Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome everyone to another edition of why it matters. My name is Tracy Cronbach I'm director of innovation here at now. It matters, uh, before we get going, Tim and I thought it would be really fun to share.
Speaker 0 00:00:23 No, no, there's
Speaker 1 00:00:24 Nothing. There's no introduction now.
Speaker 0 00:00:26 Um, just to see whatever, move on,
Speaker 1 00:00:32 Like how I handled that
Speaker 0 00:00:33 I did. I think it was smooth. It was, I don't think anybody knows.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 Nobody noticed that. I forgot that you were here at all.
Speaker 0 00:00:41 Alright. <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:00:44 Well, so before we get going, I do want to point out and I want to leave a lot of time for our guests today, uh, who in our finest tradition will introduce himself, but we are just passed by in our recording cycle. We are just past one full year of why it matters in that full year. We have gone from a side of our desk experiment on YouTube, uh, to fully deployed over multiple podcasts, subscription services, that availability we uploaded. Most of our past episodes. We've now got 21 live with by now. I've got a dozen more guests booked between the beginning of October and the end of the year for 2021. We have 2000 listens already since late August going live on multiple podcasts services. And we are incredibly excited to start this next year of recording, uh, with some new branding that you've probably already seen if you bother to go to YouTube anymore, uh, and some incredible guests coming up and you know, so now we have to think of new traditions for year two. We've we've pitched stalwart out the door and now we will go towards, I don't know, virtuous constant.
Speaker 0 00:02:17 I don't know. I don't, you know, our, our, our ability to plan. This has never really worked that well. So I'm pretty sure it'll just emerge. Um, yes, but I do want to say, um, it is amazing. It's been a year. And I remember when we did our first recordings, it was just like, let's just hit record and see what happens. I literally, I think that is how our first episodes were made. And, um, and so I do want to say it has been, uh, it has been a partnership, but you've really done a lion share of the visioning for this and making sure that we've got guests. And, um, and so thank you from all of us. Thank you so much. Um, and it is, it's great to be a cohost I'm with you on the show and, and all of that. So maybe that's how
Speaker 1 00:03:06 Happy birthday, happy birthday. And you're upgraded from star wars to cohost Tim
Speaker 0 00:03:13 And Adam. You were here for it. I'm so promotion. I was retitled. So
Speaker 2 00:03:19 You can introduce yourself
Speaker 0 00:03:21 Exactly
Speaker 1 00:03:22 My constant co-host Tim. Lucky.
Speaker 0 00:03:26 Thanks. I'm the, uh, I'm Tim Locky, the CEO of matters. So welcome to the show and, uh, it's my, it's my pleasure to, uh, to invite our guest, to introduce himself, Adam, uh, please tell everybody who you are.
Speaker 2 00:03:44 Thanks so much, Tracy and Tim I'm, Adam Rosenswag, uh, and the senior manager for product impact at Okta on the Octa for good team, and really excited to be here with you long time listener, first time caller.
Speaker 0 00:03:57 Thank you. Yeah. And, um, we, uh, nobody would know this, so you and I got to meet in person last week, um, at, you know, at Dreamforce ish and, um, it was great to meet your team. It's, it's so interesting to finally be able to get out and about and, and meet people again, um, and meet some of the others on your team at, uh, in philanthropy. But I wanted to start with the question I had when you first posted in February a question, um, or an article in response to an article that we had written. Um, and I was in my first question was who's Adam, and what is Okta? Um, and then what is Okta for good. And so, um, if you wouldn't mind just starting with what is, what is Okta? I think that maybe people aren't as familiar as they should be with, with what Okta is.
Speaker 2 00:04:52 Yeah. So the, what you'll find on the website is that Okta is the world's leading independent identity provider. And basically what that means is, uh, we are in the identity and access management field identity as a type of technology helps people securely log into anything. And so we're most OD you know, all of us log into things all day long. We're used to doing that with usernames and passwords. Increasingly we're used to doing that with things like two factor authentication or multi-factor authentication. These concepts are becoming more ubiquitous. Um, all of those functions belong in the space of identity
Speaker 1 00:05:36 And therefore, uh, if I could riff on what you're saying, really, I will speak of this. As we were sort of talking about immediately prior to hitting the record button, I hold a dual role. It's a very important dual role, even if it's tiny, invisible and a pain in the neck. And that is my, and I co-founded Livermore pride out here in Livermore back in 2019. And I said, oh, sure, what I want to do is revisit the early years of my career and go right back into the idea that what I'll do is be sort of the tech manager, tech support, user support, deployment, support, deployment, provisioning, all of these things. But for what that really means for someone like me on the ground is that you have this problem very quickly of multiple users using multiple apps with multiple means of logging in.
Speaker 1 00:06:33 And Octa kind of says, okay, you can do that. If you want to spend your whole life navigating 60 different things for your users, or we can connect a single identity to those. So that the ideal path is CTO or technology manager, whatever layer goes straight out to user deployment all at the same time with multiple applications attached on and off with a single switch. And it's rather than like, you know, metaphorically plugging things into one of those, you know, the little plugs, right, where, uh, the power strip. So Octa is the power strip and the multiple plugs are your app applications sitting on that power strip per user. And what that means is rather than turn them off on and off independently, I can turn them on and off with the master switch on the power strip. Uh, and what I love about that ideas for, for a lot of nonprofits, it saves them time and time is actually the most valuable resource on earth. Believe it or not, not money, uh, because time leads to money. So I'll also confess for a long time. The Octa logo substantially reminded me of the Obama oh, eight logo. So I would always associate like Octa for good with the Obama campaign. And that was, you know, just the way it was for about eight years.
Speaker 2 00:08:01 Yes. We can
Speaker 1 00:08:02 See same day.
Speaker 2 00:08:05 Yeah, I think that was, uh, I wasn't, I wasn't around, uh, when, when they were designing that. And I wonder if it was at all a subconscious or maybe conscious,
Speaker 1 00:08:15 You know, hope,
Speaker 2 00:08:17 Hope exactly. Yeah. The way, um, you know, it's interesting, I've never heard the power strip analogy, but, uh, it's a good one. And we, we search for metaphors constantly. I find myself searching for metaphors to describe what we do. Metaphors are a kind of storytelling, right. And people learn best from stories or stories are very powerful way of, of teaching and learning at the very least. And when we talk about something like identity and access management and most people's brains, uh, go to something else because they don't care and they don't have a problem called identity and access management. And so we're constantly looking for ways to articulate the value of this technology, which is very powerful, but it's got to connect to where people are right now. And so sometimes we talk about, um, you know, the different technologies that people are using or the applications that people are using in an organization say your non-profit, uh, you know, has 10, 20, 30 different applications that over time get added on people talk about like a Christmas tree ornament metaphor, right. That's where these things to sort of are eventually sort of dangly and, and, uh, and can be somewhat on really as a sidebar. Um, as a Jewish kid, all I wanted was a Christmas tree. So
Speaker 2 00:09:29 Sort of like, I'm now sort of trying to get like, you know, the Christmas tree is bad in this metaphor. We don't want that, but in my heart, I was like, but it's so nice. But yeah, the idea is that people, um, you know, every, every account that one has with, uh, uh, uh, technology is an identity. And, uh, that's a very it way of thinking, which is why I think most people that don't sort of, it's not, of course natural for them to think that way. And so when organizations ask sort of, well, I don't have an identity shapes problem. I don't, I don't have an idea, a problem called identity and access management. What I have is, um, a time problem or a security problem, or a user experience problem, because I've got all these technology has got all these people. Um, and so when we are, when we can show them, Hey, every, you know, all of your people, times the number of applications or devices that you're trying to manage, that's the number of identities you're actually managing. So if you have a small team with a lot of technology or a large team with a small amount of technology, whatever it is, you can still end up with an identity problem because each one of those relationships, uh, presents security, risks, presents friction, et cetera, all these things. So that's the paradigm that I am constantly searching for metaphors to explain. Um,
Speaker 1 00:10:48 I will say for our listeners, Adam, you also came up on our radar screen earlier this year. Uh, Tim and I wrote a piece called six questions every month. Nonprofit must ask the tech industry in 2021. And it sort of created a lot of interest, but no response. And then you responded on LinkedIn and tagged us. And I was like, I don't know this guy, Adam, but he's clearly associated with the Obama campaign. And I should figure out a way to be friends with Adam. Um, and I just wanted sort of like, I want to park on that for one second, because one thing that is a thread is how transparent we are with our operations and the tools that connect ourselves to the world in the nonprofit ecosystem. And, you know, I want to thank you for responding, but I also would love to hear you dig in around this sort of very high value that, that transparency an organization like Octa, particularly when it comes to playing neutrally and well with many parties, all of which usually have conflicting interests. They want to tear at each other's throats for whatever reason.
Speaker 2 00:12:07 Yeah. Well, I totally appreciate that. And, um, you know, and honestly, when I saw, when I saw your article, it caught my eye because of course now I, I spent my career in nonprofits before I came to Okta had been a nonprofit Okta customer twice, but now I find myself on this side of the desk, so to speak and I, I saw your article and, uh, and I read it and I'm like, oh, what are these questions? Um, and they're great questions. And I think it, um, it honestly, it felt very natural to just want to respond and be in that conversation that I can share a little bit about the importance of that conversation. Um, as you mentioned, but just on a, on a very personal level, this was not a piece of, um, strategic, digital marketing for Okta, you know, um, it's my privilege to be the face of Okta in a lot of nonprofit communities, right.
Speaker 2 00:12:58 I am one of many, but I am often out there speaking on behalf of Okta to folks that I used to work with. Right. And folks that are just like I was right. I mean, working in organizations. And so, uh, when I, when I took this job and came to do this kind of work, I always wanted to be able to look people in the eye when I talked about Okta and the value that it could provide, especially nonprofit leaders who are trying to do a lot with a little and are constantly, um, in sometimes a confrontational or antagonistic relationship with for-profit vendors. Right. We like that, it's all value-based, but the business models of these sectors are different and that creates a natural tension there. And so I sort of thought to myself, well, this is a, this is also a challenge to me on sort of an existential level. You know, how, how do I show up as a corporate employee now for the first time in my career? Um, and yeah, it, uh, they're great questions, um, and, and absolutely happy to, uh, to get into any of them or, or talk more about that.
Speaker 0 00:14:10 What, um, one question is Octa for good is the, you know, uh, octa.org, if you will, side of Okta, um, for nonprofits. And so, um, what, what is the nonprofit offering that Okta provides for nine?
Speaker 2 00:14:29 The profits? Yeah. Thanks Tim. So as you mentioned, Octa for good is the name of our social impact initiative. We're not a separate entity, we're just an operating unit inside of Okta. We're just a team. We're not a separate foundation or a 5 0 1 C3. We're just a team inside of Okta. Oxford was created, uh, basically when Okta went public in 2016, like thousands of other companies took the 1% pledge, which has been a very prolific and powerful model, especially for high growth tech companies and their founders in particular, as a way to think about as I'm trying to build this company that is growing by leaps and bounds and is taking on venture capital and hopes to go public. Um, how do I think about structuring my giving back over time? And the 1% budge, you know, has its limitations and problems, but it has been a very, um, popular and prolific model.
Speaker 2 00:15:22 The founders of Okta came from Salesforce, Marc Benioff, and Salesforce helped to make this model popular. That's where they got the idea. So they took the pledge in 2016 and pledge 1% of our equity it's in our S one public filing document, but we can go and see 300,000 shares of class B common stock were set aside when knocked went public, that funds our philanthropy. You pledge 1% of people's time. So Okta employees immediately got three paid days a year. That's a little bit more than 1% of their business days to volunteer for any positive they want. In addition to other things we do to help employees, and they played 1% of their product back to the community. 1% of products, different companies define that differently. It's, uh, it's a little bit more of a guideline, I would say, sort of like a spiritual guide, um, then's for a specific number for us.
Speaker 2 00:16:14 Um, but the work that I leave here is trying to make good on that pledge and sort of how do we make our products and technology much more accessible to the nonprofit sector. And so to get your question about, okay, what is the offer, um, to nonprofits, to the basic offering for any validated, uh, 5 0 1 C3 or their country's equivalent is we donate 50 licenses for all of our basic products. Um, they basic our core workforce identity products that includes universal directory, single sign-on, multifactor authentication and lifecycle management. These are basically all of the individual products that when you put them together, enable you to make the best, uh, and get the most value from modern identity and access management and everything. After that, if nonprofits need additional licenses or products, they get a minimum 50% off, whatever the published list price of that product is. And we also offer things like free passes to our conference and discounts on training, um, a handful of other support programs to help folks. Um, and we're always trying to grow, uh, that menu of offerings and make it more generous and help more organizations take advantage.
Speaker 1 00:17:31 Can I ask a follow up to that, Adam? I very much love, like, really love what you just described in terms of the problem that I, as a beleaguered CTO of a four person organization I'm trying to solve. Right. And one of the things in the course of my career that has been a daunting and occasionally like Tracy will get up on a soapbox and scream from the ramparts kind of issue to address has been, how do we look at technology infrastructure inside of nonprofits and not just from the kind of strategic way that we want to look at it in deployment or execution or maintenance, but in funding and in supporting and in growing, because why I would get annoyed is I would get up in front of a bunch of foundations, CTOs or CEOs, and be like, if you're not funding infrastructure, you're literally only funding half of a project. And nobody got that for years. I felt like people were like, shut up crazy person, but I feel like this is catching on. And I'm wondering if you're encountering these kinds of discussions and what you would say to a Flint, philanthropic audience about the need for infrastructure, you know, as it relates to funding nonprofits.
Speaker 2 00:19:02 Yeah. It's, uh, it is, it is totally the question of the day. And I, and I appreciate that. And, uh, and I, I have a hard time believing that anyone would refer to you as beleaguered, but we'll, we'll, we'll leave that.
Speaker 1 00:19:13 Um, you don't see my real life, Adam,
Speaker 2 00:19:19 You know, the, uh, there were a lot of folks, I think part of this, to be honest is a bit of a generational divide in the, there are people that are increasingly populating the ranks of all organizations, including non-profits, who came of age in a cloud first digital native environment, where the understanding that, uh, you will use a certain platform or technology for all kinds of programs. It's not program specific. So it's like, well, of course we have one CRM that CRM is going to serve all of the programs in our organization. So we can't allocate the cost of that CRM to these programs in a really simple way. Um, but there was a different way of thinking when technology wasn't cloud-based and you could ascribe, you know, and it was, uh, uh, you know, accounted for as a capital expenditure. And you've got your box of CD ROMs, or you've got your hardware, you've got your whatever.
Speaker 2 00:20:17 And it was a little bit easier, I think for people psychologically, um, to think about, uh, the traditional way of nonprofit accounting and non-profit evaluation as funding, the overhead myth, all of this stuff. I think that is the root of the problem when people think about infrastructure and for technology is, uh, but I think it's changing, um, generationally when we do try to engage funders to talk about this, of course, Octa has a selfish interest in that an infrastructure provider, right? If there's more money for infrastructure, Aqua is going to get some of that money. Sure. Um, but I think the value to nonprofits is, uh, that in order to serve people, um, securely and scalably and sustainably, and to actually provide them with a modern user experience while they're doing it, which we often think of as sort of like price of admission to work for a nonprofit or engage with a nonprofit, is that you have to have, um, sort of high friction in every transaction or operation or like, oh, we're going to, well, we're using the old version because we're a nonprofit and people sort of like, they believe that that's acceptable.
Speaker 2 00:21:33 And for people who are outraged by that, um, we want them to have access to the same tools that commercial entities have access to. And so when we talk to funders, we explained one, the overhead myth is an acronystic. We have to get rid of that way of thinking. Um, it's just not, it's not useful anymore. It's not that it's wrong. It's just not the way that modern infrastructure works in a technology context. Um, and we describe the hard savings and the soft savings that come with modern infrastructure. So the hard savings are often, well, you can just get rid of certain things I used to pay for, if you start doing it this way, whether that's, you know, VPNs or whether that's servers or whether that was, you know, multiple products that can now be, uh, you know, solved by a single product. So there, there is a hard savings to some of these things, but the soft savings Tracy, you mentioned at the beginning is in people's time, which is very hard for a lot of nonprofits to account for on paper because their budgets are set beginning of the year and they're not used to, um, time allocated.
Speaker 2 00:22:42 Uh, some of them are, some of them are not, but to be able to say, you know, what we ended up finding is the more, um, like a poignant way or a salient way of talking about this with nonprofits is capacity building. Another phrase that lots of people use. And do you mean different things, but just say, look, if you have a person on your team, let's just take Okta. For example, I'll speak on behalf of Okta and they're spending, let's say you've got a Tracy on your team. Right. And you don't want Tracy to become beleaguered. And so, uh, rather I think I just created the word of the day.
Speaker 0 00:23:15 I thought it might go Rampart, but I think beleaguered is it. So yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:19 Um, you can get a thing. Um, then, you know, it takes a, it takes a lot of time to create and configure user accounts and automate that. And you've created more capacity for tracing. And by that you you've expanded the size of your organization's pie. And that I think resonates with folks and they understand, oh right. Someone just gets more efficient.
Speaker 0 00:23:46 It's funny you were saying right there, because, um, I was just thinking like about how in, in, you know, movies where they're deciding on, um, like what's going to happen in a war and they say, you know, that's just acceptable collateral damage, you know, which is, which is just horrifying to hear what I think what happens in nonprofits all the time is that there's collateral inefficiency. That's just accepted. Right? Like, there's just like, it's just like the way it is. And, um, and so I agree with you on the efficiency being a place of law that lands, but what's interesting about part of what you're saying here in, in it being generational is that the mindset of the decision-makers does not match the mindset of your early entry, like, you know, uh, staff in non non-profits. And so I, I don't think I had thought of what that's going to look like in the next five years, but what you're going to see is that generational ism is going to cause people at the bottom to be so frustrated at the crazy decisions being made because of the mindset that exists at the top. Um, and if leaders don't start adjusting mindset, they're going to be completely out of sync with, uh, with staff coming in.
Speaker 2 00:25:13 There are, it creates, um, it creates shadow it very
Speaker 0 00:25:18 Much so, oh yeah,
Speaker 2 00:25:21 There are people who will just start using stuff because they want to do their work. They want to do it, but we, and they will just create accounts and they'll use the reach for the tools that they need and outside of the command and control structure, and this creates in some ways, this is great. It's a great way of working and it creates problems, uh, right at different times there. Um, I recently got to work with an amazing woman in Canada. She's a, um, in a fellowship program that I get to run an Octa, the nonprofit technology fellowship. She's a long time, uh, consultant in the charity world in Canada, her name's Anya McGlynn. And she wrote an article, uh, inside philanthropy recently, where she talks about the vulnerability that is required for many leaders in the nonprofit world to talk about technology. Yes, we're talking about 10 people are used to being experts and they are experts in many things.
Speaker 2 00:26:19 And, you know, there is, it's natural to feel insecure about all of the change in the innovation and the new shiny. And, uh, and so, you know, that's, that's just human. Um, and that's something that, that if we allow that into the conversation, right, if we allow people, we allow, you know, we let's not use acronyms without defining them when we can. And, um, you know, let's not sort of define all of the processes that we use and let's allow for the fact that, um, just because someone doesn't necessarily know some late latest technology thing, um, it doesn't mean that their expertise is in valid.
Speaker 0 00:26:59 I I'm so glad here that, um, I saw, I saw that you posted that on LinkedIn and we'll for sure go back and read it now. Um, it, it triggers for me, something that we've started talking about is myth versus mindset. And one of the, one of the big mythologies in nonprofits is that, uh, that, that I hear as consultants, so many times is, uh, I don't know how to turn on a computer, so I can't leave technology. Right. Um, and that, uh, that widespread leadership application, it, you know, the, the long-term effects of that are so invisible. And, um, and so, you know, I just think you don't ever hear a nonprofit leader say, like, I didn't study accounting, so I can't do the budget, or I'm going to hand the budget off to a volunteer terrifying. And you're not even wanting to know that you have heard that.
Speaker 0 00:28:04 Um, but, but it's at least like less often, right? Like everybody kind of knows the board of directors is like, Hey, your job is the budget, right. That's, that's yours. Um, unless, unless executives engaged their leadership on technology, we're stuck. And so shadow, it is one of the outcomes from that. But I also think the core there is, um, when you think about accounting, you can sum it up the whole thing in five words, more money out than in I, so you can, you can, you know, what you're trying to do with it from the beginning. And I would say one of the biggest issues is that leaders don't know what the core objective of technology is to begin with. And so, you know, they replace it with all of these other things. So if you've got, you know, like in the budget where I'd like staff spending appropriately is a good thing, it's just not the main thing or, you know, departmental, you know, uh, alignment, um, in the same way.
Speaker 0 00:29:02 I think that they leaders end up replacing good things rather than the main thing. So good things are like getting like staff that aren't complaining or accurate reports, um, which are both rich are really good. Things are appropriate technology, but the main task has to be data driven. Decision-making right. That the whole point of all of the stuff that we're doing here is data informed decisions. And if, if leaders start understanding that, I think you could start to see them accept like, okay, well, I can get around this as the main, my, I can get my mind around this as the main thing. Um, so anyway, I got really excited about that. Um, but, uh, I'll read that article. Does that, is that what you're seeing out there as well? Do you feel like you see leadership advocation? Do you feel like the effects of that are longterm?
Speaker 2 00:29:51 I don't know if I would necessarily say leadership advocation or at least I haven't seen it, but I, you know, I heard someone say once, um, I don't know if I necessarily believe in this, but the, that sort of anytime a company has a chief innovation officer, uh, you know, they're not an innovative company because what ends up happening is it becomes like that one person or that one team's job to be innovative and everyone else is off the hook. So I do wonder, um, to what extent leadership's relationship with their technology leaders or their technology team, such that they have ones that a lot of organizations don't have one, right? There's just somebody, somebody has to do it, even though it's not their job title. I wonder to what extent that creates a mindset, that technology is somebody's job, which means it's not everyone else's job.
Speaker 1 00:30:38 Well, I mean, I'm just going to say as director of innovation. So first of all, Tim, I need to change my job. Title. Vice president of strategy would be fine.
Speaker 0 00:30:49 All of us have to do technology
Speaker 1 00:30:52 As the director of innovation over here. I can say yes, occasionally you do feel that pressure. You're like, okay, pony run. And I'm like, but the pony doesn't want to run today. The ponies tired, the Pony's already thought through a lot of things. Can we just go through the things we've thought about, right. But I, you know, it's funny cause Tim, you, you were taking that tack of where this can go and, and, and how this represents and shows up in leadership. And I was kind of unpicking this in my mind in a different direction, Adam. And that is, you know, the hard part about technology infrastructure in the 2020s is that it does feel Ethereum. It's not, I need an ex serve. I can buy that X or I can predict it will last for five years. I can deprecate it accordingly. It's a lot of subscription delivery.
Speaker 1 00:31:48 It's a lot of identity management, right. But the metric that you've surfaced here, I think is important for philanthropists to know, because you can't measure, you can't say to a nonprofit, well, you can, but they don't, you can't say to a nonprofit, we're going to give you a hundred thousand dollar grant. And we're going to increase that by 20% to cover the costs of technology. Right. That would be a miracle. I would love that if for any foundation listening, that's exactly what's necessary. But in the absence of that, I think philanthropy lacks a hard metric to hang its hat on. And the hard metric that you're surfacing here. Isn't the thing, it's the time, right? It's the measurement time saved and time lost. And I think that's really interesting to dig into because the culture of change, the outcome of the culture of change as an implementation consultant is generally business process re-engineering, which may or may not save time by the way to Tim's earlier point. But time is the thing that we save. That's almost something that could be measurable from a philanthropic lens in a new way.
Speaker 2 00:33:12 It is. Um, I think time is a big one. It's not, it's certainly not the only, but it's a really big one. Um, it's one that, that every organization shares in common, you know, we could talk about security and privacy as also being almost ubiquitous. You know, I think in some ways, um, I think that the there's a simple yet revolutionary answer to, um, funding tech infrastructure in the past when technology was a one-time purchase, we could pay for it with a one-time grant. If technology is subscription, philanthropy should be subscription. The funding needs to follow the model of what it's paying for. It just simply is a mismatch. Now recurring technology costs with a one-time funding. It's just, is sort of very obviously doesn't fit, which sounds very simple, but as what is totally revolutionary in the nonprofit world. So instead of saying, here's a grant for one thing, say you're in our portfolio, that means we're subscribed to you the way that you are subscribed to Salesforce or AWS or Okta. And so our funding of you is, you know, at a certain level, right, we agreed to that, but it is in perpetuity until you fire us as your funder. Right.
Speaker 1 00:34:28 I love that because it also gets out of the prior solution and that is, can we just make a multi-year commitment please? Um, but it turns out foundations are sort of time horizon driven to six months or less anyhow. So
Speaker 2 00:34:46 It's easier said than done for sure. And we have to for good team, only in the last, uh, two years ago, we started making multi-year grants and sort of the best that we can do. I, you know, in the corporate world, it's also hard. Um, people, we don't have those kinds of, um, accounting structures, right. There's just, we're sort of limited by our, in our creativity, by, you know, when people need to project and, you know, it's sort of in perpetuity is very tough. So you can say, okay, well it's 10 years long enough. Does that feel like perpetuity for now? And then we'll kind of revisit is five years enough. Um, so, but that's the way that I think organizations need to be thinking, otherwise we're just going to constantly be feeling like we're, we're wearing clothes that don't fit.
Speaker 0 00:35:28 Never heard anybody talk about a mismatch like that, I think has net new to me. And it's really interesting. Is this out there, you know, it being talked about in philanthropy right now, um, or did you just
Speaker 1 00:35:42 Make it get out there? Cause that would be amazing.
Speaker 2 00:35:46 I don't know if I can take credit for that. I'm sure that there are, there are people out there that are, I mean, certainly, you know, this idea of the mismatch and the funding versus the business model. Is there, um, you know, I don't know if people are using a term like subscription philanthropy or something like that, but I wouldn't respond.
Speaker 0 00:36:08 Right. So I'm really intrigued by how the accounting structure would limit that. Um, so I don't know if you meant to get into this, but we're both like I can feed, Hey, Tracy and I are both weighed like, so like we're, we're going to get that's what, what does the limit come from on that?
Speaker 2 00:36:26 These have, uh, uh, you know, um, unrealized obligations that sit on their books as a liability, right? So the question is, how big does that, how big do you allow that liability to swell? I think that's like the fundamental question. You know, if Okta's gonna assign itself up to fund a nonprofit in, you know, for a much longer period of time, um, then that, that changes where the value sits on the balance sheet, you know, does it sit above or does it sit below?
Speaker 1 00:36:54 Wow. All the lights just went on because in the corporate world, size of liability is a factor considered in acquisitions and in the philanthropic world, that liability can't be appropriately accounted for in the way that foundations are mandated to give away a certain percentage of their holdings every year. Yup. All the lights just went on,
Speaker 0 00:37:18 But doesn't that match up with an endowment model. So maybe that's true of a corporate, a corporate model like that. But if you have an endowment model and you basically are like, we know what our return is within, you know, within a certain amount. So as long as we kept the subscription funding within that amount, like then it does line up. Right.
Speaker 2 00:37:37 It's an annuity.
Speaker 0 00:37:39 Exactly. Right. Yeah. I also am. I, I don't, I mean, I think 10, five to 10 years, five years would be, would be a huge shift in the market 10 years I think is too long to predict anything. Um, and perpetuity, I think is problematic because, you know, but I, but that has been, that does not that doesn't decrease the value of just aligning, even at a mindset level. Look, you need this to be an ongoing thing because what we run into all the time is, oh, we're going to get this thing done. And then we're not going to have any more expenses related to it. And, and, you know, I'm, I'm the one that gets to be that guest to navigate that conversation because, you know, the platform marketing is not going to raise that and the grant funders know it, but they're not raising it either. So they let us in the room to have that weird conversation about like, Nope, this expense is not going away. And I've seen that shift some over the last 10 years, but not, not into realistic levels, just like, you know,
Speaker 2 00:38:48 You know, the, the community that really understands this well, that we've been where we've learned a lot of this from is in the technology association of Grantmakers tagging convenes. Uh, the, the, you know, the type of folks that sort of are in that community are the CEOs of the big foundations because they have a very unique seat and they understand the role of technology and organization because they're, you know, the end of the day, just a CIO in a nonprofit. So they totally get it. But there, it's not just any nonprofit, right? It's a funding organization. And so they, I think are going to be the most important advocates because they can speak to their own funder community. And at the end of the day, there's so much more money in from institutional and private foundations than there are from corporate funders. And we may have a very small portion of, of, uh, of the philanthropic dollars that are out there.
Speaker 2 00:39:48 And so we, we know that, but we also play by a slightly different set of rules. So on our team, um, what's been really great to see, is thinking about, well, what license or privilege do we have that those traditional funders don't regard, and we can have, we can talk to them behind closed doors and try to talk about how they might evolve, um, and how that sort of towards a paradigm and shift in the way nonprofits are supported to use technology, but we don't have nearly the same level of oversight that they do, right. Okta for good, doesn't have a public board of directors. You have to publish minutes or get rid of a certain amount of money. There's just so much that comes with being a foundation. And so we can be the risk capital. And so that's what we've tried to do with our money is we, you know, we have lower reporting requirements and try to lift that burden from our grantees. We fund, um, things that aren't proven out yet very often, which is like, it sounds so simple. And you're like, well, in fact, the entire technology world is funded. Maybe it was basically built by venture capitalists paying for stuff that's not proven yet. So it's very natural for us, but in the nonprofit world, it's a mathematic. And so we are trying to demonstrate by linking it with public granting to say, Hey, look, it's not so scary. You know?
Speaker 1 00:41:02 Well, the, this sort of older, cause you gave a great history and culture lesson earlier and honestly the older kind of cultural artifact that I think I ran into when I was doing on the ground technology management. Yes, my dog is visiting our podcast right now. Uh, uh, you know, the thing that I ran into was that can't fail kind of myth. That's another one of the myths out there. And you could say at a high level, it's connected to, you know, the way that funding cycles work. Right? Because you, you get a grant, you do the thing, you report on the thing, but if you don't do the thing, well, you don't get the next grant. Right. So you could say that, that can't fail mentality is rooted in that. But I think that's only part of the full analysis. I actually think that it's also driven by resource constraints and some of the leadership qualities that we've been talking about earlier.
Speaker 1 00:42:01 And, you know, I really do believe that, you know, we don't have enough conversations about failure for nonprofit tech. I mean every big tech thing I've ever been involved with that went well, and that didn't go well, how to full dissection, right. It wasn't like we're only going to talk about the successful thing and do better at that. We're going to talk about the thing that didn't work at least to some extent that we don't avoid it so that we avoid spending this money again, doing the same thing wrong. We don't have that space, you know, and I think that kind of funding yeah. And chronic under investment too. Right. So, you know, we don't have the space and, and you put all those things together. You know, the kind of funding that you're talking about suddenly becomes super important because that is that fail safe funding.
Speaker 1 00:42:56 If you fail, you are safe, you know, something else to Adam that I wanted to bring back to one of your earlier comments, it's, it's even crazier. When you think about you were talking about generational differences in nonprofits, right. I think it even goes one layer deeper than just sort of generational expectations of what technology can and should deliver. I think there's a generational personalization of technology that is really coming up. I mean, this is maybe even beyond millennials, I don't know what the next labels are, but gen ABC, but you know, at the end of the day, I grew up with technology as something that I turned on, solved a problem with in turned off, right. The young people of today are growing up with technology as an integral part of their lives. And of course, they're going to grab every single tool available to do jobs that they consider integral to saving the environment to raising money. So there's this deep, personal expectation as well. Uh, and yeah, I, I'm just saying there's a lot there and you know, it, it serves to have space to unpick that
Speaker 2 00:44:18 Yeah. In, uh, there's we talk about this very often inside of Okta, that every organization is becoming a technology organization it's as a cliche that that sort of bandied about, but it is very true. Um, I, we, uh, you know, one of the organizations that we hold up as an example of this is John Deere, everyone thinks of as a tractor company, they're a technology company, right. I mean, it's every organization, uh, in order to compete in the modern world, in the nonprofit sector, there is competition. Right. Which we all know. So that's that, that's also true, but two, you can also just say, you know, to deliver or perform in the modern world rather than compete if that's not appropriate or if that makes anyone uncomfortable, um, really requires, um, at least some kind of understanding of, of technology. And it's not, it's not over on the side, it's, it's embedded in everything.
Speaker 0 00:45:10 Yeah. That, that tracks with, um, that tracks with our work in developing a transformation methodology that is trying to deliver that type of thinking, not to just the largest, you know, 500 million and above revenue driving non-profits, but at mid market nonprofits, because that's where the challenge really hits at that level. Um, and the expectations don't adjust for any of that as well. Um, and I think that that's, that's really challenging, um, for those nonprofits. We see that all the time. Um, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you when we got together, we talked a little bit about partnering and developing partners for Okta and our highlight that partly because I think Okta is an important part of the, Anne's not or way of thinking that we hold. Um, and I think it's really important for partners to know, uh, how much Okta can save them time by not getting the weeds in the weeds on multiple deployments, on technology and like using the budget that organizations have to, for us to deliver technology in much better ways. Um, so I'd love to hear what it looks like to be an Octa partner, um, who are Octa partners and what does that, what does that look like?
Speaker 2 00:46:39 Yeah, we, um, we it's, uh, we're in a, I don't wanna say I'm lucky space that it was, this is, this was strategic from the, from the traveling of the company, but I feel lucky to have been showed up several years later and, um, and get to get to help advance this. But we talk about Okta's neutrality as a technology vendor. And when we, when we, when we mean by neutrality is, uh, we're not neutral about who your identity provider is. I mean, we would prefer to be your identity provider. Um, but there are companies that have, you know, organizations that are using multiple identity providers and Octa makes that easier too, but the neutrality is around everything else. The idea is that we are not going to bundle other functions of your organization and lock you in to using only our stuff. We know that there are, um, there are companies out there where that is the model, right.
Speaker 2 00:47:35 Um, wanting to talk about who they are, but that's when we say neutrality, that's exactly what that word is pointing to, is that way of doing things, which is just stay here, we've got everything you need. And, uh, that's just not the way of the world anymore, right? The best, best of breed is here to stay. Um, you know, there's, of course there's always some little consolidation things here and there. Um, but really when you look under the covers, even after major technology platforms get bought by other technology platforms, um, from an infrastructure perspective, they still act like separate products. So, uh, it really is we're in this world of where organizations need to be able to quickly adopt and deploy new things all the time and having an identity, an identity provider or an identity solution, and just take the Okta out of this modern identity.
Speaker 2 00:48:20 It makes that much easier. And so to get to your, uh, to get to your question about sort of partners, our point to partners is, uh, sure. We would love for you to build an Octa practice into your business. We would love for you to help support organizations, especially nonprofits with affordable high quality trustworthy services to help them get up and running on Okta. Um, I tell people that like Okta is, um, easier than Salesforce, harder than Google to implement, like something like very quickly give my nonprofit folks, like, what am I signing up for here? When I go to be an Okta perfect measuring, well done somewhere in the middle. I'm a, you know, well now I'll never say, oh, it's just turnkey out of the box. All these, uh, these like tripe things like, no, it's not, it's, it's complicated. It can be hard.
Speaker 2 00:49:09 There's a lot of new concepts. Um, but, uh, know all it is built for a non-developer audience. Anyway, a lot of nonprofits still need a lot of help with this. And so we go to partners and we try to make a market for them and say, you know, we will, we will send you many nonprofits who need your help. We need you to give them a rate that they can afford. And the pitch is Okta is a gateway to many, to a future of technology, adoption and usage, which is good for your business as a partner. And then if you were trying to help non non-profits adopt and use technology over time, uh, then put something in place that makes all of that easier in the future, you know, take it out, add a new one at the users, configure stuff. So that's the, that's the approach to those partners and to say, you know, you continue to use and recommend and, and manage whatever other technologies your customers need.
Speaker 2 00:50:08 Right? It's all, we're all driven by what the nonprofits, uh, tell us they need. Um, and people, you know, I think a lot of partners want to, they're, they're trying to pick their expertise and their lines of business based on where there's demand and where there's, um, utility Tim. One of the things that we talked about last week, uh, you know, that I asked you is sort of is, are, are you and your teammates agnostic, right. About the technologies that nonprofits use. And, um, and you said, um, I forget exactly the words you use. I was hoping that I could look it up. You said informed, like at that, right. So we're not agnostic. We aren't, uh, which I think is great, right? Which is, you're not as experienced practitioners. Um, you don't want to let a nonprofit drive itself off a cliff and make poor decisions, right? So there, there is value to your expertise and experience and that you can bring informed guidance, um, which is great, but also recognize that, you know, it's going to look a little bit different for everyone. And some CRMs might not be right in some analytics platforms, et cetera. Um, that's the only way we want to have that same approach and mindset.
Speaker 0 00:51:14 Funny, let me raise that because I just got to Tracy and said, neutrality is so much better than tech platform agnostic. I was like, I love neutrality. So, um, we, we have, we we're in so much alignment with it, with everything you just said, I'm just really, really glad to have it articulated so well. Um, and it's also great to hear that from, from a tech provider, not just another, uh, another partner. Um, and, and so, yeah, thank you for thinking that way. It makes sense to your business model, but I have a feeling like that's native to how you would think about it. Anyway.
Speaker 1 00:51:56 I want to, I want to give airtime to one more thing before we wrap up. First of all, for our listeners, uh, one of the recordings that came out right before this one was a conversation with Tim, Sarah Antonio from me on one. And we dig in a lot on that idea of best of breed, like the unseen, erm, the, there is no CRM, the best of breed, the analytics, et cetera. Uh, and we also had the privilege of having Shantelle Forster on an earlier recording earlier this year, who is the CEO of tag and wow, she is a tour to forest. And if you haven't listened to that one, please listen to that one. But Adam, I would love to end on something that I think is incredibly special about what you're doing and that is you are teaching tech for good. And I just want, I want to make sure we cover that.
Speaker 2 00:52:49 Yeah. And, um, so I feel very lucky to be doing this. So, uh, what, uh, those listening at home that are not following my, my, my actions on LinkedIn every day talked about my lack of influencer following, uh, which is totally fine. Um, yeah, this, um, uh, so I've been teaching for the last couple of years, uh, at the hospital of business at UC Berkeley and this, uh, it's currently October. And so this fall semester, um, I have the privilege of, co-teaching a class called designing tech for good now with another guy named Dave Rocklin, um, who is an experienced instructor as well. And, um, it's so funny because we sort of take this for granted that this is, we're like, well, of course this is a thing and you know, you can teach it and there's no right. There's no one right way to do it or teach it, but like this should absolutely be taught.
Speaker 2 00:53:38 And it's a little revolutionary up there. We, um, I'll be honest, but I think we, we hit on a vein of demand that the, as a business school, um, they were not serving among the student population. They have all of these, you know, ambitious young leaders who come to the bay area, um, to attend this prestigious business school. And, um, increasingly this is really heartening. Actually, this is, this is not just a marketing. Um, it is, they're not just sort of eager to be in the social impact world. It's actually broader than that. They're eager to go into all kinds of careers, you know, traditional business careers, social impact careers, but they, it is a given that they will do it as mission driven leaders. That is actually the amazing thing. So some share some of them, you know, they want to figure out how to get a job like mine, and that's fine.
Speaker 2 00:54:29 You have social impact in your title and you have to do that. But a bunch of them, you know, they're there, most people are not going to do that, right. They're going to go do other things. And so what we're teaching, um, is not how to start a social venture or a nonprofit. It is not how to build a purpose-driven tech from the beginning. It is, if you're in a commercial business that has a single bottom line to begin with, um, as you find yourself in leadership positions, how do you leverage what you've built and the capabilities of your technology to solve social problems sort of after the fact, because that's very often what is going to happen. Um, for most of these folks now, maybe one day we'll, um, we'll be at a moment historically where, you know, every company that started as a double bottom line or triple bottom line company or something, but that's not the world that, uh, today's MBA's are graduating into.
Speaker 2 00:55:20 And so, um, we, uh, it's a lot of fun. Um, we start with, um, some history. I was a history major. I'm very, uh, partial to the importance of history and helping us understand the world that we live in today and how to make it better. And so we talk about the role of the corporation, um, throughout time, it's basically, you know, we've cut to the heart of it. A lot of these conversations, um, are about what role should companies play in the world? What should we expect of companies? Uh, and then we started talking about the time when people started to use phrases like corporate social responsibility and social impact and textbook good. And, uh, we have them read Milton Friedman from 1970. Uh, fantastic. And they're like this guy's nuts. Um, and, uh, and I say, yeah, but it's important because many people including, you know, like the presidents of the United States, for least as they ever agreed with him.
Speaker 2 00:56:13 So it's very important that we understand through that argument. And then I immediately, we have them read mark Benioff, uh, as sort of responding to Milton Friedman also in the New York times. But 40 years later talking about the business of business is more than this business. Um, and sort of a, this is a new chapter. It's really just a cultural paradigm shift. Um, and so we talk about things like, you know, the pledge one, uh, playbook and restructures to do this. Um, but the product, the course is then project-based from some real companies come in with projects. Um, and so this semester we've got companies like Dell Autodesk and electronic arts. Um, these are, these are established companies. These are not, um, scrappy little upstarts. And I guarantee these are companies that, uh, we're maximizing shareholder value above all else for a very long time, but they want to, they want to do good. They're already doing a lot of good and the students get to work alongside them and practice that
Speaker 1 00:57:10 That is incredibly heartening. I was snarkily thinking you should also make them read Atlas shrugged, but that's just a torture. And that's just the torture to
Speaker 2 00:57:23 Get students to actually read a book.
Speaker 1 00:57:27 Adam, I cannot say enough. Thank you for your time today. It is. We did. We covered so many bases today. And so methodically, thank you for bringing a lot of new concepts and fresh ideas to our listeners. And thank you.
Speaker 2 00:57:44 This is very fun. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 0 00:57:46 Yeah. Thank you very much. I'm been
Speaker 1 00:57:49 Lucky. I am Tracy. Crohn's Zack, and you've been listening to why it matters,
Speaker 0 00:57:55 Matters as a thought leadership project. Now it matters a strategic services firm offering advising and guiding to nonprofit and social impact organizations.
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