Grit

Co-Founder & COO Okta, Frederic Kerrest: Zero to IPO

Jun 20, 2022

01:19:20

In the early days of Okta, co-founder Frederic Kerrest was courting a 3,000-person company in Louisiana, which was considering Okta and one other vendor. When he learned who he was up against, he said, “We love competing with them ‘cause we beat them every time.” That arrogant boast lost him the deal, and taught him a humbling lesson: Your confidence is not superior to your customer’s needs.

In this episode, Frederic and Joubin discuss literally walking down memory lane in San Francisco, who his new book “Zero to IPO” is for, the value of time, the happiest nations on Earth, why Frederic prioritizes writing personal thank-you notes, why it’s better to be lucky than good, pivoting to an upmarket strategy, the letdown of being at the top, the problem with “product-led growth” in enterprise, “sharpening the contradictions,” and staying present.

In this episode, we cover:

Why Frederic wrote “Zero to IPO,” and why he leads it with a story about failure (08:23)
Entrepreneurship is a pie-eating contest (13:07)
Frederic’s direct communication style and the dichotomy between time and money (15:19)
His passion for hockey, and why he used to park his car around the corner (24:35)
Getting thrown out of two Okta board meetings in a row (29:03)
Surviving awful quarters and service outages (36:10)
How Frederic’s arrogance lost him a huge early deal (42:20)
Would he build a company from scratch all over again? (45:39)
Why Frederic doesn’t take phone calls on the weekends and the “oxygen mask rule” (54:06)
“Nothing happens until somebody sells something” (57:20)
Is Frederic personally affected by Okta’s stock price? (01:02:09)
The key players who receive a “ball bearing award” at Okta (01:07:22)
How taking on additional projects and working with a professional coach has extended Frederic’s time at Okta (01:11:48)

Links: