Stytch has raised $30 million in Series A fundraising led by Thrive, with participation from Coatue, Benchmark and existing investors, Benchmark and Index. Gaurav Ahuja of Thrive and Benchmark’s Chetan Puttagunta have joined as board of directors. Matthew Prince, Cassidy Williams, Neha Narkhede, and Joshua Browder are among the new angel investors on board.
They saw passwords firsthand at Plaid, both in terms of security and usability. They saw how easily people gave up when the authentication procedure became too difficult and easy passwords left users vulnerable to account takeover attacks.
Authentication, which underpins all of our online interactions, has been stuck in the 1990s despite the fact that user experience and security have both improved over the last few decades.
That’s why Stytch was created – to make the next generation of authentication passwordless.
They believe in developing tools and infrastructure that allow integrating authentication into apps and websites easier, faster, and safer. By adopting passwordless technologies, they’re making it simple to upgrade users’ authentication flows and provide exceptional user experiences.
Alternative authentication techniques have risen in popularity in recent years, utilising developments in both hardware (e.g. biometrics, YubiKey) and software (e.g. APIs for programmatic text + email), paving the way for a password-free future. However, developing a reliable new authentication system is a major job, requiring organisations to dedicate entire teams to the task. They see this as a huge opportunity to assist developers transition to a new era of authentication, where they can use simple APIs and SDKs to incorporate passwordless authentication solutions.
More than 350 developers are already using the Stytch platform to design user onboarding and login flows that include email magic links, SMS and WhatsApp passcodes, and one-click user invitations. They said that they have seen enterprises of all sizes drawn to the straightforward developer experience and flexibility given by their API-first strategy, including a handful of Fortune 500 companies who use the platform.
With the new funding, they want to introduce a variety of new authentication options to the platform, including mobile biometrics, WebAuthn, OAuth logins, QR codes, and push notification login. They are also beefing up the user infrastructure features that make Stytch the easiest and most frictionless method to onboard and engage users, such as session management, account recovery, and more effective fraud detection.
