product, people building the product and the customers using that, which was great for, for a product person to uh, to, to experience. You really helped me understand a lot the power, the value of transparency, communicating changes directly to . Users, targeting messages depending on the different types of usage patterns that your, uh, install base had. Social media engagement research at a whole different scale, given the sheer size of our install base.

[00:05:36] So that was digital ocean like in, not quite a nutshell, but a nutshell ish. apple. Apple is apple, apple is different. Um, And wants to join it. Like it really becomes very obvious that is more different than what expect from, uh, from the outside. I was part of the team that, uh, managed, uh, manages cloud infrastructure for Apple, uh, right. And I mean Apple, if you haven't heard of them, they're kind of big, lots of services, lots of user, user users, but it's unimaginable. At least it was for me, from the outside to get a sense of the sheer size, the number of projects that are running like concurrently, It will satisfy my curiosity from that perspective to see like a company of that sheer size and the relentless commitment that Apple has to their core beliefs of innovation, uh, customer like privacy, et cetera.

[00:06:25] So that was all very, very interesting. Now over to Okta. Uh, so I've been here for over three years, right? Like, as I said, um, like a little earlier. Um, and for me, like the highlight of this has been helping to bring Alt Zero into, like, into Okta. It's just fascinating. I had seen other types of integrations, acquisitions like m and a, but nothing at this size or nothing at this level of um, um, I mean, just the good fit. The perfect fit in like of the two technologies, the two like install bases, like coming, uh, coming together in the value, uh, of bringing two leaders in the space. Right? That's, to me is being sort of the pinnacle of what we are going through, like starting two years, um, two years ago. These are hard problems, like really hard problems, but those experiences don't come twice. Like maybe, I don't think they will come like twice in my lifetime. So I'm like making the most of it.

[00:07:21] Matt: Yeah, that's, that's an incredible, I mean, even story arc of yourself over the last couple years as well. And I think you, you really hit on something there too, where managing all that scale and complexity and needing to manage an integration of this size, while managing incredible growth for the company in general, right. It's, uh, it's quite amazing. I think, like, I'd love to talk a little bit about that as well. What do you think, what goes into fueling such remarkable growth that, you know, we've obviously experienced within the industry, but also at Okta in general?

[00:07:50] Cassio: I think there's a lot of factors. That, that are going into fueling this growth. But maybe, uh, the ones that come to mind, one is the relentless move to, to the cloud, right? You would hear, uh, Todd McKinnon, uh, our CEO talk about like this, like secular changes that are happening in the sec, the move, the digitization of different environments. And, um, I mean, there's a place for on-premises, there's a place for like data centers, et cetera. But the reality is that the, the cloud growth is, uh, it's unstoppable. Um, Combined that with the digital transformation projects that every company needs to be out there, needs to have, like forget if they're storefront or like providing services or reducing customer friction through a digital experience. So combine that and like for us in customer identity, it's like, The perfect storm, right? For, for us to, to be in. And then of course security. Um, there's not a single day that goes by and I'm gonna try to spare like our listeners here from any jargon or any cliches. I'm sure I'm gonna fail, but I'll try.

[00:08:53] Uh, the every day is a new breach, a new type of like threat, a new vulnerability, like that's out there. And um, like we are the part of it. Like we as identity, we are that technology then a lot of cases, Is that boundary in between your data, your privacy, like information like your customers and the bad actors that, um, like that, that are out there. And because users have been conditioned to experience, to expect seamless click one click experience like Amazon, right? It makes it very easy for you to, I know, go in debt like if you will, and spend all your money away with one click purchases. Or like Netflix is one click. You get to a hotel and you check in with your phone, get to your door, like type of thing. So that becomes an expectation for every, every human, uh, now in the face of earth. And that's what our customers are looking for. Customers in all different types of industries, regardless of where they sit in terms of, um, the innovation cycle, their customers have come to expect that, that experience from them. And that's what we're here for, right? To help customers like provide that.

[00:10:01] Matt: Yeah, it's certainly the expectation and I, I almost equate often when I'm talking to, to customers as well of, identity being this invisible hand, right? When it's not working, you certainly notice it. And when it is working and it's working well, it's something that you just expect. You expect to be able to use your phone to, you know, to just use it as your room key. You, you expect to be able to, with your fingerprints, sign into all of your applications. When you can't do that or there's friction in that process, it becomes a huge problem. Um, but I'd love to talk a little bit more about identity in general, and I think looking at, you know, what you and I are actually wearing today seems to be part of our identities to wear a three quarter, uh, black zip, uh, which is, which is awesome. But when we think about identity in general, how, you know, thinking about how we, we pull that into the product creation sort of element of it, how can we effectively, uh, identify and understand our customers' identities to build successful products?

[00:10:55] Cassio: No, that's a great question. And I think what we wearing has to do with the latitudes that we have chosen to live to right out. Cuz none of us are in the tropics. Like that's, uh, that's for

[00:11:03] Matt: That's true.

[00:11:04] Cassio: It may be a bit of a cliche, but cultural differences, regional differences like matter a lot. And it's funny because we talk about identities and like that is just makes for like a, a very, a very interesting topic in itself. Understanding that to start, like don't make assumptions that are the same just because you use social login, right? Like when you log in with Facebook or you log in with, uh, like your Google account, et cetera, that that same profile that you see if you run like a US Canada based business will apply if you go to Southeast Asia, like for example, right? You're gonna have differences in terms of a, there will be different apps, right? Like that's a, like the social networking ecosystem has some regional important differences, but there's also regulatory, there's political, like the political, more fragmented political environment that we live, uh, like these days, more restrictions in terms of the regulatory scrutiny that places like Western Europe, like the European Union.

[00:12:02] Like in general, like, or like Australia, et cetera, are subject to. So gotta be mindful of that. Um, the other thing too is very easy for us, uh, here, like in, um, like in a developed country to assume that of course everyone has like the latest device that's out there, so biometrics like, yeah, check. Everyone's got, it's such a false assumption. Right. Like you, uh, talk about pasky, like right now, is this like this huge thing that's happening, which we believe, but we gotta be mindful, right? That there's a whole, there's like billions of people out there that are on devices that are a very different generation, and you need to provide technologies that support all of that, uh, ideally with the same level of security. And then third, I think the nature of the business too is, is very important. What are you securing with your identity? Are you securing, um, Like healthcare, like records, uh, financial data, like retirement savings, like plans or 401ks, if you like, in my territory right now. versus all you're doing is like cashing, like a coupon for like a $5 discount on a, on a standard shop, right? Not that the visa is not important, but the level of sensitivity, how much you're gonna put users through in order to, to get through that. So understanding. That they tinted your users from that point of view is very, very important.

[00:13:20] Matt: what do you feel are some common myths or misconceptions about customer identity that product managers should be aware of? You know, when they're thinking about building their own products?

[00:13:28] Cassio: do we have like four hours for this one too, or is

[00:13:32] Matt: This is a, this is another documentary, another Netflix documentary.

[00:13:36] Cassio: That's right. Like the lord of the identity rings. That's good. The, I think what's most relevant in here would be most prospects, like, and developers like they, they come to us running. Dating house, right? We see this over and over again. You don't think of identity or most people don't think of identity that as discreetly as you think of, um, some other technologies that are like out there like cloud computing, obvious, like no, very few companies will think of building their own Kubernetes like infrastructure or their own virtual machines, but identity is not quite there like yet. So folks who start building an app and they are like, yeah, just a logging box. Just throw a logging box there like, and. And I think what happens then we see this over and over again is like a fast forward, like a little bit, and that it's just taking up so much time and so much cycles from the engineering teams, uh, that need to be, should be building value into the app. And now they are consumed by essentially what we do like in here. Right? Um, I think that's a huge misconception, like the customer identity. Still going through, like where people don't see them as a discrete technology like that. Um, I think we're making progress like in, in that front, but I think that that's a key one.

[00:14:53] Matt: I, I definitely agree with that, and I think even for alternate audiences that should, and that really benefit from identity, I think about being in a marketing role, and generally marketers and, and digital folks as well who are in digital roles, you know, are probably not aware of the benefits that a focus on this level of customer identity inside of your application can actually have, right? It can help you improve conversions, it can help you really drive that customer retention. Again, almost that visible, invisible hand mentality. But it's, it's really how you balance that security and user experience, and even privacy and compliance as well altogether. But deliver that in a, in a real perfect balance that kind of unlocks, uh, you know, the value for those, those, uh, those different parts of the business . Too.

[00:15:38] Cassio: uh, I think technology evolves in always in this direction of creating more abstraction layers, like over time, right? So if we go back to the beginning of my career, I'm gonna try to not date myself in here, but I'm like, maybe I will. Like where you had to build a lot more in-house, right? I, I happened. To work with identity way back when the off standards were like not around, none of this like was around, so we had to figure it out. The encryption that goes into your cookies to manage that session, like you keep that on a PHP like database that you build yourself over time, those things get more and more and more, more abstracted away. Uh, but customer identity is still not seeing as like a module, like a full, like mod encapsulated module like that. Uh, but it's getting there. Like I think that it's moving in the, in that direction.

[00:16:24] Matt: you know, the understanding of customer identity. How can it improve adoption, engagement, and really retention of of products?

[00:16:32] Cassio: I am not gonna say data is a new oil, because that is a cliche that like I refuse to, I won't cross that light.

[00:16:38] Matt: you told me no cliches.

[00:16:41] Cassio: No, but, uh, but in all seriousness, the, um, like bringing, trying to bring identity data into like what we call funnel analysis, right? At the end of the day, every company, regardless of what you're doing, all you want is to get thinking of that as a typical like conversion funnel, right? You wanna get users to come in, to sign up, to come back, to have a, a seamless experience regardless of them consuming a, afin having a financial transaction with you, So understanding that abandonment when customers are trying, or the user trying to log in. Right. Because of an authentication problem. What we see is that a lot of fun of analytics or analysis that are out there have much more focused on like the cart abandonment. Like it's sort of kind of like the post identity experience. Like once you're already logged in and you. Kind of blind to a lot of things that are happening on the, like, on the top end of that.

[00:17:34] When you look at the power of someone using a certain type of, uh, authentication technique, like how much faster they're able to resolve the challenge and with like rate of success, right? If you compare something like Face ID with a typical username or password, like an email link, Like it's orders of magnitudes faster and it's, most of the time it's gonna be resolved with perfection because you tend to look like yourself, like when you're staring at your phone, like most of the time you're carrying your own thumb, like around like that type of thing. Right.

[00:18:05] Matt: I, I, I don't know about the scenarios where people carry other people's thumbs around, but that's, that's for a different kind of podcast. I think the true crime broadcast will, but, uh, that's, that's all, that's all. Excellent. What about, uh, thinking about even strategies of, of things that product managers can think about? What strategies can product managers use to. Leverage customer identity knowledge and provide a better customer experience for their own applications?

[00:18:33] Cassio: think what's key here is trying to map the business value that's at the different identity strategy techniques or, uh, or I mean, just the techniques like we're having in terms of improving the different, the things that businesses care about. Right. For a lot of identity projects fail to get support from the business like side of the house, because people talk about like, yeah, we're gonna support OAuth. Like, I know what our office, I mean, it tends to be some of the unfortunate people that spend time like in that. But if I'm my market and I'm just trying to like, like launch a new product, a new promotion, et cetera, like I really like, I don't care and I shouldn't care. So, but if you translate that into business value, right? So let's think about it like mapping registration or your signup to conversion, like telling the story from that point of view. That's, uh, by using social login, by allowing you to sign up with Pasky, for example, you will convert customers like this much like faster, this much better quality of conversion. You prevent more fraud, you reduce, like exposure to account take over. Now you're talking right about business metrics that are mapped directly to it, to it. Log in, next step, log in equals retention. You sign up, do some stuff, log in, you came back for more. Make it seamless, right? Get the person right away to what the person is trying to do. I think that's, that's what's key is translate that we talk about the same thing, just using a different language, like a different vocabulary to it, and that helps, like, just helps to break those, those barriers.

[00:20:05] Matt: Absolutely I'd, I'd love to come back to something I think you mentioned earlier of sort of this concept of building technology yourself versus going with a solution that actually, you know, you can just implement right away. Um, That's sort of like building it versus buy, uh, buying the solution. I've, I've had a lot of conversations recently with, uh, through executive round tables, and this has been the actual focus, but I, I'd love to hear your take on, what would you say in terms of like, you know, when folks actually go to look at solving some of these problems, what would the state of the industry be today with regards to how they go about approaching, building it on their own or, you know, going to market in another different way?

[00:20:43] Cassio: you go a level up, uh, I look at the overall identity, um, industry or space, it's not, it's very, it's, it's a, the heterogeneous genius in a way where workforce, employee identity, uh, is much more mature as a technology, uh, as an. As a space like or a sub-industry, like if, if you will, in the sense that, um, most organizations when they're thinking about introducing some, like you, you growing your company, your startup like, or your large organization, you think of your, um, enterprise like directory, like single sign-on, like your MFA or . Something that, uh, you typically don't build most of the time you, you will buy. That doesn't happen in customer identity yet. Right. We were talking about how many organizations start building that in inhouse just to, to learn about that later. So it's important to understand like that there's two sides of that identity industry that's still a different levels of, uh, Uh, of maturity.

[00:21:42] And what's fascinating or obvious if you're an identity, but not if you're a little bit far away from that, is that there's a lot of shared components when you're building a workforce and a customer identity. You could argue that, uh, well, I do need a directory to store like my identities. Sure. But when you move up closer to the actual end user, the parts that are visible to the end user there, like need, there are significant differences, right?

[00:22:07] Like in a workforce environment. You may not necessarily impose that. Everyone uses like a company issued device. You may allow for bringing on device, but you still have control, like to drop something in that, uh, some type of mdm, some other type of technology that will help enforce a higher level security in into that device.

[00:22:24] Why consumer? That's just like some companies are able, depending on an app, right? The value of that technology should drop something to the device, but a lot of times you might not be able to. Um, and then how much customers. How hard your security policies can afford to be on a consumer device. Of course it's different than, than, than what it is for like, in the employee, in employee identity.

[00:22:47] So with that, those differences, like well understood. Um, just keeping in mind if you're talking identity, the customer identity, early stages, lots of things being built like, um, in-house. Um, and devs love to build stuff, right? Like I. I still write code, believe it or not. Um, I love to build stuff like, so do you wanna spend your time on this? Versus spending time on something that your marketing team is like, kind of like over there, like waiting for you to ship. I think those are the considerations.

[00:23:17] Matt: you get to choose where you focus your time on, right? To generate the, to generate the most value. I think that's really key. thinking about the folks on, you know, that are listening to this, to this podcast, this episode specifically, that might be starting out in product management or, or maybe aspiring product managers. What are, what's your experience of sort of the ups, the downs, the highs, the lows of creating a product? What are some of the things that you can share there?

[00:23:42] Cassio: Yeah, it's definitely, um, like not for the faint of heart to be a uh, like a b2b, uh, product like product, product manager. Um, but I think what's, and it's part of the fascination that I have with this, but also the challenges is that on the, on the very, like on the very same day, like you may be helping your account teams, your sales teams to just close like the marquee like customer that you've been working on for like six to uh, uh, like to nine months. And then the next second you may be dealing with some type of escalation. Like due to some, it could be security, it could be, uh, like an outage. It could be a customer specific feature, like a request that they need. At the same time, you wanna keep your teams focused on releasing continuous value, like to customers. You're coordinating market launches, you're doing research on partnerships and acquisi. So there's like you working on so much like, and I love it, if you recall what I said earlier, you worked long hours, right? Like so you, because you need to, but. The diversity of the different levels of altitude in terms of technology, business that you need to, um, to be prepared to do it is what, uh, make this fascinating.

[00:24:56] But also, uh, also very, uh, very, very challenging. and I think it's important to stay flexible right in the way, uh, like that, uh, that, that you get there. Um, you may know the destination, but the path to get there, you have to, you have to be willing to adjust and iterate, right? Like you still have a lot of the old, if you will, philosophy that's, uh, your right is perfectly aligned, beautifully like outlined GaN chart, like you put that on the wall and come back two years and you'd be there. Like it's proven to fail over and over again, right? So setting that destination. Like in there and allowing the teams to, to figure out the best way to get there. You may need to adjust, you may need to course correct, but staying flexible, like keeping your sort of like an open mind so that I think it's key to enjoy the enjoy the ride.

[00:25:50] Matt: I love that. I love that point. You know, flexibility, adaptability, it sounds like that those are real strong characteristics that a product manager needs because you are Jack or Jill of all trades. Right. To, to, to put one of my own cliches in there. I I, one, you know, number one cliche on the board there, so I'm

[00:26:06] Cassio: Good job.

[00:26:08] Matt: But, uh, another question I was thinking about disruption when you were talking there about, you know, sharing your experience of, of how you build, you know, strong products and. In your, you know, your thoughts, your experience, and your opinion, what's the importance of being a disruptor? Right? Like why do large companies need to disrupt more?

[00:26:25] Cassio: eight hundred and seventy six. Like, or, or not, uh, let's do it.

[00:26:30] Matt: I guess I'm not catching up then.

[00:26:33] Cassio: So if you're not disrupting, you're being disrupted. Sure. The barriers of entry in technology are generally low. Sure. Like depending on the business, like there you are in, if you have massive amounts of, um, like physical assets, like involved, is that easy to go after the cloud computing, uh, business and displace lots of capital? They have to go into that, right? Like they, um, The cost per unit that some of these large companies are able to, to negotiate is, will be hard for like any other organization or small organizations to do, to do. But in software, um, things move very fast. Newer companies have, don't have legacy, right? Not having legacy is a, like, it's a blessing if you think of, uh, of software, of software technology, right?

[00:27:20] So there's always gonna be someone looking at a way to do what you are doing, like cheaper, better, faster, like, and if you get two of them, Right, you're already like onto like building, uh, building, building your business. Large companies have this capabil velocity problem, like you're always working on the thing that your existing customers need and you have to try to create some capacity to work on, call it horizon three, call it like long-term, whatever terminology you wanna use it.

[00:27:48] So it's existential if you, if you're not setting aside time resource to work on that, someone else will. And if you look at. What has happened over the past few decades, like four data from yesterday, markets moved. So this may be different like by the time listeners tune in, but, um, four of the top 10 companies by market cap were not around 30 years ago.

[00:28:12] Right. Um, and if you wanna stretch that a little bit and add two companies to that, the number goes up to six and 40 years, but let's just stay with 30 and four like for now. Uh, so when I graduated, which was like, sure, your lessons like, oh my, Lord, this was like a long time ago. Yes. When I graduated, the companies I aspire to work for, they are not the same ones that like folks are graduating now are like, it's been completely upended.

[00:28:36] Um, from, from like, from that perspective. And it's not slowing down. Like I know there's a lot of talk about technology domination by a small number of players, like et cetera. Uh, but the innovation that we are seeing, the number of new entrants that we see every week coming in now with all the, um, Uh, like the AI like revolution that's happening, uh, and Matthew and I saw firsthand like a certain company dominant, like at one point in Southwest and Ontario, how rapidly that's uh, uh, became something very different, right?

[00:29:06] Matt: Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's almost when you're not disrupting, you're, you're losing sight of the future vision. Uh, and I really like what you said there about companies that even weren't around in the past decade. Uh, I saw something really interesting recently about all of the companies that have been founded since the last time the Toronto Made Beliefs won a playoff series, it is a list of almost a hundred, a hundred companies. You know, uh, like Gmail, YouTube, Snapchat, WhatsApp, like all of these applications hadn't been, uh, created yet. But maybe thinking about that theme of, of future thinking and future vision. Cause I really like that. I wanna. Kind of understand that a bit more. Even for, for the listeners too, what would you say or what are some things you wish you knew about product management five years ago?

[00:29:53] Cassio: What about 20? Like there will be more applicable. Let's, let's stick to five. Um, the, even I think even if you are in a b2b, um, if you go back B2B technology or the, even the notion of B2B was a quite out there. Like if you go back a little, like a little further, right? You're either building a firewall, you're building like some network equipment, you're building a server, um, or some type of software that you ship like on a, on a dvd, v on a cd. Like now people are, now people are just like switching off, like at the moment I say CD lost half of the listeners. But um, like, like we were just saying, like things have moved on like a lot and now we work, we operate in this world of everything is. Everything. There's an expectation that you are gonna be very transparent about your releases.

[00:30:46] You're gonna be very transparent about why you specifically, you face a certain type of outage. These things didn't exist in the past, right? Companies by definition. Um, did not want any transparency. Like you ship your DVD to customers like you, there's a support line. The transparency would be whatever the companies have to type on your support ticket, like those days are long gone, right? And I thinkthis change happened like faster than a lot of professionals in the industries were ready to like, to accept. Like I myself had to adjust my ways of working, uh, by going into that. But once you embrace it, I think it makes it so much easier to understand and create that, uh, customer connection, that developer connection, that user connection that builds trust, increase their um, Like their reliance on you and your ability to, to, to, to, to collaborate, like with them. Um, so this is something that happened potentially over the past, uh, decade. Um, but uh, yeah, it was a big change. Like from how product managers like think about engaging with their, like with their customers.

[00:31:48] Matt: big change. And that's really great advice I think for any of the product folks out there listening to this as well. Um, What about product management skills? What are some underrated product management skills you think that are, you know, great product managers have?

[00:32:02] Cassio: at, at a very high level, at a very, maybe like the opposite, like at a very low level. I think the attention to detail is one of the things that separate like, awesome product managers from even very good product managers. You have these individuals that, they're just relentless. They will like look at a specific, they, they'll look at the docs, they'll look at the really, the press release, et cetera, and they'll get in and they wordsmith like every single aspect like, like of it. And the graphics are not right. And like I look at the ma i, I look at the docs, I look at the. Like at the sdk and you know what, like the way that works in the dashboard, the api, like you need that obsession like with that, uh, to be able to build the things that customers really, it's . A very competitive space.

[00:32:51] We talk about barriers of entry, like the differentiation sometimes would be that last mile, right? It be that last like, level of details. So I think that's number one. If you wanna be a great product manager, be obsessed with the details, like the matter, um, and push your teams in that direction. More broadly, I would say more general skills. What I found in my career to be very useful, uh, is to be to, to be able to, to understand the legal and finance implications and how to talk to your finance and legal partners. Like in, like particularly as your organization scales up. A lot of companies, the relationship with legal finance becomes a little more adversarial with product. Um, which doesn't have to be, I think a lot of that falls on us. To be more, be able to be conversational, like on the language, on the terminology, understanding where like those teams are, like are, are coming from, I'm a little bit of a sucker for those topics, so I really enjoy reading contracts. Like now we lost another two thirds of the listeners in here, but, um, I think it helps, like helps, helped me a lot.

[00:33:57] Uh, and then it gets everyone on the same side of the argument. Everyone is trying to ship products. Everyone is trying to like, sell more to customers, like to improve customer like satisfaction. It just turns everyone into partners. Like instead of, um, adversaries.

[00:34:11] Matt: It. It's such a good point as well about both finance and legal, of building relationships with those teams because they're not departments of, no, they're basically risk management departments. Right. And even with finance, they're trying to manage the financial risk of the business, and legal is trying to manage the risk of the business, so they need to understand. That what we're seeing, the product actually does, does what it says. So it's a, it's a really good point of, I think, you know, looking to build strong relationships with those, uh, with those teams because it is critically important, I think, to your success as a product manager as well going forward. Really good points.

[00:34:47] Cassio: In the technology. If you think of our technology in particular or a lot of. B2B infrastructure as a service, platform as a service. Um, you may not be thinking about as you're building the product, but the product may be underpinning critical infrastructure. It may be underpinning access, uh, privilege access, like to some type of pipeline, water supply, healthcare, right? It's beyond, it's beyond just giving a customer the ability to sell. Sell products like proceed, a successful checkout to buy some very, very important things that you couldn't live without it, that has to have to ship overnight cuz they really needed, like tonight, right? We're talking about things that could disrupt, like cities could disrupt infrastructure and that's of course you have significant legal implications like to that like, and how do you ensure that, uh, to your point, like that the product works to spec, right? And the spec in that case is a whole different level of rigor and expectations.

[00:35:47] Matt: what about the future? When we think about the future of customer identity, what does the future of customer identity and access management look like? And how is Okta positioning itself for that future?

[00:35:57] Cassio: Fundamentally, the customer identity problem will continue to be about the balance of convenience and security, right? We use that terminology a lot like here within, uh, within Okta, and it's, it's really not a cliche, but it's the reality, right? When you're building an app, that's what you're trying to do. You're trying to get users. As fast as they can, as safely as with the minimum acceptable level of security like that your business is willing to, to tolerate or to accept if, if you will. There's a lot of technologies, we'll continue to invest heavily on that, right? There's paske, that's an important piece of the puzzle, not the only one but's an important one that's, uh, like that, that, that is coming. You wanna bring, um, as many. As many login options or identification options for users, you want to bring the ability to use their phone number. Uh, you want to bring the ability to use like a random, not a random, but like a different account.

[00:36:54] Identify. If you're logging into your mileage, like plan, service, your mileage plan Id may be the actual like number, like your email may be a secondary, like given the level of flexibility for users to do it is very key, uh, for, for our future. Um, we also believe that. We talked a little bit about the reliability and the importance of like these apps being always on.

[00:37:19] We have this, um, concept that we, we, we created internally that I think even it was posted externally on a couple of blog posts of ours. This notion that we see identity as a Tier zero service, uh, something that's, uh, Chev and Ramji, my boss, smart guy for the record by the way, posted. Uh uh, which is we expect we build something that we expect to be always on.

[00:37:41] Available everywhere in the globe with the highest levels of performance. Right? Performance measured as like response times as ability to scale up in terms of requests. So that's the other part that we continue to invest a lot because now customer identity is on every customer touchpoint. We are an inpatient bunch.

[00:37:58] We are not willing to click and expect that to respond in seconds. Right. We become very patient. Uh, and and the last part is, um, You're not gonna win alone, like on this, right? Like it's an ecosystem play. The world is, um, the API economy to use cliche number 916 like, but it's real. Um, and to make Siam successful, our philosophy is extensibility.

[00:38:25] First. If customers want to integrate that with any system that they have or they licensed. We don't necessarily care. Like they can do that on their own. They don't, we don't have to stay in the way of them doing that. And at the same time, bringing more partners like to that ecosystem. So then when customers come to us, there's more of a menu.

[00:38:43] Hey, we worked with all of these hundreds of companies. We know, we've proven that integration actually works. So then it gets them faster, uh, and more efficiently to to market.

[00:38:53] Matt: Cool. All right. Now we're gonna go through some quick hits, some fun questions, fun question time. what is your favorite thing that you're reading or watching right now?

[00:39:03] Cassio: don't watch a lot of television. Um, am I even allowed to say television these day? Is the word even a word

[00:39:09] Matt: Yeah. You know what I don't understand is how do children understand the word videotape? Because my, my kids say that, can you videotape me doing this all the time? And I'm just like, how do you even get that word? Like, how do you understand? It's kind of like how it's how the save icon is a little, uh, floppy disc.

[00:39:26] It's like, how. How do you understand what a floppy disc is? I know what it is, and that's dating myself. But anyway, I digress.

[00:39:34] Cassio: No, that's great. That is great. So I, I just finished reading, um, a book called Wonderland, how Play Made the Modern World. It's by Stephen Johnson. Stephen Johnson is one of my favorite. L like authors, like writers, like, and this book tried to tell the, it's very ambitious, right? Tells the history of the world from the perspective that humans were just trying to have fun.

[00:39:56] And that's why everything happened. It didn't happen because we are looking for economic or political, like improvements or achievements or more wealth. It happened because we wanted to eat like. Delicious food you wanted to like, enjoy good music and read like interesting things and then everything followed.

[00:40:14] So it's, it's, it's fascinating. Um, hopefully some folks who will pick that, uh, take a look at that.

[00:40:20] Matt: That's awesome. I'll have to check that one out. Absolutely. if you had to live anywhere in the world, where would that be?

[00:40:26] Cassio: You know the answer to this one.

[00:40:28] Matt: Waterloo, Ontario.

[00:40:30] Cassio: I live there. I, but it's not like nothing against my. My adopted homeland. But, uh, I love Southern Europe, places that make great wine. Um, not all places, but like southern European places that make great wine, love them. Uh, in particular the Iberian Peninsula and more specifically Portugal, right?

[00:40:50] The, the combination of food people where their lifestyle I think is unbeatable. And the last thing I think to the helps here is that I did my, um, ancestry. Like g a test and he came back as 95% Portuguese. So

[00:41:04] Matt: No kidding. Well, there you go.

[00:41:06] Cassio: calling back. It's calling me back.

[00:41:08] Matt: They're trying to bring you back home. That's awesome. What about the best advice? What's the best life advice that you've ever gotten?

[00:41:18] Cassio: Oof. Okay. Um, okay, let's go back to books. Um, because I. Think the, maybe the, the best advice I got was by reading a lot. And, um, I got into, into like stoicism, like reading about the stoics, um, several years, like back. And it's a very powerful like, philosophy. I'm not very good at following like them. Like I'm not, like I'm argue that I'm like Greek level or Roman level, like I'm still working my way up there.

[00:41:49] But, um, Some of the principles I think really, really help to shape the way I try to, to to operate like one of them is this idea that you don't set your expectations like either like to the best or the worst possible scenarios, but that you think about all of them and you prepare yourself for those outcomes.

[00:42:08] But you sort of like frame your expectations. I think a narrower scope like in there, because then there's no surprises. Right. Just not expecting to become a billionaire tomorrow or to not have a place to live. Like, so you're working within something more, uh, more like, more moderate like that. So I think that's been very liberating when you're able to do it.

[00:42:31] You just face things like in much more factual terms without like less emotions and, um, no, that's being, that's being transformational for me.

[00:42:39] Matt: I love that it's focusing on obviously what you can control, what's in your span of control, and then move on. That's really great advice. What about the best? What's the best tech advice that you've ever gotten?

[00:42:50] Cassio: okay, so we talked that I quit TV ages ago. Um, but I read, and a lot of what I read, I'm gonna offer a contrary point of view here, like, which, if you know me, you know, I do that quite, quite a bit. Uh, but starting the 2010s, I start reading a lot of. About the potential harm that some of the new, so many new technologies can do to us both as societies or as individuals, uh, mental health, like et cetera.

[00:43:18] Um, there's a bunch of things I read that are great books, so I'm gonna just list them out here if anyone is interested. I think they're all fascinating. Like technology, solutionism, you are not a gadget. Weapons of math des uh, math destruction, the cyber effect, um, the silo effect and future shock. I'm not a ladi, I'm not a type of person that you like.

[00:43:38] Oh, like I, I don't even know how to use a computer. No, I'm not like that. But I believe the technology serves us. We don't, shouldn't serve technology. The offline world is awesome. Right. I love offline like too. It's proven for millennia to have been working, like for us, for, for the most part. So I think that's, to me is like balancing how much you dedicate ourselves.

[00:44:01] Technology versus having technology serve you. It's how we think about it.

[00:44:06] Matt: I feel like he could have, you know, rewound a couple thousands of years and said, you know, if we had the same conversation, you'd say, I'm looking forward to the wheel. I, I think it's a, it's an incredible invention. Um, I mean, I'm really looking forward to the wheel, but what, uh, what, what technical development are, are you looking forward to?

[00:44:27] I am, I'm sure it's not the wheel. There has to be something else.

[00:44:30] Cassio: Yeah, I think if I said that we will really date myself, um, no, we don't have the time machines like just yet. Um, I, I think I do. I'm not even allowed to say anything that's not related to artificial intelligence. Am I? Like that's, I, I, I'm

[00:44:45] Matt: feel like we have to.

[00:44:46] Cassio: Like if I had time, I would ask Chad g PT to answer that question for me, but I won't like, and I'll let you under wonder if Chad g p t answered all the other questions that Matt just asked me, but maybe not.

[00:44:56] Um, I am very interested in how the development of, um, this general, uh, large language models and the G P T tech, like we'll have in terms of the regulatory, um, like implications like government, uh, position, like in respect to that like. And everything like in between, right? Like successful technologies are the ones that help to change society without like breaking it, right?

[00:45:23] Or without the fear of breakage, right? Because if the fear exists, then it typically drives an over like reaction that, that we don't want to see it. So of course, like everyone else, we're following those developments of this type of technology very uh, uh, very closely. It has potential to just make everything so much better.

[00:45:43] Forget, I, I personally don't believe in this fear mongering that we're just gonna get rid of jobs because you know what, this has happened before it was industrial revolution. Like it's just happened before. And for the most part, we actually have quite the opposite problem right now, like right unemployment, so low, like in Soma in some geographies.

[00:46:02] But I'm curious to see the development this in line with how the regulatory and political like systems are reacting to it.

[00:46:10] Matt: I, it's, it's, it's amazing that we, you know, have gotten to this point and really haven't touched on artificial intelligence. And I think the impact that it's having on the technology industry, I feel like the pace of change that it's driving is just, it's incredible, right? You look around and it's like every single day.

[00:46:28] There's a new like L l M. There's a new model. There's a new version of G P T. There is a something that is new. There are so many co-pilots now. It is unbelievable. That I kind of think about how this, how I think about the application of it, right? To your point of, it's not that it's going to make a whole bunch of jobs obsolete.

[00:46:49] Well, that might be one piece of the puzzle for the jobs that are ready for disruption, right? I think the other piece is that it's going to also open up a whole nother, you know, uh, line of, of working with these types of technologies to improve the quality of life, to make things easier too. Dual of these things.

[00:47:08] And, uh, you talk about disruption. I mean this, I, I don't know if there's another technology out there that exists today that is more disruptive, uh, you know, than, than AI and, and, uh, G P T technologies.

[00:47:20] Cassio: Yeah, no ab like absolutely. And um, this is something I'll be monitoring very closely.

[00:47:26] Matt: Excellent. Well, Cassio, listen, I wanna thank you for joining us today on this episode of the Mistaken Identity Podcast. It's been incredible getting to know a little bit about your background, your story on how you've approached developing, you know, great products, and even some of the challenges and the misconceptions that you, you've encountered along the way. So thank you very much for joining today's podcast.

[00:47:43] Cassio: Thanks so much for having me, Matt. This was great.

[00:47:46] That's all for this episode of the mistaken identity podcast. Mistaken identity is brought to you by Okta, your strategic partner for building awesome customer identity experiences. Discover how by visiting us at okta.com.