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Of course the sole purpose of a publicly traded company is to maximise the revenue for its shareholders, however, you can take a long term or short term approach on this.

Okta appeared to have kept this under wraps to prevent a shareholders backlash (short term approach) However, as a result they achieved the opposite, as the share price is still down this morning. This may of course be a temporarily glitch, however, I can see it resulting in a temporary loss of revenue. If I would be evaluating Okta versus a different solution right now, this may well sway my decision.



It doesn't have to be. If the shareholders want the company to otherwise cease operations and throw a big ice cream party for all the shareholders every Friday they can choose to do that. There's nothing that forces a public company to focus only on maximizing shareholder value, they just have to be open and honest about the goals of the company and try and meet the shareholder expectations.


I suspect there are plenty of current customers that are considering a change, not just prospects.




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