Todd McKinnon

McKinnon holds a B.S. in business from Brigham Young University (BYU) and an M.S. in computer science from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Before joining Salesforce.com he spent nearly a decade in engineering and leadership roles at PeopleSoft.⁠[1][2]

From 2003 to 2009 McKinnon was overall head of engineering at Salesforce.com, during which the engineering team grew from 15 people to more than 250 and developed and launched Force.com and AppExchange.⁠[1][2]

In 2009 McKinnon co-founded the identity management company Okta with Frederic KerrestFrederic KerrestFrederic Kerrest is an entrepreneur and the co-founder and vice chairman of the identity and access management software company Okta, where he was chief operating officer from 2009 to November 2023. He is the author of Zero to IPO.Open the full entry; he serves as its chief executive officer and chairperson of the board.⁠[3]

On May 8, 2015, the a16zAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry Podcast released “a16z Podcast: Making Security More Useable,” in which McKinnon and Pindrop co-founder and CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan talked with a16z’s Michael Copeland. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on January 1, 2019.⁠[4][5][6]

The episode discussed whether security can be both strong and easy to use. McKinnon argued that security should also be attractive to users—for example, an employee who passes a stronger authentication step while traveling could be granted access to a broader set of data or applications. The conversation also covered why security policies that depend on users doing inconvenient things tend to fail, AppleAppleApple is a public technology company founded in 1976 and headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Its business includes the iPhone, Mac, iPad, wearables, and services such as digital content, payments, and cloud storage. The company builds its product system through in-house hardware, operating systems, and services.Open the full entry’s Touch ID as an example of tying security to the individual, and identity as the common thread for securing applications, data and connected devices.⁠[4][5]

On April 6, 2017, Okta announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 11 million shares of Class A common stock at $17 per share; the shares began trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol OKTA on April 7.⁠[7]

On May 3, 2021, Okta completed its acquisition of Auth0 in a stock transaction valued at approximately $6.5 billion; Auth0 operates as an independent business unit within Okta, led by its CEO and co-founder Eugenio Pace, who reports directly to McKinnon. McKinnon said in the announcement: “Identity is one of the most strategic investments an organization will make today.”⁠[8]

Okta: Official website: https://www.okta.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[3]