I followed the CEO of $5.7 billion Okta around and learned the secrets of a tech conference that landed President Obama as a speaker (OKTA)

Okta Todd Mckinnon makeup

Last week, the conference center at the Aria hotel in Las Vegas was abuzz with excitement. Okta, the $5.7 billion identity management company, had landed a very special guest speaker in the form of President Barack Obama.

Okta has a classic Silicon Valley origin story. It was founded by two early employees of Salesforce: Former Salesforce engineering head and current Okta CEO Todd McKinnon, and Freddie Kerrest, who had been a sales exec at Salesforce, and is now COO of Okta.

When they first decided to pursue this company, no one believed in the idea. Salesforce and its gregarious CEO Marc Benioff are known for investing in the startups of ex-employees — but they never invested in Okta.

With little support, the two of them started with nothing and had to do all the initial programming themselves. But after they signed on their first customers, hundreds, and then thousands of cloud app companies began coming to them. Andreessen Horowitz invested and Okta soon became a Silicon Valley VC darling, hitting a "unicorn" valuation of over $1 billion in 2015.

In late 2017, the company had a successful IPO. Sales have been beating expectations and the stock price has doubled since then. Okta now has over 4,300 customers, 33,000 developers are building apps on its platform, and it hit $260 million in revenue last year. They welcomed 4,000 people to this conference in Vegas.

Okta was so excited to be hosting President Obama, the company invited Business Insider to tag along for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to put on their tech conference, and what they had to do to host the 44th President of the United States, who still enjoys enormous popularity in the tech community.

The day before the conference opened, I met up with Okta cofounder and CEO Todd McKinnon at the private executive room his team had reserved for the week. He was drinking an espresso to get charged for the afternoon. (He is a coffee fanatic.)

Cybersecurity folks can often be reserved bordering on secretive. But not McKinnon. He's friendly, open, and cheerful with a dry wit.

And he has a strong vision for how passwords are evolving into digital identities, and what his company needs to do protect people as more and more of their lives are managed online.

His keynote this year was aimed at sharing his vision with his customers, the folks responsible for protecting people's online identities.

Later, we'll catch McKinnon blowing off steam by walking across the stage on his hands.

He doesn't do this trick during his actual keynote, but he's famous for taking a break during long meetings at the office in exactly this way.

He can walk a good six feet on his hands, thanks to his love of CrossFit. When he's not running Okta or hanging with his family, he's competing at the national level, doing events involving days of cardio, weights and shows of strength like this handstand walk.

The private executive room where we first meet up is lux.

It includes a kitchen stuffed with snacks and an espresso machine. It will also serve various meals during the day. It has two private studies and a conference room in back.

That's Okta's head of PR Jenna Kozel in the foreground. She's one of my guides for the day.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider