Congrats on The IPO, Okta — and Thanks

Today, Okta, an identity management software company went public [NASDAQ:OKTA]. It closed up 38% on its opening day with a market capitalization of $2.1 billion.

I was supposed to be there to help celebrate this milestone (as I was one of the early, early investors in the company,) but sadly could not make it out. Also, I’m not very good at celebrating. The night of the HubSpot IPO, I left the party at like midnight or something. Totally lame.

The Story Of Freddy and My Best Investment Ever

Frederic Kerrest is the co-founder and COO of Okta.

Freddy and I originally crossed paths through the MIT Sloan network (he started at MIT the year after I graduated).

Freddy was (and is) amazing. Super-smart, super-passionate and a true force of nature.

We tried really hard to recruit him to join HubSpot. And by “tried to recruit”, I mean he was gracious enough to meet with us despite the fact that HubSpot was an early-stage startup in Cambridge with two mostly clueless founders (who are now, somewhat less clueless).

Needless to say, he didn’t join. But, we stayed in touch, and when Brian (my co-founder at HubSpot) and I were on the west coast for some meetings, we met up with Freddy for dinner in Palo Alto. Just the three of us. During that dinner, out of the blue, Brian looks at me across the table and says three words that I’d never heard him say before: “You should invest.” I agreed, and told Freddy that I’d love to invest. Freddy said he’d love to have me, and so it was done.

I’d like to say I did it because I had the brilliance to recognize the idea for what it was. Or because I recognized the massive market opportunity. But, neither of those things is true. I invested because I loved Freddy.

I hadn’t yet met Todd McKinnon, Freddy’s co-founder (and CEO) but I had heard great things.

Then I met Todd…

Months later, I met Todd. This was over a nice dinner in San Francisco (those that know me know that I’m OCD about nice dinners). Todd, Freddy and I spent hours chatting about startups and business. If I had any doubt about my decision to invest, it was gone by the end of that dinner. Todd is the real deal. That perfect mix of great engineering talent with a high EQ. And, he was humble too. I love people that have a high accomplishment/ego ratio. Todd’s was remarkably high (he had previously run engineering at Salesforce.com)

Thanks, guys

So tonight, my wife and I raised a glass to Todd, Freddy and the Okta team. Thanks for making me look like a smarter investor than I actually am.

I hope you folks are celebrating properly right now (it’s about 1:30am here on the East Coast). If I know Freddy, the party’s just getting started.

I love seeing great people get the success they deserve.

Cheers.

Appendix: Some Fun Facts

1. The original name of the company was SaaSure. I’m no branding expert, but I think Okta is a much better name and checks a bunch of boxes on my startup naming checklist.
2. One of the other early, early investors in SaaSure/Okta was professor Ed Roberts from MIT. Professor Roberts was my thesis advisor at MIT and also an early, early investor in HubSpot.
3. Pat Grady (from Sequoia) who is an investor in Okta and sits on their board was a board observer at HubSpot (Sequoia invested in us too). Pat gets a lot of the credit for some pivotal decisions we made in the years leading up to HubSpot’s IPO. Pat’s also one of my favorite VCs.