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Zero to IPO: Over $1 Trillion Worth of Advice from the World's Most Successful Entrepreneurs
From the cofounder of a $40 billion software company comes an invaluable guide packed with $1 trillion worth of advice from some of the world's most successful and recognizable entrepreneurs.Over the past 20 years, as he first worked as an early employee at Salesforce and later cofounded Okta, a publicly traded software company now valued at over $40 billion, Frederic Kerrest met hundreds of business leaders and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. In Zero to IPO, he's collected a trove of nitty-gritty tips for each stage of a company's growth and assembled them into a clear blueprint for how to build a business. The book represents the distilled wisdom of his fellow visionaries and leaders who have collectively built over $1 trillion worth of wealth for themselves and their investors: people like Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz), Eric Yuan (Zoom), Stewart Butterfield (Slack), Aneel Bhusri (Workday), Julia Hartz (Eventbrite), Aaron Levie (Box), Fred Luddy (ServiceNow), Melanie Perkins (Canva), Patty McCord (Netflix), Sebastien Thrun (Udacity), and dozens of other business luminaries.
Kerrest has battle-tested these ideas himself, so he knows their power. Organized by topic in roughly the order that leaders will encounter them as they scale their businesses, this book is the ultimate guide to taking a company all the way from founding to IPO--and beyond.
Kerrest has battle-tested these ideas himself, so he knows their power. Organized by topic in roughly the order that leaders will encounter them as they scale their businesses, this book is the ultimate guide to taking a company all the way from founding to IPO--and beyond.
320 pages, ebook
First published April 19, 2022
About the author
Frederic Kerrest
1 book3 followersFrederic Kerrest is the executive vice chairman, COO, and cofounder of Okta, an enterprise software company that IPO’d in 2017 at a $2 billion valuation and now has a market cap worth nearly $40 billion. Frederic is responsible for establishing and driving Okta’s corporate priorities; accelerating innovation across the company; working closely with customers, partners, and prospects; and serving as a key liaison with the investor community.
A software entrepreneur at heart, Frederic cohosted the Zero to IPO podcast, featuring founders, entrepreneurs, and investors who shared insights from their experiences building innovative technology companies. He serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and advises early-stage software company founders. Frederic is also the chairman and cofounder of Herophilus, a platform drug discovery company.
Frederic earned a BS in computer science from Stanford University and an MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family, reading, skiing, and playing ice hockey.
A software entrepreneur at heart, Frederic cohosted the Zero to IPO podcast, featuring founders, entrepreneurs, and investors who shared insights from their experiences building innovative technology companies. He serves on the Executive Advisory Board of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship and advises early-stage software company founders. Frederic is also the chairman and cofounder of Herophilus, a platform drug discovery company.
Frederic earned a BS in computer science from Stanford University and an MBA in entrepreneurship and innovation from the MIT Sloan School of Management. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with his family, reading, skiing, and playing ice hockey.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
April 25, 2022
There are really good insights in this book, but the author never dives into them with sufficiency depth to actually understand them. If you haven’t done a lot of reading of startups prior to this book you’ll likely misinterpret a large portion of the content.
Due to the superficial nature with which some topics are covered, some of the advice is even contradictory. For example at one point he talks about how hard you need to work as a founder, waking up in the middle of the night for customer calls etc…and then later he talks about work life balance. It makes sense if you take into account different phases of the startup lifecycle but he never says this in the book.
I would not recommend this book.
Due to the superficial nature with which some topics are covered, some of the advice is even contradictory. For example at one point he talks about how hard you need to work as a founder, waking up in the middle of the night for customer calls etc…and then later he talks about work life balance. It makes sense if you take into account different phases of the startup lifecycle but he never says this in the book.
I would not recommend this book.
October 31, 2022
2.5 stars. Overall pretty basic info of which I already knew. Was looking for a couple of golden nuggets that I never found but maybe that's on me. So an extra .5 stars awarded.
Story lacked narrative and storytelling
Story lacked narrative and storytelling
June 4, 2022
Pretty good tactical advice on building a company.
August 15, 2023
One of the best entrepreneurial books I have read till date. Relatable, practical, and real insights - greatly appreciate how it is written from an insider’s point of view. Will read it again!
August 31, 2022
It's an easy reading book with a collection of startup industry anecdotes sorted into thematic chapters to look like a guide. But it's not. It's just what it is—a collection of anecdotes. It's entertaining reading rather than educational. Most stories are short fun blurbs—the type a fresh entrepreneur would share in a bar over a beer.
In contrast to the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (who Frederic mentioned many times) this book never dives deeper into situations or solutions. Things just happen: "There was a problem and we had to solve it... then we solved it"—without explicit details on what was the journey to the solution. In other words, it could be compared to a book about house building that instead of describing how to build a house just says that you should build a house and lists all the rooms you should build there.
In general, it could be interesting easy reading for those who have very little understanding of the startup and VC industry. Those who have even a small experience won't find anything new or revealing there.
In contrast to the book The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (who Frederic mentioned many times) this book never dives deeper into situations or solutions. Things just happen: "There was a problem and we had to solve it... then we solved it"—without explicit details on what was the journey to the solution. In other words, it could be compared to a book about house building that instead of describing how to build a house just says that you should build a house and lists all the rooms you should build there.
In general, it could be interesting easy reading for those who have very little understanding of the startup and VC industry. Those who have even a small experience won't find anything new or revealing there.
September 18, 2022
I'm writing this book review mid-book.
My habit of writing book reviews is difficult to maintain, so I want to take a good moment and get this Done.
It's a good book, that does contain important lessons and insights from many top CEOs.
Yet somehow my mind goes blank now as I try to come up with specific examples.
Maybe the reason for this (and why I'm struggling to finish it), is that the book is more directed towards B2B - while my natural passion is to B2C. Nevertheless, any founder or investor can benefit from it.
One sales anecdote comes to mind - Don't take no for an answer.
When Okta's management got rejected on a sales deal, after a long negotiation when all the customer's management team left the room, Okta simply didn't leave the customer's offices. They just lurked there for a while as a tactic, and it paid off - they eventually managed to win the deal.
This is just an anecdote, and I'm telling it poorly. The book isn't about sales. It's about all aspects of running a startup, from "Should You Be an Entrepreneur?" through Growth to Boards and IPOs and more. Kerrest founded Okta, now a $40B business, and has interviewed many other successful CEOs, and he does a great job of distilling that wisdom. Plus, the title "Zero to IPO" is great microcopy :) (referencing Peter Thiel's immortal From Zero to One)
You should read this book, especially if you are a b2b founder/investor.
My habit of writing book reviews is difficult to maintain, so I want to take a good moment and get this Done.
It's a good book, that does contain important lessons and insights from many top CEOs.
Yet somehow my mind goes blank now as I try to come up with specific examples.
Maybe the reason for this (and why I'm struggling to finish it), is that the book is more directed towards B2B - while my natural passion is to B2C. Nevertheless, any founder or investor can benefit from it.
One sales anecdote comes to mind - Don't take no for an answer.
When Okta's management got rejected on a sales deal, after a long negotiation when all the customer's management team left the room, Okta simply didn't leave the customer's offices. They just lurked there for a while as a tactic, and it paid off - they eventually managed to win the deal.
This is just an anecdote, and I'm telling it poorly. The book isn't about sales. It's about all aspects of running a startup, from "Should You Be an Entrepreneur?" through Growth to Boards and IPOs and more. Kerrest founded Okta, now a $40B business, and has interviewed many other successful CEOs, and he does a great job of distilling that wisdom. Plus, the title "Zero to IPO" is great microcopy :) (referencing Peter Thiel's immortal From Zero to One)
You should read this book, especially if you are a b2b founder/investor.
September 6, 2022
Seems like solid business advice but, by comparison to Ready, Aim, Fire, Zero to IPO is more clearly for entrepreneurs that are not at zero. The advice seems to be specifically geared towards founders who already run a business that is successful enough to be seeking funding and considering the future of their organizational structure, including their own role in it. There's very little advice that feels usable as someone at absolute 0. A lot of the advice is about pitching, fundraising, about how to allocate roles in a startup and what titles to use for those roles to consider future growth, how to grow a small business quickly and what investors are looking for out of your company, what VC investment cycles look like and how to position yourself to capitalize on them the most, how to select partners in your investors, etc.
Recommendation to the author, drop the zero part and reframe the book around $10 mil to $1 Trillion. Maybe I'll have different opinions if I ever make it.
Recommendation to the author, drop the zero part and reframe the book around $10 mil to $1 Trillion. Maybe I'll have different opinions if I ever make it.
July 13, 2022
A great book if you have anything to do with silicon valley, or are looking for investment (especially from silicon valley or somewhere along those lines). The author has been in there in the trenches and got a big investor (Andreessen Horowitz), so he knows his stuff. These only touch me tangentially, but I still found quite a few interesting tidbits, including how the average age of the founders Andreessen Horowitz invest in is in the 40's, so substantially higher than you tend to hear about.
I will probably give this another read if and when I have to do a road show for any business, in the meantime it was good background knowledge.
Much of the advice (how to deal with a team, talk to investors, etc.) probably doesn't apply outside the US.
I will probably give this another read if and when I have to do a road show for any business, in the meantime it was good background knowledge.
Much of the advice (how to deal with a team, talk to investors, etc.) probably doesn't apply outside the US.
August 2, 2022
Frederic Kerrest wrote an outstanding book, especially for the entrepreneur’s book category, in which most books are lame and self-centered.
The book has 13 straightforward chapters with excellent and practical information for entrepreneurs. Also, the book is suitable for a wide range of people, going from someone thinking if they should open a company to someone who is almost in an IPO and is afraid of demotivation after the event.
You can read the book fully or choose some chapters with a problem you are struggling with right now. The chapters are:
1. Should you be an entrepreneur?
2. Ideas
3. Teams
4. Fundraising
5. Sales
6. Culture
7. Leadership
8. Growth
9. Crashing and burning
10. Managing yourself
11. Boards
12. IPOs
13. What comes next
The book has 13 straightforward chapters with excellent and practical information for entrepreneurs. Also, the book is suitable for a wide range of people, going from someone thinking if they should open a company to someone who is almost in an IPO and is afraid of demotivation after the event.
You can read the book fully or choose some chapters with a problem you are struggling with right now. The chapters are:
1. Should you be an entrepreneur?
2. Ideas
3. Teams
4. Fundraising
5. Sales
6. Culture
7. Leadership
8. Growth
9. Crashing and burning
10. Managing yourself
11. Boards
12. IPOs
13. What comes next
July 30, 2022
This book is a boots on the ground wisdom from the trenches.
If you are an entrepreneur or aspire to be one, this is a practical guide covering the following:
- should you be an entrepreneur
- ideas
- teams
- fundraising
- sales
- culture
- leadership
- growth
- crashing and burning
- managing yourself
- boards
- IPO
Apart from the author's own experiences, the book is peppered with advice from other unicorn founders like Julia Hartz (Evenbrite), Melanie Perkins (Canva), Fred Luddy (Servicenow), Aaron Levie (Box) and Patty McCord (Netflix).
If you are an entrepreneur or aspire to be one, this is a practical guide covering the following:
- should you be an entrepreneur
- ideas
- teams
- fundraising
- sales
- culture
- leadership
- growth
- crashing and burning
- managing yourself
- boards
- IPO
Apart from the author's own experiences, the book is peppered with advice from other unicorn founders like Julia Hartz (Evenbrite), Melanie Perkins (Canva), Fred Luddy (Servicenow), Aaron Levie (Box) and Patty McCord (Netflix).
June 9, 2023
This is not “an” author, but a high success in the field and probably super rich too :) Taking about everything he learned about growing his company into a 40 billion dollar enterprise. Both stories included - the highs and the lows, the successes and failures. A “must have” startup book to read from men from the trenches… Who survived many heavy battles and won the war. Not just to IPO, but beyond. I even like the way they aimed at the IPO only as a step in between, not “the” goal as the title is. I took A LOT of notes.
October 24, 2023
The higher we grow, the more highly impactful decisions we make with rapidly decreasing data with each layer. eg, often a CEO makes many more “instinct heavy” decisions compared to the CTO. This book, from Okta COO, is a breezy read of how he made those and some associated frameworks with narrative thrown in. Some of those are novel and could be useful depending on situation. Like, no recurring 1x1 could eliminate a typical “hub and spoke” decision-making chain and empower others more at a fast-growing smaller org. Not so much in larger orgs with highly layered leadership.
May 8, 2022
Great book for founders/ people working in high-growth companies. While you should take every point with a grain of salt, there’s a lot of great advice for people who have the context of working in a high growth environment. The book is focused on advice for founders/ leadership but there’s also good lessons for ordinary employees.
If you do not work in such an environment, this book will be less useful for you as you lack the context.
If you do not work in such an environment, this book will be less useful for you as you lack the context.
September 10, 2022
I loved reading this book. A valuable resource for any businessperson that wants to be an entrepreneur. It’s not encyclopedic, so it doesn’t dive deeply into topics, but gives highly valuable big picture views of what you should be thinking and learning about. It’s fun to hear both the author’s personal experience as well as from many others who have been there and done that.
July 25, 2023
A bit too woke for my taste.
Valuable advice otherwise
-outsource marketing, hr, accounting...
-Keep the main thing the main thing
-ditch 1on1s
-Done is better than perfect
-Your money has a fuse on it. Nothing happens until someone sells something
-You need to hire people that can do what you can't
-Skip board of advisors
-Contra MJ Demarco: Find something you love...
Valuable advice otherwise
-outsource marketing, hr, accounting...
-Keep the main thing the main thing
-ditch 1on1s
-Done is better than perfect
-Your money has a fuse on it. Nothing happens until someone sells something
-You need to hire people that can do what you can't
-Skip board of advisors
-Contra MJ Demarco: Find something you love...
May 16, 2022
I think I've found my new favorite.
One, it's a fantastic reading experience. Knowing what Okta has become.
Two, being a person who works in the same industry, I can tell you'll indeed pick up some valuable advice.
Best book of 2022 sofar!
One, it's a fantastic reading experience. Knowing what Okta has become.
Two, being a person who works in the same industry, I can tell you'll indeed pick up some valuable advice.
Best book of 2022 sofar!
January 15, 2023
This is great summary of different decisions that founder of Okta had to make over the years. And what to keep in mind while making those decisions, many have hidden impacts that show over time.
I would recommend anybody even just joining a startup to read/listen to this.
I would recommend anybody even just joining a startup to read/listen to this.
Want to read
June 17, 2022Hello.
Where can I click in order to read this book, anyone can assist, please?
Where can I click in order to read this book, anyone can assist, please?
July 20, 2022
Good read and has interesting insights into the challenges in building a startup and how Freddy and Todd built Okta and took it public. It also contains advice from other entrepreneurs as well.
August 23, 2022
Disclaimer: I'm an employee of Okta.
I don't intend on becoming a startup founder but this book was a light, fun read.
I don't intend on becoming a startup founder but this book was a light, fun read.
September 25, 2022
Good book from a doer - COO and co-founder of Okta (valued at 40bn USD).
Useful insights from other successful founders, nice illustrations and practical advice round out the package.
Useful insights from other successful founders, nice illustrations and practical advice round out the package.
October 23, 2022
Buen libro de fácil lectura y entretenido…tengo poco conocimiento en el area me parece un buen punto de partida
March 9, 2023
Very solid advice allround
March 15, 2023
Excellent read with actually actionable insights.
Want to read
May 5, 2023From Okta CEO class
January 1, 2024
Shoe dog for B2B SaaS along with strong examples / tactics - great book!
June 16, 2023
Building a startup is not a straightforward path
Building a startup is not a straightforward path, and it entails numerous challenges that require substantial experience. This book can help you understand what the path will look like and provide instructions that can help you avoid some of the mistakes you may encounter along the way. Additionally, it offers insights into the intricacies of the startup journey and provides a glimpse into what lies ahead.
Building a startup is not a straightforward path, and it entails numerous challenges that require substantial experience. This book can help you understand what the path will look like and provide instructions that can help you avoid some of the mistakes you may encounter along the way. Additionally, it offers insights into the intricacies of the startup journey and provides a glimpse into what lies ahead.
May 8, 2023
Disclaimer: Okta employee here.
It might sound as I want to butter up but I loved this book. First and foremost because it tells you the bad things of walking this path, it's not just all sun & rainbow and you should know that, Frederic makes this point so clear by sharing his past experiences.
Not all people would be able to be part of an IPO with their own company but he makes you part of it.
The book can also be used as a reference manual as some of its sections are pretty actionable, well documented and organized.
It might sound as I want to butter up but I loved this book. First and foremost because it tells you the bad things of walking this path, it's not just all sun & rainbow and you should know that, Frederic makes this point so clear by sharing his past experiences.
Not all people would be able to be part of an IPO with their own company but he makes you part of it.
The book can also be used as a reference manual as some of its sections are pretty actionable, well documented and organized.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews