How To Scale Marketing to the Enterprise and Developers, with Okta CMO Ryan Carlson

I sat down with Ryan Carlson to chat about his experience at Okta. Ryan joined Okta 9 years ago after the Series B, seeing the company all the way through to IPO in 2017.

Here I break down the video, with links right to that time in the video.

1:00 How to manage a startup as a husband and wife team.

5:30 How to continue to pursue a job after rejection.

7:15 What Okta's product does, including the developer facing side.

12:30 On enterprise selling. “You’re not selling to enterprise. You’re teaching them how to buy.”

14:30 Why Okta bought Stormpath to get serious about developer facing product and marketing

18:45 Developer facing marketing must be authentic, and building authentic presence and content takes time.

20:35 How to measure the value of marketing through Sales Accepted Leads. Including how to build a portfolio of channels.

24:45 The parts of the marketing team: corporate marketing, customer marketing. PR, product marketing, sales enablement, developer evangelism, international marketing, MarTech, and inside sales.

29:00 Why run a user conference? Telling your story, getting leads, but also rallying the team.

33:30 Puppy Cam! Right as we start talking about sheltering in place, Ryan’s new puppy makes an appearance.

38:18 How to do executive recruiting, the types of CMOs, and making sure your CMO matches the company.

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