身份管理平台Okta估值6亿，已完成上市前最后一笔融资
Okta首席执行长Todd McKinnon
当Todd McKinnon第一次在2003年加入Salesforce.com,他的工程团队15人。到2009年,已经增长到了250名工程师。
McKinnon爱他的Salesforce的工作。他是高级工程副总裁,被认为是Salesforce.com的CEO Marc Benioff的门徒之一。
但McKinnon在云密码管理方面看到一个巨大的商机,他不能放弃。所以在2009年McKinnon离开Salesforce.com，推出自己的启动名为Okta，基于云的软件供应商管理用户账户和登录的Web应用程序。
Benioff显然不喜欢它。当McKinnon 想让他成为天使投资人时,Benioff夫拒绝了他。Salesforce工程师压力都很大,他们中有一些人后来加入了Okta。
但没多久McKinnon找到其他投资者。Andreessen Horowitz是其早期的投资者之一,首次在Okta云投资。到目前为止,Okta筹集了1.55亿美元从红杉资本等顶级风投,给予合作伙伴,科斯拉风险。现在价值约6亿美元。
现在1500多家公司使用Okta的服务,在过去一年销售增长了200%。尽管实际McKinnon拒绝透露销售数字,但他说Okta在明年有望扭亏为盈。
Okta庞大的增长实际上已经促使一些大公司,包括Salesforce和微软,创建类似的产品。“我们定义这个市场,但现在我们必须保持在最前沿,因为微软和Salesforce山寨产品,发布“麦金农告诉商业内幕。“在某种程度上,这些大公司都是验证我们创造了什么。”
当被问及他与Benioff的关系,麦金农说他们好聚好散。事实上,现在他开了自己的公司后,McKinnon说他慢慢正在理解Benioff。
Okta 6月筹资7500万美元,McKinnon说这将是最后的上市前融资。伴随着行之有效的商业模式，有了稳定收入,Okta上市可能不是太远,虽然McKinnon表示,它将不会发生在明年。”
上市是一个复杂的过程,比起IPO，McKinnon似乎更专注于更大的目标。“你可以有一个蹩脚的经验与60个不同的密码,或者我们可以给你一个好经验,”他说。“这是一个过时的做事的方式。密码真的需要现在就‘死’。”
以下是英文原文：
The Man Who Left Salesforce.com To Build A $600 Million Startup Takes It Personally When Employees Leave His Own Company
When Todd McKinnon first joined Salesforce.com in 2003, his engineering team had 15 people. By 2009, it had grown to 250 engineers.
McKinnon loved his Salesforce job. He was senior VP of engineering, and was considered one of the proteges of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff.
But McKinnon saw a huge business opportunity in cloud password management that he couldn’t pass up. It was an idea he knew was going to blow up, and he didn’t want to be that guy sitting there and watching it happen.
So in 2009, McKinnon left Salesforce.com to launch his own startup called Okta, a cloud-based software provider that manages user accounts and login for Web applications.
Benioff apparently didn’t like it. When McKinnon asked him to be an angel investor, Benioff turned him down. There was a lot of tension around Salesforce engineers, as some of them would later join him at Okta.
But it didn’t take long for McKinnon to find other investors. Andreessen Horowitz was one of its early investors, and made its first cloud investment in Okta. So far, Okta has raised $155 million from top VCs such as Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, and Khosla Ventures. It is now valued at roughly $600 million.
More than 1,500 companies use Okta’s service now, and sales have grown 200% over the past year. Although McKinnon declined to disclose actual sales figures, he said Okta is on track to turn profitable by next year, a feat a lot of cloud software companies struggle to achieve.
Okta’s massive growth has actually spurred some of the big companies, including Salesforce and Microsoft, to create similar products. “We defined this market, but now we have to keep it on the cutting edge because Microsoft and Salesforce released copycat products,” McKinnon told Business Insider. “In a way, these big companies are really validating what we’ve created.”
When asked about his relationship with Benioff, McKinnon said they’re on good terms. In fact, now that he’s running his own company, McKinnon says he’s come to understand Benioff better.
“I didn’t understand it as much at the time as I do now, but founding a company and being the CEO is very personal. You take it personally when people leave,” McKinnon said. “I take it personally when people leave Okta, and I’m sure Marc felt the same way, to some degree with me.”
But McKinnon reiterated he’s never been in a bad relationship with Benioff. If anything, it’s just their competitive nature. “Marc’s passionate about what he’s doing,” McKinnon said. “But competition is very motivating for us, it just fires us up. And we want to win. We want to be the top player in this space.”
When Okta raised $75 million in June, McKinnon said it would be its last funding before going public. With a proven business model that’s generating recurring revenue, Okta may not be too far away from going public, although McKinnon said it would not happen “in the next year.”
Going public is a complicated process, and with millions of dollars in the bank, McKinnon seems more focused on far bigger goals than an IPO. It’s about killing the password at the workplace. “You can have a crappy experience with 60 different passwords, or we can give you a good experience with one,” he said. “It’s an outdated way of doing things. Passwords really need to die now.”
【文章来源：YAHOO FINANCE】
扫一扫 加微信
hrtechchina
