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First-Time Entrepreneur at 37: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2009?

Todd McKinnon: Ever since I was in high school I wanted to start my own company. The reason I did not do it earlier is that I always had good jobs, and the companies I was with kept challenging me. At PeopleSoft I had a new project every few years. At Salesforce we had a huge growth ride. When I started, there were 10 engineers and when I left, I was managing hundreds of them. Managing growth was a good challenge.

In 2009 I was at a point of my career where I had accomplished what I felt I was going to be able to do at Salesforce. If I was ever going to start my own company, there was never going to be a better time. It was a life timing, and a career timing, issue. With all of the change in technology where people were moving from software into cloud services, there was an environment of disruptive transition. During that period there would be big, important companies built. What you want as an entrepreneur is that level of change and disruption. I saw the opportunity and decided to go off and do it. >>>

First-Time Entrepreneur at 37: Okta CEO Todd McKinnon (Part 1)

If you haven’t already, please study our Bootstrapping Course and Investor Introductions page. 

Todd McKinnon is the CEO and co-founder of Okta, an enterprise grade identity management service, built from the ground up in the cloud and delivered with a focus on customer success. Okta enables IT management of access across any application, person or device. Whether the people are employees, partners, or customers, or the applications are in the cloud, on-premises or on a mobile device, Okta helps people become more productive and IT more secure.

Sramana Mitra: Todd, let’s start at the beginning of your story. Where are you from? What is the story to Okta?

Todd McKinnon: I am from California. I was born in Southern California but I grew up in the Bay Area. I always tell people that I am super lucky that the career I chose to go into happened to be the hotbed of the area where I grew up. All these smart people are born all over the world and have to move here, and for some reason my parents decided to move here in the 1970s, so I was raised in it. I am extremely lucky. >>>

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 7)

Sramana: What do you think of Sheryl Sandberg?

Maxine Manafy: I love the idea that she has stepped forward and is asking women to step up and move into leadership positions in industry. I think the structure could be louder. When I read her book and I see the advice she gives women I think it is amazing that she is telling people to step up. However, I want them to do it more.

If I am looking at a woman and you are telling me that you are going to put yourself in this box where you try to be nice as well as aggressive, reality is that something has to give. That will not work. I don’t know how you try to be politically correct and jump in the leadership role. I think what she did is needed and that more women leaders are needed.

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Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 6)

Sramana: How do you sell?

Maxine Manafy: We sell on a CPI [cost per install] basis. For the US, in desktop it might be a dollar for an install. On mobile we are seeing up to three dollars for an install. Those are pretty good rates.

Sramana: How do you scale this business?

Maxine Manafy: It scales with sales and building out the sales force is important to grow out the ecosystem. We have created additional products. We started on the desktop and have now built a PC to mobile product that sends you from the PC to the mobile space.

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Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 5)

Sramana: Your real value proposition is mobile to mobile ads, cross network. Is that correct?

Maxine Manafy: Yes, and on top of that we have targeting capability. There is an ability to have all of this data and leverage the targeting to make sure the ads were properly matched. One of our clients may not know that security goes well with banking, but we can provide that for them because we have seen that match work well. We can help the advertiser spend less time and money by targeting the user who really wants that app. >>>

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 4)

Sramana: What was the beginning of Bunndle? What made you start the company?

Maxine Manafy: It was the idea that we would help developers acquire new users. I saw a need to help developers get into an area that was dominated by big brands and big money. I raised some seed funding from a few angels in the area for a combined $1.5 million. It was very difficult because I did not have a co-founder at the time. Although I had a technical background I was not a coder. I had my MBA and had worked in business development so nobody wanted to talk to me. Nobody wanted to talk to an MBA. >>>

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 3)

Sramana: What role does the publisher play?

Maxine Manafy: The publisher who would host your app and promote it to the end user would also be in our network. They have the ability to approve or disapprove the ad in their channel. They are also interested in how relevant the app is to their channel. They want the user experience to be clean. When they agree we show that ad to the end user, it is important to use intelligence in this space or you are losing your ad dollars.

Sramana: It’s not clear to me that something as specific as an autism app would work in your network.

Maxine Manafy: That is a very specific case. We could certainly try. It would be a very different price point as well. >>>

Breaking the Norm: Maxine Manafy, CEO of Bunndle (Part 2)

Sramana: How did you view the competition when you were starting Bunndle?

Maxine Manafy: When I started Bunndle there were a couple of competitors in the market. They were not so much concerned about performance, activation and retention. They were really just trying to get as much money as they could from smaller guys. As an end user, as a customer, I wanted to see that experience improved. I wanted something that worked so I built Bunndle as an ad network for applications. Big or small, you can have the same amount of distribution with the same quality afforded to the big guys.

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