Auth-as-a-Service is dead

Dave Berner — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 00:19:01 +0000

When I started building products, Auth-as-a-Service felt like a gift.

Plug in a few lines of JavaScript, and boom! Sign-up, login, and password reset all taken care of. No more rolling your own sessions or wrestling with bcrypt. It felt like cheating (in the best way).

But over time, something changed.

Authentication stopped being the problem. It was connecting it to everything else around it.

You still had to:

Decide how users would pay
Gate access to features after login
Assign roles and permissions
Customize onboarding flows
Sync data to your CRM, analytics, and internal tools
Handle cancellations, trials, and feature upgrades

None of that lived inside your auth provider. So you ended up bolting on half a dozen tools, wiring them together with glue code, and praying it held up.

Auth got abstracted. But the rest of the user journey? Still chaos.

So what was the choice? Bolt on more yet more tools and then figure out how to get them to talk to each other and keep all the data in sync.

That’s why I believe standalone Auth-as-a-Service is dead.

The future isn’t just about logging people in. It’s about managing the full customer journey:

That’s why we built Kinde as a platform, not just an auth provider.

We started with authentication but always knew it was just the first piece. Today Kinde gives you:

Authentication
Roles and permissions
Feature flags
Billing (Stripe-powered)
Workflows
User management
Custom data
B2B management

All working seamlessly together. All designed for SaaS builders. A fully integrated developer platform.

If you’re building a product where users sign up, pay, and expect gated access you don’t need another 6 services - you need a platform.

Auth-as-a-Service was great for 2015 but it’s 2025 now and it’s time to raise the bar.

How I protect deep work as a technical founder

Dave Berner — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 05:26:35 +0000

I’ve been coding since the <blink> tag was the new "hotness".

These days, I’m one of the co-founders at Kinde, where we’re building tools that power SaaS products—auth, billing, and feature flags, all in one place.

I still write code almost every day. But I also lead a remote team, ship product, and make decisions. Staying focused is hard.

Here’s the rhythm I’ve built to protect deep work:

6am gym: mental clarity + early momentum
Morning meetings only: clear the decks early
Midday reset: walk, food, some fresh air
Afternoon deep work: no interruptions, full flow
After-school time: playing with my kids
Optional night session: only if I feel like it

We call it adult hours, a structure that respects your time and your brain.

More detail here if you’re curious:

👉 https://kinde.com/blog/startups/adult-hours

I’d love to hear how other devs (especially founders) carve out real focus time. What’s working for you?

Forem: Dave Berner

Auth-as-a-Service is dead

How I protect deep work as a technical founder