How Sydney's Kinde hopes to peel customers from authentication giant Okta
Two years after raising $10 million in seed funding, Kinde is beginning to grow in the authentication space – thanks in part to an unintentional boost from Okta.
There are a few things you'd be surprised to know about user authentication technology, the software that allows people to log in and out of platforms. First, it's deceptively difficult to create. Second, it's incredibly lucrative, having spawned an industry expected to grow over 400% to USD56 billion by 2032.
Two years after securing $10.6 million in seed funding, Sydney startup Kinde is beginning to extract some of that value. Founded by Atlassian and Campaign Monitor alumni, Kinde sells software infrastructure to startups. Authentication is their first major product, and in recent months it’s gotten a boost thanks to an unlikely source – industry leader Okta.
Customers started flowing to Kinde since December, cofounder Ross Chaldecott said, complaining that Okta had hiked prices dramatically. Kinde’s customer base has grown over 8000% over the last year, with its clients now having a combined 3 million users. Much of that growth happened in the past six months.
“Auth is baked into your product,” Chaldecott said, comparing changing authentication services on a live platform to changing the plumbing of a house while people are already living there. “A lot of these companies are held hostage, and that third party [vendor] can often feel like they have the ability to raise prices.”
