Okta bought a16z-backed password manager Uno to speed its first consumer product

Okta is the US enterprise identity management giant; Uno was a design-centric consumer password management app.

Okta bet buying Uno's consumer-first, design-focused talent would get its first consumer product — a password manager — to market faster than building it.

Uno raised $3 million from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Kevin Mahaffey and Dug Song; Okta's deal size was not disclosed

Uno was founded by former Google engineer Parteek Saran and launched its app earlier in 2023 with a design-centric approach to password management.

Okta announced on October 4, 2023 that it had acquired Uno; the app will be discontinued from November 1 and the team joins Okta to work on Okta Personal, in beta since the prior year for US and Canada users with web and iOS apps.

Okta Personal launched publicly for consumers in the US and Canada, with credential sharing, autofill and family sharing on the roadmap; Okta did not say whether Uno features like reading one-time passwords from email would carry over, or how Uno's user base would migrate.

This is Okta's move into consumer — a different buyer, product surface and design bar than its enterprise identity business.

The acqui-hire pattern is explicit: Uno the app dies on November 1 while its team builds Okta Personal.

Okta's own statements frame the deal as buying speed and consumer design sensibility, not technology or users.

Enterprise giants entering consumer markets buy taste first: Okta's problem was not identity tech but consumer-grade design, so that is what it acquired.

As of the announcement, Okta Personal was live for US and Canada consumers, Uno's app was set to shut on November 1, and migration of Uno's existing user base remained unspecified.