Eric Olden
Founder, CEO
Tell us about one good and one challenging experience you've had with fundraising.
A good aspect of fundraising is the quality and caliber of the people you get to meet. I am a believer that relationships > transactions and its really nice when you meet a like-minded person.
On the other hand, fundraising takes a lot of cycles. I joke that the hardest round to raise is whatever round you are raising. It's frustrating to hear stories that so and so got 4 term sheets in a week. I always allocate much more time to raise and take my time finding the right partner.
What did you take from your last experience that you're using to build Strata.
I had a great experience running Oracle's identity and security portfolio that gave me exposure to the biggest enterprise customers, which showed me the immense need in the market for a way to move to multiple clouds and off of legacy software. Virtually all the customers were asking for a way to move to the clouds while supporting existing investments. I also learned an appreciation of the role of a global identity operator, as I was responsible for supporting the identity for all of Oracle's SaaS apps which led me to understand what Strata's customers need as we help them move off of legacy platforms.
Before Oracle, I was founder and CEO/CTO of 2 venture backed identity startups (Symplified and Securant/ClearTrust - both acquired by RSA) where I learned through a lot of challenging times the importance of leadership in times of crisis. That experience taught me how to grow a fledgling startup and raise upround financings through both 2000 Dot Com crash, and the 2009 Global Financial Crisis. Both of these episodes shaped my thinking as we work through Coronavirus - stay focused on what matters, develop a resilient culture and be smart with cash.