The startup Clerk recently announced a successful Series B funding round of $30 million, led by CRV and with support from notable investors such as Stripe, Andreessen Horowitz, and Madrona. With this round of funding, Clerk has now raised a total of $55.5 million since its inception.
The startup, founded in 2019 by brothers Colin and Braden Sidoti, offers a comprehensive suite of developer tools including embeddable UIs, APIs, and admin dashboards. These tools are designed to streamline the process of authenticating and managing users for app developers.
In a recent email interview with TechCrunch, CEO and co-founder Colin Sidoti shared that the latest funding will be used to expand Clerk’s services beyond authentication and into authorization. This means that in addition to identifying users, Clerk will also determine what permissions they have within the app.
“Authorization has always been part of our product vision, but we needed a successful authentication product to build upon,” Sidoti explained.
The Sidoti brothers, both engineers, bring impressive credentials to their startup. Colin holds a degree from MIT, while Braden graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and previously worked at Uber and Inspirato.
Clerk’s tools are based on React, the popular open source frontend JavaScript library. The platform also incorporates advanced security measures to detect and prevent malicious activity, such as bots, while managing user data for customers.
“Despite authentication and authorization being universal challenges for software companies, they have been slow to become outsourced,” said Colin. He attributes this to the tightly-coupled nature of these processes with the rest of the app. To address this, Clerk takes a unique approach to authentication, offering a balance of efficiency and customization.
Clerk’s pricing model is based on the number of monthly active users and its platform is primarily self-serve. As part of its plans to expand its services, the startup will soon integrate with Stripe Billing to determine user permissions based on their subscription plan. This integration is partly driven by the investment from Stripe, which Sidoti describes as the beginning of a strategic partnership between the two companies.
“Stripe Billing helps developers create and manage user subscriptions,” Sidoti added. “Since permission to access certain features often depends on the user’s subscription plan, a tight integration with Stripe Billing is crucial for Clerk to provide a robust authorization solution.”
Clerk currently boasts around 1,300 paying customers and manages over 16 million users for these clients. As it continues to compete against other emerging startups such as Descope, Stytch, and WorkOS, Clerk plans to grow its team from 55 to 80 employees by the end of the year.
“It was a phenomenal year for Clerk in 2023, and we anticipate continued acceleration in 2024,” Sidoti said.
