It is rare that the founding father of Solo is building a widely accepted tool for programmers’ infrastructure. What’s more if the founder comes from Africa. (*5*)ENGIDA BektetThe self -taught programmer from Ethiopia, quietly builds what some programmers say is the best authentication tool they have ever used.
Startup of Engida, Better authIt offers Open Source framework, which guarantees to simplify how developers manage users’ authentication, and drew the attention of some great investors. Recently, he collected about $ 5 million of seed funds from Peak XV (formerly Sequoia India and Southeast Asia), Y Combinator, P1 Ventures and Chapter one.
But the most interesting part here is not who is on the table of startup hats: Engida says that he built the whole product at home in Ethiopia before he set his foot in the USA
Engida told Techcrunch that he began to program at the age of 18 after a friend refused to assist in building an e-commerce search application, and began working on the project himself. Then there was distant software tasks and eventually built an online analytics platform that permits programmers to watch users’ behavior on their web sites.
But during his various works, Engid says that he saw in every single place a problem that appears: authentication. Each application must manage the way users login and leave and reset passwords, and sometimes administrators must support the rights and roles of users. But he decided that the existing tools were either too limited or too stiff – corporations akin to Auth0, Firebase and Nextauth offer managed services, but store user data externally, limit adaptation and are expensive on a scale.
“I remember that I needed the organization’s function. This is a very common case of using most SaaS applications, but it was not available from these suppliers,” said Engida in TechCrunch. “So I had to build it from scratch. It took me about two weeks and I remember:” It is crazy; it have to be a higher method to solve it. “
He then scraped this project and began working as a typescript-based authentication, which might allow programmers to access user data via Open Source libraries, support joint powers to make use of cases of use-likes-likes and roles-roles-roles-roles-roles and scaling with plugs.
“The idea was that you can add advanced functions in just two or three code lines,” said Engina.
Why developers love this
Over six months, working mainly from her bedroom in Ethiopia, Engida built the first version of the library that will develop into higher. When he published him to Github in September 2024, the developers quickly noticed the potential.
From that point, Better Auth will gain over 150,000 weekly downloads, over 15,000 GitHub stars and a community of over 6,000 members of disagreement, says Startup.
Pitch Better Auth is easy: let programmers implement the whole lot, from easy authentication flows to corporate class systems directly in their databases and embed all in the back room. Unlike hosted services, Better Auth is the Open Source library, which programmers may integrate directly with the code base, maintaining all user data in terms of the premise in their database. In the case of corporations that are not intended to offer critical information about users to third parties, this function itself is the primary point.
The library also found unexpected adhesion among AI startups at an early stage, which must build non -standard authentication flows, which integrate with reserved API interfaces, safely manage tokens and have the ability to scale without increasing high costs.
“For the first time we heard about the product from many startups we have worked with,” said Arnav Sahu, partner at Peak XV and former director of the Combinator. “Their author’s product observed a phenomenal reception among the new generation of AI startups.”
Better Auth Marx. The first direct investment of Peak XV in the African founder.
ENGIDA claims that Better Auth, currently free, will focus on improving its basic functions and launching paid entrepreneurship infrastructure, which connects to the Open Source base. This will provide programmers with the flexibility of an independent host or selecting if needed for accessories for the Better Auth cloud.
He also wonders how one can scale without exchanging product experiences. Therefore, on the road map, employing a small team that helps maintain a code base, expand documentation and support corporate users. For now, nevertheless, Engida is still writing most of the code.
Better Auth, who has just accomplished the latest Spring YC party, is the third Ethiopian startup that passes through the accelerator, after the base of the digital drone of the health platform and the BeU food supply platform.
“Building this seems important not only because people love this product, but because of what they represent,” said Engina. “There are not many founders of Ethiopia building global products. For many, it seems almost impossible. Seeing that adhesion gives other people hope that they will be more ambitious.”