Co-Founder & COO Okta, Frederic Kerrest: Zero to IPO
Grit20 Juni 2022

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

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:

Avsnitt(274)

Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

Chief Sales and Success Officer at Slack, Bob Frati: Exploring Slack’s Key Growth Levers and Competition

In Episode #1 of Go to Market Grit, Slack’s SVP of Sales and Customer Success, Bob Frati, gives the inside scoop about the company’s sales and go-to-market strategy, and why they have been able to scale their go to market so quickly and effectively over the last few years. Bob and Joubin discuss two key topics in detail, outlining the next four years for Slack and key growth levers they can pull, along with growing competition in Slack’s market and what that means for their future. In this episode of Go to Market Grit, we cover: Key growth levers for Slack, and why the company is positioned for continued market dominance.Slack’s response to growing market competition, and why it’s ultimately better for the consumer and for the company.How Slack identified a business need and strong product market fit, and then worked to expand the solution to a broader audience. The importance of having a strong and developed customer-facing team to navigate complexities in large enterprises, and push business forward to completion.How Slack grew its sales team from 300 to 2,000 people — quickly, and effectively. Some of the factors that Slack looks for when hiring customer-facing sales staff, and why they value these characteristics.Why hiring should be a mutual fit for both the candidate and the employer.Identifying motivated individuals, and finding ways to tap into their motivation that will drive them to be successful. Bob’s career journey from sales rep to manager — including why and how he executed the leap. Why much of Slack’s success can be attributed to tight collaboration between its engineering, product, sales, and success teams. Slack’s ability to not only deploy a solution in an organization, but to help manage through the change and ensure success — and why this is a game-changer.Slack’s role in ushering a new way of working, and why it transcends the tired and overused digital transformation narrative in business.Links Host company: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/Loom: https://www.loom.com/ Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rfrati/Host Twitter: https://twitter.com/JoubinmirHost Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com

16 Juni 202050min

Grit Trailer

Grit Trailer

About the Joubin MirzadeganJoubin has been with Kleiner Perkins since 2019 where he advises the KP portfolio companies on how to build and scale a robust go-to-market strategy. Additionally, he enables the firm’s portfolio through high impact relationships with F500 executives and key ecosystem partners. Joubin was previously at Palo Alto Networks as a global district sales manager for the Central US based in Chicago where he scaled the Central Cloud business from 1 enterprise rep and $2M ARR to 12 reps and $50M+ ARR in 4 quarters. He has also worked for Evident.io as an enterprise account executive and at Bracket Computing (acquired by VMWare) where he built the inside sales team from the ground up.

20 Apr 202045s

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
varvet
rss-svart-marknad
rss-jossan-nina
uppgang-och-fall
lastbilspodden
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
avanzapodden
24fragor
rss-borsens-finest
bathina-en-podcast
affarsvarlden
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
borsmorgon
tabberaset
rss-dagen-med-di
kapitalet-en-podd-om-ekonomi
rss-en-rik-historia
dynastin