For the past five years, the FusionAuth team has been focused on building “authsome” identity solutions for developers. We build products that solve real world problems. It’s why millions of developers around the world count on FusionAuth to more quickly and easily add mission-critical authentication to their applications.
We’ve done all of this without raising any outside money because we wanted to remain focused on customers, when we saw so many other startups focused on growth-at-all-costs. So today, as we announce a $65 million growth equity investment from Updata Partners, it’s important to give some context. We want to talk about what this investment means for our company, customers, and the industry at large. I’m going to start by promising you one thing --- our vision hasn’t changed and it won’t.
Solving the Market Problem: Helping Devs Deliver Innovation Faster
When FusionAuth entered the CIAM space in 2018, existing tools targeted enterprise security buyers and not the developers building the applications. This was, and still is, a huge problem. The options that did exist were clunky and hard to use. We built the business of FusionAuth differently. First, it’s free to download and flexible enough to run anywhere. We know we made the right move by looking at 13 million downloads of our Community plan and from what we’ve learned by addressing the pain points of our more than 450 paying customers worldwide.
Fast forward to 2023. Authentication has continued to evolve. Look at the advancements in passwordless login using passkeys and WebAuthn for example. New standards like OAuth 2.1 and GNAP promise to solve some of today’s problems, but the challenges have evolved too, with new types of threats, regulatory requirements, and ever-changing consumer expectations. Unfortunately, most of the players in the market haven’t moved fast enough to evolve with them.
Native identity platform tools only provide basic functionality and fall short when it comes to modern protection features, such as advanced threat detection, passwordless authentication, passkeys, single-tenant hosting infrastructure, and configurable password encryption. Much of what we see from larger, legacy providers wasn’t built to address developers’ needs. Other startups in the space are often plagued by scaling problems. While awesome open source libraries exist, they come with added business risk and implementation challenges.
Development teams do not have the time or the expertise to build and scale their own auth solutions. They need a partner that delivers security at scale with simplicity so they can focus on delivering innovative software faster. As our customers have said, we’ve already solved the problem.
At FusionAuth, we are changing how developers approach customer identity by providing a solution that is easy to install and run anywhere, and then integrate with anything in minutes. It is the only solution that runs anywhere, scales to massive volumes of users across thousands of tenants and applications, and supports thousands of logins and registrations per second, all without performance issues.
We’ve seen a huge increase in demand for FusionAuth solutions, so now is the time to scale the company. Brands like Audacy, Stihl, Zenni Optical, and Take 2 Games have already adopted FusionAuth as the auth standard for their applications. Now we’re excited to see who’s next.
Extending the Dev-First Focus: Why Updata, Why Now?
Auth, built for devs, by devs. This has been our core focus since the beginning. We chose to work with Updata Partners because they believe in our approach as much as we do. They have a solid track record of partnering with the software industry’s emerging leaders, and as you can read on their website, they are software leaders, builders, hustlers --- just like us and just like our customers.
Ransomware is on the rise. Data breaches plague even the biggest names. There’s never been a time when the auth market was more important than it is right now. Partnering with Updata ensures we have the right resources to continue supporting our growing number of customers while delivering industry-leading products and personal customer support.
Leading the CIAM Market: A Preview of What’s To Come
The FusionAuth team is incredibly proud of all we’ve accomplished as a bootstrapped company. With no outside funding, we’ve doubled revenues every year. Our growth landed us on some impressive lists, including the Inc. 5000 and Colorado Top 50 Companies to Watch. We’ve reached and now serve customers across six continents, and thanks to them we’re ranked as a G2 High Performer season after season.
So what’s next?
First, we’re hiring. We’re excited to expand our team, and we are looking for hackers, marketers, salespeople, and others who love solving problems. We’re looking both in the Denver area and for remote positions. If you’re interested in starting a new role at one of Built In’s Best Places to Work, check out our careers page. If you don’t see the right role for you today, check back as we keep adding more.
Up to now, nearly every bit of growth we’ve seen has come from inbound customers. It’s time for us to tap into channel and technology partnerships, as well as other outbound efforts. Stay tuned for more news as we grow.
Finally, we’ll never stop innovating. We wouldn’t be here without the loads of developers who trust their authentication to FusionAuth. We will continue to look to our customers for insight on what capabilities matter most as we extend our product roadmap. Your input is important to us and we will never stop working to bring you auth built for devs, by devs.
