Founded in 2009 by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest in San Francisco, Okta was built to solve the critical problem of identity management as enterprises moved their applications to the cloud. Before Okta, managing employee identities across dozens of cloud applications was a nightmare of disconnected systems and manual IT processes. Okta became the neutral, cloud-native identity platform that could connect any user to any application securely. The company went public on NASDAQ in April 2017 and grew explosively, reaching a $30 billion market cap. In 2021, Okta acquired Auth0, the developer-focused identity platform, for $6.5 billion, adding a complementary customer identity product to its workforce identity offering. Today Okta serves over 18,000 customers including FedEx, MGM Resorts, and T-Mobile, protecting the identities of over 100 million people.
Active Founders
Todd McKinnon
Founder / CEO
Todd McKinnon is the co-founder and CEO of Okta. He previously served as VP of Engineering at Salesforce, where he saw firsthand the growing complexity of managing enterprise identity across cloud applications. Todd co-founded Okta after becoming convinced that identity was the most critical and underserved infrastructure layer in enterprise IT. He has led Okta through its IPO, its $6.5 billion acquisition of Auth0, and its evolution into the world's most widely deployed enterprise identity platform.
Frederic Kerrest
Co-Founder / COO
Frederic Kerrest is the co-founder and COO of Okta. He also worked at Salesforce before co-founding Okta with Todd McKinnon. Frederic has been responsible for Okta's go-to-market strategy, global expansion, and business operations. He is a prominent voice in the enterprise software community and co-hosts the Zero to IPO podcast, which provides advice for founders navigating the journey from startup to public company.
Okta