Matias Woloski, Auth0 | Productizing a Service and Selling $100Ms with Product-Led Growth [Ep. 96]

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

With more than 40 million users a day, Auth0 must be one of the most widely used Latin American software products in the world and, ironically, one of the least known.

Auth0 was acquired by Okta, a US cybersecurity company, for 6.5 billion dollars.

Today we speak with its cofounder and CTO, Matias Woloski.

The idea for Auth0 was born from the hundreds of consulting projects Matías did for large companies, where he identified common and recurring problems that served as his inspiration.

Matías told us the steps and his lessons for “productizing” a service and collaborating with large companies on the creation of software. We also talked about the product led growth and B2B commercial strategies that allowed Auth0 to reach 2000 corporate customers and generate hundreds of millions in revenue.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:25] - Intro to Authentication and Identity

How did Matias arrive at the fascinating world of startups?
What does the authentication and identity problem they solve consist of? And what trends made it become such an urgent problem for companies?
In a presentation for Endeavor, Matias said that “what you learn in the time before starting a company is the only competitive advantage we have.” What was his learning process before starting Auth0?

[13:00] - How to Turn a Service into a Product

Before Auth0, Matias developed hundreds of authentication and identity implementations for companies as a consultant, using other people’s technology and processes. What is the step-by-step process for turning the service into a product from there?
B2B services tend to be quite customized, and the challenge of “productizing” is identifying the parts they have in common and generalizing them. How did Martin decide which part of the process to focus on automating and productizing?
What did the first version of Matias’s software look like? How much co-creation was there with his customers?
There are open source projects that solve the same problem as Auth0. Even so, they have thousands of customers. How does Matias interpret this, and what product lessons does he draw from it that could be relevant for other startups?

[32:15] - Go to Market

The largest SaaS companies have a “bottoms up” go to market, that is, they start by generating usage among the users inside companies, before selling to the company. Auth0 is one of the few Latin American startups with this kind of strategy. What does this “bottoms up,” or bottom-up, go to market strategy consist of, and what did it look like in Auth0’s early days?
Matias and his cofounder had a blog and wrote a software architecture book before Auth0. What role did this brand and audience they had already built play in this go to market strategy?
Developers’ “free” use of their product influences their B2B sales strategy. But, because of the nature of the strategy, they have demand across many geographies and time zones. What data does Matias take into account to know whether there is a high probability of success in selling to that customer and, therefore, that it is the right moment to go after them?
At the start, they had a very bootstrapper and resourceful culture. How was that culture of resourcefulness reflected in the sales strategy as the company scaled and raised significant rounds of capital?
The developer is a highly demanding and sophisticated customer profile and, therefore, very hard to serve. What has Matias learned is needed, in terms of culture, product, communication, etc., inside a startup to create a product that serves developers?

[53:31] - Round of Tweets

If he had to start a company from scratch, what is the main piece of advice Matias would give himself?
What has been the most influential book on Matias’s path through the world of startups?