Our Enduring Identity

The following note was sent to Okta employees this morning.

i·den·ti·ty ˌīˈden(t)ədē/ (noun) 1. the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

We’re proud that today is Okta’s first day as a public company. It is a rare and important milestone, and we celebrate the victories and hurdles both big and small that brought us to today.

We celebrate the day Ben Horowitz wrote us a check before a16z even had office furniture. We celebrate the day we signed our first customer (thanks for sticking with us, Xactly). We celebrate that our first cloud area network product never saw the light of day. We celebrate the day we changed our name to Okta (major upgrade from SaaSure). And we celebrate you, the employees who’ve chosen to start and end your days at Okta through every trial and success.

Today is an exciting day, but it doesn’t change our identity: who we are, how we act, or what we believe in. If anything, it is Okta’s identity — we’re people who put our customers first, hold ourselves to the highest standard of integrity, confront hard problems and solve them, believe no one is invincible, religiously wear Hawaiian shirts on Friday (some of us anyway) — that makes us confident in our path forward.

Okta’s identity makes us confident in our ability to answer to the public with honesty and transparency, to grow and scale wisely, to innovate and solve our customers most intractable problems, to create a workplace that supports growth, diversity and meaningful work, and to make technology easier and friendlier for everyone to use. We’re all familiar with the Okta saying “Always On.” That includes today, the day of our IPO, and each day that follows. It speaks to the mission-critical nature of our products, and acknowledges the trust that we must build with our customers every single day.

While the technology landscape and identity industry have changed considerably since 2009, we’re most proud that Okta’s identity hasn’t. Our deepest thank you to everyone who has taken on the challenge of building and owning Okta over the past eight years. To you, our employees, for all that you do, and to your families for the support they provide. To our customers for trusting us, transforming their businesses with us, and being our strongest advocates. To our investors for seeing the future with us.

We are Okta. We take pride in our identity, and the identities we protect. We’re just getting started.

Todd and Frederic