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Frederic Kerrest

Vice Chairman & Co-Founder, Okta · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveacademic

Frederic Kerrest is the Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of Okta. He previously served as Okta's Chief Operating Officer and is on the professional faculty at UC Berkeley Haas.

10statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 33%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 2/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 24said about them ↓

1 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 3 assertions · 5 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Frederic argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Okta pivoted from small businesses to mid-market and enterprise in 2011
“We went from focusing on small, medium businesses to focusing more on mid-market companies and a little bit upscale because those companies, A, had more pain, B, they had more budget, and C, they were looking for solutions like the ones we had”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 16:25 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Kerrest: Okta planned to hire over 900 people in 2019
“And look, in a high growth environment, we have to hire, you know, north of 900 people this year.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 29:01 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
none yet certainty 3
0% certainty 4
75% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

271 words/min while actually speaking · 3.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Frederic Kerrest: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 25 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 5,883 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Frederic Kerrest is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10
pushed back at the host ▾ 2/10
setup questions received 65%

Everything Frederic Kerrest said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Kerrest: Successful Enterprise Software Founders Are Industry Veterans, Not 20-Somethings
“I think if you look at successful enterprise software founders, whether it was Mark Benioff and Parker Harris, Salesforce, or whether it was Anil Bushri, And Dave Duffield at Workday or whether it was Fred Luddy at ServiceNow, these are all folks who did not s…”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 10:37 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Insight
Kerrest: Exceptional Founders Are Constrained Without Large, Growing Markets
“You can have a super special founder, but if you don't have that big market opportunity and there's not that opportunity to create the growth and to figure out the go to market strategy and all these other things, I think you're going to be kind of constrained…”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 9:11 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Insight
Kerrest: Startups should dominate small markets with adjacent expansion opportunities
“What he's looking for, and I agree with, is you want to become a monopolist in a small market with a lot of adjacencies.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 11:52 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Insight
Kerrest: Two to four co-founders is the optimal startup team size
“I think if you look at the data says that solo founders always have a tougher time. I think you really see a lot of success in the two through four group of co-founders. I think once you get five co-founders or more, there's just too many cooks in the kitchen.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 16:57 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Assertion Partly supported
Okta was Andreessen Horowitz's first fund investment check in 2009
“We were the first check that they wrote out of their first fund. In the summer of 2009 was into our seed round, and then obviously they led our series A in 2010.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 22:52 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Assertion Supported
Okta pivoted from small businesses to mid-market and enterprise in 2011
“We went from focusing on small, medium businesses to focusing more on mid-market companies and a little bit upscale because those companies, A, had more pain, B, they had more budget, and C, they were looking for solutions like the ones we had”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 16:25 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Disclosure
Kerrest: Okta restrained sales spending with a mandatory payback governor
“In our case, it was always about how fast can we grow, but we want to have a certain amount of payback on the investment that we made in sales marketing. So we kind of had a governor on how long it was going to take to get paid back for a dollar invested and g…”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 20:52 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Insight
Kerrest: Founders only need to make 3 to 5 key decisions annually
“And really at the end of the day, as a startup founder, there's probably three or five major decisions you have to get right every year. And that will really dictate what's going to happen with your company in the future.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 29:56 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Okta revenue performance in 2011 was flat despite aggressive projections
“Frankly, if I look back at 20 11 and I look at what our revenue projections were versus how they actually ended up, the projections, of course, were up and to the right. The results were actually pretty flat.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 13:31 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Kerrest: Okta planned to hire over 900 people in 2019
“And look, in a high growth environment, we have to hire, you know, north of 900 people this year.”
Frederic Kerrest May 3, 2019 ▶ 29:01 20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, The Biggest Challenges in Scaling Okta To IPO and Being a16z's First Ever Fund Check

The other half of the tape: Frederic Kerrest's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 23 times in 9 episodes on 20VC. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 20Todd McKinnon 1Mike Maples 1Ben Horowitz 1

Statements about Frederic Kerrest, by other people (1)

Opinion
Ralston: Y Combinator Weighs Founding Teams Far Above Ideas
“Well, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, because my weighting is far more on the team at the stage in which I choose companies for angel investments, in which YC chooses companies to fund. I will always Pick a great team. Assume they'll figure it out, or…”
Geoff Ralston May 27, 2019 ▶ 10:12 20VC: Y Combinator's New President, Geoff Ralston on The Single Most Important Perspective An Investor Can Provide A Founder, The Biggest Lessons From Working Alongside Paul Graham & Why You Will Lose As An Investor If You "Profile Invest"

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
001042082019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions
0482019202020212022202320242025episodes it came up in
0034682019202020212022202320242025episodesmentions per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2021 6 mentions in 1 episode
2019 16 mentions in 7 episodes 2 per episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: Okta Founder Frederic Kerrest on Why You Want To Be A Monopolist In A Small Market, May 3, 2019 22m
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