Jon Gelsey: Identity Product GTM Insight from Auth0’s Early Days
Jan 10, 2024
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Jon Gelsey, Founding CEO of Auth0 Inc, shares insights on building Auth0, technology adoption, and avoiding disruption by embracing change. He discusses the role of big tech in identity management and the importance of innovation in staying competitive. Gelsey emphasizes the user-centric approach and the future of secure identity practices.
Auth0 focused on developers for identity management, not security engineers.
Product-led growth strategy attracted big enterprises without targeted marketing.
Technology adoption is incremental, not revolutionary, for gradual industry impact.
Companies must disrupt themselves to stay ahead in evolving markets.
Deep dives
The Early Days of Auth0: Unique Approach to Identity
Auth0 took a different approach by offering an abstraction layer on top of existing identity infrastructure to simplify usage. Similar to companies like Stripe and Twilio, Auth0 aimed to make identity management easier for enterprises with complex existing systems. Their focus on selling to developers rather than security engineers set them apart in the market.
Product-Led Growth Strategy: Appeals to Developers
Auth0 successfully employed a product-led growth strategy by appealing to developers with a free sample and extensibility features. This approach led to big enterprises adopting Auth0 organically without targeted marketing efforts towards larger companies. By focusing on creating a robust and user-friendly product, Auth0 attracted a loyal customer base.
Incremental Technological Innovation: Key to Adoption
John Gelsi highlighted that all technology adoption follows an incremental approach rather than revolutionary changes. Drawing parallels to past innovations like the iPhone, he emphasized the importance of making technology easily adoptable and accessible, leading to gradual but impactful changes in industries.
Challenges for Reusable Identity in Big Tech Dominance
The discussion revolved around the future of identity management and how startups in the identity verification space can thrive amidst big tech dominance. John highlighted the cautious approach of incumbents like Microsoft, Google, and Apple towards adopting disruptive technologies like reusable identity, emphasizing that their strategies often involve acquiring proven solutions rather than building them from scratch.
Navigating Disruption: Cannibalizing Your Own Business
Addressing the dilemma of disruptive innovations, the conversation explored the concept of companies cannibalizing their own business models to embrace new technologies. John emphasized the importance of recognizing market trends and strategically disrupting one's own offerings to stay ahead of competition, even if it means short-term revenue implications.
Importance of Defensibility and Market Perception
The conversation delved into strategies for companies facing potential disruption in established markets, highlighting the significance of creating defensibility through high switching costs and brand perception. Emphasizing the value of aesthetic user experiences and strategic positioning, the discussion underscored the need for companies to adapt proactively to evolving market demands.
Future of Identity: Incremental Evolution and Security
John shared insights on the future of identity, foreseeing an incremental evolution towards easier and more secure authentication processes. He highlighted advancements in technologies like verifiable identity and emphasized the potential for innovative solutions like Trinsic to drive positive changes in identity management practices.
Collaboration and Continued Exploration
In wrapping up, the podcast encouraged collaboration and knowledge sharing within the identity industry. John expressed his enjoyment in exploring new technologies and contributing to innovative projects while keeping an eye on potential future endeavors. The episode concluded with a call to share the insightful content to further enrich the industry's understanding and progress.
In this episode, we talk with Jon Gelsey, founding CEO of Auth0 Inc, which sold to Okta for $6.5B, as well as the CEO of Xnor.ai which he sold to Apple for $200m.
Jon told the story of the early days of Auth0, including how they got their first $1m of revenue. Then we spent time diving in to how new technologies get adopted—Jon even went as far as saying that technology adoption is always incremental, not revolutionary.
Then we talk about the role of big tech, and why he doesn’t think reusable identity will be dominated by massive incumbents. That led us to talk about what he would do if he were running a company whose business model could be cannibalized by reusable identity, which is that he would look to disrupt himself in a safe way.
This was a rare look into some great advice from one of our industry’s best operators.
