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Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

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Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#211

Post by paranoidrobot »

Really not a fan of this.

Okta as a business are a pain to deal with, and unless you meet their minimum spend requirements (which are not told to you up-front) you're screwed.

I've rolled out a ton of commercial products where we started with 1-2 users or a few units of compute, and on the basic little/no support options.

When those products succeed, and we can demonstrate that not only does it meet our needs on paper, but it actually works, and whatever flaws that exist are not big enough to stop us wanting to use it more.

AWS, Atlassian's Jira and Confluence, Sendgrid, Mailchip, Duo, and a bunch of others all started being used in orgs where this kind of thing is super low friction and easy to spin up, we plug in a credit card to get us off the ground.

Okta? Well they'll tell you the pricing up-front, that's great - what they don't tell you is that after the trial period, you can't just give them a credit card, no you need to go through the sales process. It's not until you're talking to their salesperson that you find out you can't just start with a few licenses, no, you need to meet their minimum spend figure per month.

Well, that idea was dead.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#212

Post by mooreds »

beachy wrote: post #149
andrew_ wrote: post #50

I hope this gives rise to another, smaller viable party outside of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Perhaps I'm jaded, perhaps hopelessly biased - but I can only see this as a net negative. Okta's open source packages receive a pitiful amount of attention (for example: https://github.com/okta/okta-oidc-js/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%... ) with forks almost becoming a requirement. Auth0 by contrast has been "on the ball" for…

The problem is that Google, FB, Microsoft and all the other "auth providers" are able to deliver a good and free auth service because it's subsidised by their other products. Whereas Okta, Auth0, etc. cannot, since that is their product. So they have to charge. Given network effects, a free auth system will always beat a paid one, except where the user is compelled to use it. (e.g. you want to use my SaaS product? Yo…

I am not sure about that. Thee same strengths that FAANG brings means that they don't have the intense focus that companies like Auth0/Okta/others bring. See how many people are complaining about Firebase and Cognito in other threads.

Having the auth system be your primary revenue stream means you pay very close attention to it, whether that be marketing or engineering. If it is just a freebie/side offereing you add to make your core better, well, it might lack resources or focus.

Disclosure, I work for FusionAuth.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#213

Post by nl »

nl wrote: post #151
tootie wrote: post #6

Wow. These guys were basically 1 and 2 when it comes to enterprise auth/CIAM. It's great news for the businesses, but will likely only decrease competition in the marketplace. There's a ton of second tier competitors out there with plausible offerings who are probably going to start consolidating to stay alive.

Ping and Sailfish are big companies too.

Sorry, this should be Sailpoint of course.

Okta, 2020 Revenue: $586M

Sailpoint, 2020 Revenue: $355M

Ping: 2020 Revenue: $224M

Auth0, 2020 Revenue: $200M

There's also Oracle ID Manager, some IBM thing etc - a bunch of other large vendors.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#214

Post by AznHisoka »

crazygringo wrote: post #154

> Okta, whose cloud software allows office workers to access all of their apps through a secure online service, said on Wednesday that it’s spending $6.5 billion to acquire rival Auth0. Okta’s shares plunged about 13% in extended trading after the announcement. Huh? Generally speaking, companies acquire other companies to become more valuable, not for their shares to go down . And even more so when the acquired compa…

The stock literally dropped a few seconds after the press release was out. This wasn't investors reading the details and thinking "Oh, this acquisition is a disaster, let's sell our shares". It was algo funds that saw something they didn't like, and decided to trigger a bunch of selling.

If investors really like the acquisition, they will probably buy more shares in the days/weeks ahead.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#215

Post by bdcravens »

davewritescode wrote: post #148
bdcravens wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that AWS and Google have their own offerings (and the I think these aren't SSO companies as much as Auth as a Service providers)

If Cognito is the AWS offering you're talking about then it doesn't even begin to compete. It's really a terrible product and AWS has misled us about the roadmap multiple times specifically in relation to multi-region support. When AWS Cognito had it's outage in November, I was quite happy we went with Okta.

I'm unimpressed with it as well, but I suspect antitrust officials have a different definition of "competition" than we do.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#216

Post by jnwatson »

adamcstephens wrote: post #58
andrew_ wrote: post #50

I hope this gives rise to another, smaller viable party outside of Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Perhaps I'm jaded, perhaps hopelessly biased - but I can only see this as a net negative. Okta's open source packages receive a pitiful amount of attention (for example: https://github.com/okta/okta-oidc-js/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%... ) with forks almost becoming a requirement. Auth0 by contrast has been "on the ball" for…

Regulators should block this merger. Consolation is strangling capitalism in this country.

Nah. There's so little moat around the SAML/OAuth thing that there are already a half dozen startups working in the space, not to mention the offerings from the big cloud providers.

I've just completed an Okta integration, and there simply isn't much "there" there. It doesn't even really have much of a network effect. They will be one player among 5 in the space in a couple years.

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#217

Post by [deleted] »

vecinu wrote: post #208
OkGoDoIt wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work on the Okta team that made those libraries. We were a tiny team with not nearly enough people. As far as I could tell, Okta is a sales company. The salespeople got the fancy events, the high floors with nice views, all the budget. On my orientation day it was almost entirely sales people and only one other engineer. Also the pay was laughable compared to any of the other jobs I’ve had before or since.…

> Also the pay was laughable compared to any of the other jobs I’ve had before or since. Really? I'm shocked to hear this considering their successful IPO. Most engineers in SV get options and I would imagine those engineering options would be worth a lot 12-months post IPO.

[deleted]

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#219

Post by staysaasy »

Clewza313 wrote: post #163
marc__1 wrote: post #3

More information on the ppt Auth0 200M ARR 50% Growth 120%+ Net Retention Rate https://investor.okta.com/static-files/83f1811e-2f92-4c08-a1... What a great acquisition. Congrats to both teams!

Really? $6.5B is over 32x their current run rate, and that's projected revenue , not actual profit.

I'm with you that 32x feels insane, but these are crazy times and Okta presumably had to pay a premium to take Auth0 off the market. With those stats and a compelling story (developer tools) they were probably expecting a great IPO in this market. Assuming a 20% premium to take them off the market, 32x doesn't seem that crazy with many public companies trading at 25x or more.

But yeah... it does feel a little bit like that moment where you go over the top of a roller coaster...

Re: Okta to Acquire Auth0 for $6.5B

#220

Post by bogomipz »

Cederfjard wrote: post #206
bogomipz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I interviewed with both, and the process at Auth0 had me walk away with respect, while contrasted with Okta that left me reminded that tech hiring is broken." While I haven't interviewed with Auth0 it sounds like we both had the same experience and impression regarding Okta. You know something is off when your interview loop for an engineering role involves the President of Technology doing coding interviews and al…

Was this long ago? Or is the engineering team really small compared to the company as a whole? Google says they’re ~2400 people, seems really weird for the most senior technical person in an organization of that size to be conducting coding tests with rank and file candidates.

No this was not long ago and the engineering team was large. The company was well over 2K people when I interviewed. And yes it is very weird to have the President of Technology giving coding tests during an interview loop. I met with 6 other senior engineers 4 of which had already gone over coding. Apparently this is his thing though. The purpose of this seemed to be for him to demonstrate how smart and hands-on he was. Their in house recruiter actually called me the day before the interview and said he had to "prep" me for my interview with this person.
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