Ravi Madabhushi is the Co-Founder at ScaleKit. ScaleKit helps B2B SaaS teams add enterprise authentication and user management in hours, not months, so you can close SSO-blocked deals faster and focus on core product.
In this episode, we delve into the future of authentication, passwordless login, and what enterprises really expect from B2B SaaS.
- The case against passwords and what replaces them: passkeys, WebAuthn, biometrics, email and SMS OTP
- SSO for enterprises explained: SAML, OIDC, SCIM provisioning, and integrating with IdPs like Okta and Microsoft
- RBAC, fine-grained authorization, multitenancy, and organization-level controls
- Enterprise checklists: security, reliability, performance, customization, and compliance like SOC 2, ISO, GDPR
Ravi also shares ScaleKit’s 10-year vision to become the application infrastructure layer for B2B products starting with authentication and authorization, so small teams can launch, sell to enterprises, and scale faster without burning 30 percent of engineering time on non-core work.
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Episode Timestamps
- 00:00 – Intro
- 01:01 – Host welcomes Ravi and setup
- 02:32 – Why start building ScaleKit
- 05:10 – Accelerating enterprise readiness roadmap
- 07:18 – ScaleKit product overview
- 08:51 – Ideal customer profile
- 10:02 – Rapid SSO customer win
- 11:10 – What enterprises evaluate
- 16:14 – Preparing GTM for enterprises
- 17:47 – Customizability for B2B products
- 20:44 – Cofounder journey and trust
- 25:27 – Three acts and long term vision
- 30:17 – How ScaleKit compares to Auth0
- 33:28 – Build versus buy decisions
- 37:41 – Authentication versus authorization explained
- 41:13 – SSO SAML and OIDC basics
- 46:22 – OAuth and OpenID overview
- 50:29 – Passwordless passkeys and future
- 55:13 – AI for security and audits
- 57:17 – Freshworks culture and founder mafia
- 01:01:00 – Inside the IPO journey
- 01:02:49 – Product first approach and mocks
- 01:06:33 – Childhood and formative experiences
- 01:13:16 – Zero to one founder mindset
- 01:20:35 – Challenges and patience at ScaleKit
- 01:22:32 – Product management philosophy and practice
- 01:28:59 – Bridging product and engineering
- 01:33:32 – Advice for developer tools builders
- 01:37:13 – What is next for ScaleKit
- 01:39:00 – Closing thoughts and thanks
About Ravi Madabhushi
Ravi Madabhushi is the Co-Founder of ScaleKit, a platform that enables B2B SaaS teams to implement enterprise-grade authentication and user management in hours. He is focused on helping startups unblock SSO deals and scale faster by offloading complex auth, authorization, and compliance requirements.“`
Full Transcript
Ravi Madabhushi:
I think we need to get rid of passwords. Almost weekly, I get alerts that my information was leaked because a company’s database was breached. As an industry, we should move beyond passwords to more trusted solutions. If you are building a B2B application and going after enterprise customers, there is a 100% chance you will be asked to integrate with their identity provider via SAML, OIDC, or another protocol. As a B2B founder, you need to implement multiple ways for users to log in. You must build each method securely while ensuring users have a smooth experience.
Aditya Anand:
Hi, thank you so much for doing this, Ravi. It’s been a while since we caught up. Great to have you here. I’d love to start with the story of how we met, which is very Bangalore-ish. About a year ago, we were in a WeWork. I was talking to my tech team about authentication, and we were complaining, why is this so hard? You overheard us, came over, and talked about what you were building. That’s how we met, very Bangalore.
Ravi Madabhushi:
Thanks so much for having me, Adi.
I still meet a lot of people that way. I walk around WeWork to get coffee or water and hear things like, we had this problem with SAML or with two-factor authentication. I go up and say, we’re working on this, and I want to hear what you’re going through. The idea isn’t to pitch what we’re building, which we’ll do later, but to understand their challenges. I’ve been through this for eight years across different journeys, so I can relate. It’s an effort to understand their journey and see if I can help in any way, not just from a ScaleKit point of view, but in general. It’s great to meet that way because it’s so contextual.
Aditya Anand:
What was the moment that led you to start ScaleKit?
Ravi Madabhushi:
It was a planned journey. Before ScaleKit, we were at Freshworks for seven years and wanted to see the company through its IPO. After that, we took a break and decided to start again, this is our second journey. We wanted to be deliberate about the problem and the persona we were solving for. We wanted to relate deeply to the problem so we could enjoy solving it.
We looked back at the last ten years: the problems we solved and our strengths. I led product management for the platforms team at Freshworks, and for five to six years I focused on application security for a multi-product company: authentication, authorization, encryption key management, and more. We spent a lot of time making Freshworks products enterprise ready. Looking at the market, every B2B company going after enterprise customers faces the same journey, and there aren’t many great solutions. Why should every company build these in-house?
B2B companies should focus engineering bandwidth on their core problems, not on how customers log in or how role-based access control works. Those are critical, but not why customers buy your product. Customers buy because of the value you deliver in their domain. We started ScaleKit to help B2B products spend more time on what they care about, while we help them acquire enterprise customers quickly by accelerating their enterprise-readiness roadmap.
We’ve always loved working with developers. As a platform PM and former engineer, I enjoy those conversations, no fluff, no salesy talk. We knew the problem, we knew the persona, and we liked solving problems for that persona. We did market research and spoke to 100 B2B companies. The market is big, the problem is real, and we’ve solved it before. We want to make building B2B products easier.
Before AWS, Azure, and GCP, companies built their own hardware, bought servers, RAM, storage, set up networks, it wasn’t the most important thing while solving their core problem. AWS democratized infrastructure so you could focus on your product and customers. We want to do the same for application infrastructure problems for B2B companies. We’re starting with authentication because it’s the most critical, and we’ll expand from there.
Aditya Anand:
As a CTO, I really relate to the problem you’re solving. At every company I’ve worked at, I’ve had to solve it repeatedly. This should be plug-and-play. Tell us more about the ScaleKit product. What does it offer?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Right now, we offer enterprise authentication use cases. In the B2B product journey, you build an MVP, sell to early customers, and as you succeed, you go after enterprise customers, where most of the revenue is. Enterprises bring many demands: Do you support single sign-on? Two-factor authentication? Automatic user provisioning? SCIM provisioning? A bunch of acronyms get thrown around. You scramble to fit them in your roadmap while also expanding core product features to close enterprise deals.
We help B2B products add enterprise authentication and user management in less than a day. If you have an enterprise deal blocked on SAML SSO, you can work with ScaleKit, add the feature in under a day, and close the deal. We help you ship enterprise authentication and user management and acquire those customers.
Aditya Anand:
Tell us about your ideal customer. Who should decide, this is something I need?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Typically Series A or Series B B2B companies that already have basic authentication and are expanding to enterprise customers. They have product–market fit and want to accelerate the roadmap, add value, acquire more customers, and go upmarket. Those companies find value in ScaleKit because we let them focus on their core roadmap while we handle SSO, SAML, OIDC, and more to help them move upmarket quickly.
A funny story: a Series A company in Bangalore reached out via a VC connection. They had a deal blocked because they lacked SAML SSO. The enterprise customer liked their product, but the IT team wouldn’t approve without SAML SSO. They spoke to us on a Thursday evening and went live with SAML SSO on Monday morning. This was early in ScaleKit’s product journey. They went entirely self-serve and shipped to real customers in a day. That was fantastic validation.
Aditya Anand:
What exactly do enterprises look for? As an early-stage B2B SaaS selling to enterprises, what should I expect? What do they want and why?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Great question. There are typically four areas.
First: application security. Their IT or vendor procurement teams have checklists: integrate with their identity provider for SSO; automatically manage which users have access and what access; role-based and fine-grained access control; how you encrypt data; whether you support customer-managed keys and key rotations. This applies regardless of your product domain. You must check these boxes to be considered.
Second: product-specific workflows. Can they customize workflows? Do you integrate with other tools they use? How much can they configure themselves? They look for capability depth, customizability, workflows, and automation. The specifics vary by product domain.
Third: reliability and performance. Can you handle their scale, hundreds or thousands of users, without buckling? What’s your availability? If you go down, they can’t use the product. They expect strong reliability and performance guarantees.
Fourth: maturity and compliance. What’s your posture in how you build the product? Compliance isn’t just network and application infrastructure, it’s also how your employees build the product, release lifecycle, vulnerability response, and employee access to customer data. They look for certifications as proxies: SOC 2, ISO, GDPR, and data privacy standards. They want confidence that you’re mature and will be around for the long term.
Aditya Anand:
As an early-stage B2B exploring an enterprise GTM motion, where should I invest time, resources, and people to achieve these objectives?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Two areas: security and customizability.
On security, if you’re going after enterprise customers early, I’d advise deprioritizing some product features to improve your security posture. Network, infrastructure, or application security, make sure everything is locked down. Get external penetration tests, multiple vendors if needed. It’s okay if you lack some features versus competitors. It’s extremely hard to retrofit security later; every architecture decision should factor it in.
On customizability, this is a key difference between B2C and B2B. In B2C, most users behave similarly. In B2B, companies buy and every company operates differently. They want your product to fit their workflows, not change theirs. About 60% of your product will work the same for all customers, but the remaining 40% needs to be customizable: integrations, workflow tweaks, and configurability so they can make the tool work for them. Customers are buying a solution to their problem, not just a product. If you can solve 70% out of the box and let them get to 90% with customization, you’ll win. These two, security and customizability, are hard to bolt on later. Start from day one.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go back to the early days of ScaleKit. Tell us about your cofounder. How did you meet and decide to take the plunge together?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We go a long way back. My cofounder Satya and I started another journey in 2012. Satya was coming off a startup being acquired by ibibo Group. I was at redBus, on the other side of the table, doing due diligence for ibibo Group on whether they should acquire Satya’s startup. That’s how we met.
When Satya was exiting, he had an idea: SMBs struggled because every function had many cloud tools and data was fragmented. He wanted to make data integration easier for SMBs. We met at a BITS Pilani alumni event after that due diligence, he pitched the idea, and around the same time redBus was acquired by ibibo Group. I was thinking of starting up, and we hit it off, same college, similar interests in sports and music. Even though he’s three years senior, we became close friends.
We built that company for three to four years and exited to Freshworks. After spending time at Freshworks, when we thought about starting again, it was natural to do it together. Cofounder relationships must be built on deep trust. We trust each other, can have candid conversations, even ugly ones, without ego. We’re trying to solve a problem, doing our roles, making each other and the company better. We also felt our previous exit was unfinished business. We want to build a company that lasts 10–20 years, not a product to sell in three or four.
Aditya Anand:
What’s the ten-year vision of ScaleKit? Where is this headed?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We want to help B2B products get to market faster. In my previous journey, I saw 25–30% of engineering time spent on capabilities critical to packaging the product for sale, but not directly adding end-customer value.
It doesn’t make sense to spend 30% of bandwidth on things that don’t directly add value. We want to be the AWS or GCP equivalent for the application infrastructure layer for B2B products so teams can focus on core problems. We’re attempting this in three acts. Act 1: solve authentication and authorization for B2B products. Act 2: adjacencies like audit logs, feature management, and entitlements. Act 3: expand to other areas like notifications. If you have a product idea and a small team, you should be able to validate, build, and sell to five customers without building all the wrapper components to make it sales-ready. ScaleKit should do that for you in under a week. We want to democratize building B2B products.
Aditya Anand:
You mentioned an early customer who got up and running in hours to days. Any other journeys come to mind?
Ravi Madabhushi:
There’s a US customer with developers in Latin America. We still don’t know how they discovered us, but they reached out on LinkedIn: I saw your website, this is what you solve, can you help me? We hadn’t opened self-serve signups, we were in private beta and wanted to control onboarding. We gave them a sandbox and sent them to our docs and SDKs, offering a demo.
We didn’t hear back for five days, then got a Slack Connect message: how do we pay you? We didn’t even know they’d implemented us. We told them not to worry about payment, we hadn’t set up billing yet, no Stripe, because we were focused on delivering value first. That was huge validation: they didn’t get a demo, onboarded themselves with docs, implemented, and wanted to pay. It proved the problem is acute and discoverable, and that our product delivers value. Nothing beats an unknown person saying, take my money.
Aditya Anand:
How does ScaleKit stack up to something like Auth0?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We target a very specific market: B2B products. Auth0 is a very well-known authentication brand. When Auth0 started around 2012–2013, there weren’t many products solving customer identity and authentication. Microsoft and others focused on employee identity. Auth0 served the wave of B2C companies that needed powerful, scalable authentication.
Because Auth0 focuses primarily on B2C, the architecture revolves around a single user logging in. In B2B, the primary entity is an organization or tenant, and users belong to organizations. That fundamental distinction made integration harder for our B2B needs in a previous company. We’re building an authentication and authorization platform purpose-built for B2B: organizations, multi-tenancy, and deep customization. If you’re building B2C like Swiggy, Auth0 is a good solution. If you’re building B2B, we’re the solution for you.
Aditya Anand:
On build versus buy: for a CTO, the decision to adopt something like ScaleKit often comes down to that. How should folks make this decision?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Engineers love to build, not buy. But that’s changing. Engineering talent is costly, so leaders are mindful about where to spend it. The mindset has shifted too, leaders now focus on what truly matters and look for solutions first. A decade ago, there weren’t many options, so you built or used open source. Now, for many niches, there’s likely a product. The iPhone and Android ecosystems conditioned us to think there must be an app for that.
In some areas the decision is obvious: no one builds payments in-house, you use Stripe or PayPal. For email, you use SendGrid or AWS SES. Auth has reached a similar stage: five or six years ago, most founders would build; today many buy. The motion has shifted from build-before-buy to buy-before-build. There are still pockets where leaders prefer building, authorization is often seen as too close to the product, but I believe that will change. Buying access control will become easier, more economical, and faster than building.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s define some terms. What’s the difference between authentication and authorization?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Authentication identifies who the user is and verifies they are who they claim to be. Historically, apps used passwords: set one at registration and verify it on login. Passwords are insecure, stolen, reused, and leaked. That’s why identity brokers like Google, Facebook, Apple, and others emerged to verify identity so applications don’t have to.
Authorization comes after authentication. It determines what the verified user is allowed to do, what resources they can access and what actions they can perform. Authentication is essential; authorization is even more important because you must ensure users can only do what they’re permitted to do.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go to SSO and SAML. What do they mean?
Ravi Madabhushi:
In B2C, consumers often use social identity providers to log in. In B2B, we use work identities managed by enterprise identity providers like Microsoft or Okta. When you build a B2B app and sell to enterprises, they’ll ask you to integrate with their identity provider. They want employees to log in using the corporate IdP they control.
Single sign-on means an employee signs in once to the central identity provider and can access all authorized applications without separate logins. To enable this securely between two systems, the enterprise IdP and your application, standards emerged: SAML and OpenID Connect. They define how to securely exchange identity information and trust assertions so your app can let the user in without managing separate credentials. Okta is a great example of a modern cloud IdP. Before Okta, many used Microsoft Active Directory on Windows Server, managing identities on-prem. Okta moved that to the cloud.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go to RBAC, role-based access control. What does that mean in an enterprise context?
Ravi Madabhushi:
RBAC is a way to grant permissions based on roles. An application defines roles, owner, admin, editor, viewer, etc., and assigns permissions to those roles. Users get permissions by being assigned roles. What a user can do depends on their role, not ad hoc per-user settings.
Aditya Anand:
Can you define OAuth? What is it, and what’s needed to implement it?
Ravi Madabhushi:
OAuth is a framework for delegated access between systems on behalf of a user. The classic example: you build a video editor, and a user’s videos are in Google Drive. Rather than asking for their Google credentials or forcing manual downloads, the user can grant your app scoped access to specific files. OAuth standardizes how your app obtains tokens with specific scopes to access another system’s resources.
Over time, the ecosystem evolved. Many integrations only needed to exchange verified user identity, not resource access. OpenID Connect was defined on top of OAuth as a streamlined standard for identity, securely exchanging information about a user’s identity between two systems.
Aditya Anand:
As a CTO, I can either build all of this or build my own business. That brings us to the problem that ScaleKit solves.
Ravi Madabhushi:
Exactly. Can a CTO build all this? Of course. But is that the best use of your team’s time? Just as you wouldn’t build your own cloud infrastructure today, you shouldn’t have to build authentication plumbing. That’s ScaleKit’s value proposition.
Aditya Anand:
When it comes to authentication methods, what’s being used today, and how do you see this evolving?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We should move beyond passwords. I use unique, random passwords with a manager, and I still get breach alerts. We need more trusted solutions: social providers, passwordless methods like WebAuthn and passkeys, biometrics, and even SMS or email OTPs are better than passwords.
If you’re building a B2B application going after enterprises, you will be asked to integrate with their IdP via SAML and OIDC. You’ll likely implement five or six login methods and find the right balance between strong security and smooth UX. You don’t want to make users jump through hoops.
We’re at a phase where more applications, B2C and B2B, will adopt passkeys and WebAuthn because they’re phishing and social-engineering resistant. They require possession of a device, and devices are protected by Face ID, fingerprints, or PINs. Browsers and devices have made biometric login intuitive. Biometric data doesn’t leave the device, so even if an app’s database is leaked, your biometric data isn’t exposed. I expect more products and enterprises to demand biometric-based authentication.
Aditya Anand:
Will AI impact authentication and security at large?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Definitely. The biggest near-term value is anomaly and bot detection. AI can quickly flag authentication or access patterns that deviate from a user’s baseline, indicate bot behavior, and trigger preventative actions. Post-login, AI can power audits by crunching large volumes of data, logins, methods used, IP changes, and generating actionable insights, including real-time breach detection. Before and after login, AI can summarize signals and recommend next steps.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s talk about the Freshworks journey, the Freshworks mafia. More than 50 startups have been spawned: Rocketlane, SuperOps, Plum, Everstage, and ScaleKit. What about Freshworks enabled so many to start their own ventures?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We’ll see even more. It comes down to Girish, Freshworks’ CEO, and the culture he built: obsess about the customer, their problem, and how you solve it. Freshworks also made many acquisitions, bringing great people together to learn from each other while staying customer-problem-focused. With that mindset, it’s natural to spot real problems and build solutions.
Girish is humble and open about the journey and mistakes to avoid. Having a role model who’s done it makes a huge difference. In the 90s and 2000s, Infosys and Narayana Murthy showed India could build software services companies, inspiring many. Girish did that for product companies from India selling to the world. Now we have a role model showing it’s possible and how to navigate tricky situations. I credit those two factors for the wave of startups from Freshworks’ alumni.
Aditya Anand:
What was it like going through the IPO journey at Freshworks?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Exhilarating. Many people worked hard to make it happen, especially the first 50–100 who trusted Girish’s vision to build a product company from India that could IPO. Seeing their joy and pride was inspiring. Building from India, serving global customers, and competing with incumbents isn’t easy. It’s a testament to the talent in India and Girish’s leadership.
Aditya Anand:
Freshworks has been a trailblazer in build in India, sell to the world. What about the culture or approach to product and selling enabled that?
Ravi Madabhushi:
Freshworks is a product-first company. Start with the customer, the problem, why it matters, then how to solve it. The process is very visual, designers and PMs sit together and create mocks. It’s easier to align teams around a visual journey than a long document, especially in remote settings. Girish introduced the I2P (idea to product) process: once you have an idea, define context and involve a PM, designer, and architect. Create mocks, align the team, and build.
Don’t come with docs; come with mocks. It may take more effort than writing, but it forces you to think through the customer journey. Everyone is empowered to bring ideas and solve problems. As a PM, you prioritize which problems to solve, not just which features to build. That DNA has started to permeate the Indian SaaS ecosystem.
Aditya Anand:
Let’s go back to your journey. Tell us about your childhood and formative experiences that shaped your worldview.
Ravi Madabhushi:
I grew up in rural Andhra Pradesh, studied in a government high school in Telugu medium until 10th grade. My father, grandfather, and uncles are teachers. The expected path was study, get a job, marry, have kids, retire. That worldview changed when I went to BITS Pilani, the first time away from home. Growing up as a school topper in a small town made me a frog in a well. At BITS, I saw how average I was relative to incredibly smart, hardworking peers. You can either get depressed or be inspired. I got inspired and wanted to work as hard and learn as much.
For example, I first learned about doing a master’s in the US only after going to college; I didn’t know it was an option. Being exposed to what’s possible matters, that’s why role models are important.
At redBus, working closely with Phani and Charan was formative. redBus was already a household name, yet they stayed humble, in the trenches, talking to customers and solving problems. I learned what a startup really is: solving problems with limited resources and constraints, driven by the joy of helping customers, not a paycheck. That pushed me toward entrepreneurship.
Later, doing my own startup and the Freshworks journey added to that learning. Now I see how leaders like Narayana Murthy built India’s services foundation, and people like Girish and Sridhar Vembu are building India’s product story. We want India to also be known for platform and infrastructure companies, not just applications. Those experiences over 15–20 years drive me today.
Aditya Anand:
You embody the heads-down builder mentality. Let’s talk about zero to one. What should be a founder’s mindset when approaching a zero-to-one journey?
Ravi Madabhushi:
First, validate the problem. Is it big and acute for the customer persona you’re targeting? You want to be in a pull market, where prospects discover you and push you to sell, rather than a push market where you must educate them that they have a problem. Ask if it’s a top-three problem for your buyer.
For ScaleKit, we target engineering leaders and CTOs at Series A and Series B companies. If they don’t care about authentication, security, or selling to enterprise, it won’t matter how good our product is. But the minute they have an enterprise deal blocked on SSO or provisioning, they’ll look for a solution like ScaleKit. Then it’s about why our solution is best.
Next is product–market fit. Once you know the problem matters, define the market and persona that feels it most. You want conversations about pricing, start dates, and discounts, not just features or polite nods. Iterate toward more of the former.
Equally important is your team and culture. You’ll be doing this for 10 years. Surround yourself with people who give you energy, help you grow, and are fun to work with. Don’t underestimate having fun. When prospects turn you down or a VC says no, your team keeps you going. If you’re married, bring your partner along for the ride; don’t sacrifice personal life for work. Build a happy home and a happy work life. Founders often overlook these.
Aditya Anand:
What’s been the most challenging moment in building ScaleKit so far?
Ravi Madabhushi:
The mental discipline to be patient. We’re building an authentication and security platform for B2B apps. The problem is hard. Building the right product the right way takes time. I remind myself: it’s a long journey, don’t seek short-term fixes, trust the team, trust the problem selection, and trust we’ll solve it, even if it takes longer than an application feature might. Staying patient, positive, and focused is the challenge.
Aditya Anand:
Given your product background, how do you approach product management, roadmaps and stakeholders?
Ravi Madabhushi:
I learned a lot from Freshworks’ style. As a PM, you don’t prioritize features; you prioritize customer problems. Balance three things: which problems are important, how to objectify worth (revenue, churn reduction, CSAT, NPS), and stakeholder alignment. A PM is the least empowered but most responsible person. You’re constantly selling your vision internally, convincing engineering why they should spend time on a problem.
Involve engineers early with problem context, not just solutions. When they’re engaged in solving a customer problem, they often propose better, faster solutions. With sales, help them position and pitch the product, and make the product easier to sell. Sales gives unfiltered feedback because their income depends on it, listen closely. With marketing, especially product marketing, work together early and deeply on who the customer is, what problem you solve, and why they should care. In India, we underemphasize product marketing, but I believe it can be the single most critical function determining success. A great product marketing team can take you to the moon.
Aditya Anand:
Product and tech teams need each other, yet there’s a perpetual tug of war. What would you recommend to product managers and engineers to set up a positive cadence?
Ravi Madabhushi:
A healthy push and pull brings out the best in both. PMs must respect engineers’ time and value. When asking for a capability, give as much problem context as possible before discussing solutions. Treat engineers as partners whose time you’re asking for.
Engineers should question PMs more: why is this important, what are we trying to achieve, how will it help the product and company? You’re not being critical; you’re helping clarify thinking and ensuring you have context. Respect is key both ways. When engineers respect PMs, they’ll do everything to build the vision, even better than imagined. But keep the tension healthy and focused on what’s best for the product and company.
Aditya Anand:
What’s your advice to someone building in the developer tools space?
Ravi Madabhushi:
First, build a community. Don’t push your product, be genuinely helpful. For ScaleKit, we want to help developers understand OAuth or OIDC securely, regardless of whether they use us. Teach, share, and connect developers with leaders who’ve solved similar problems. Engineers don’t want to be sold to; they want to learn.
Second, give them a way to play with your product, open source, free trial, or a community edition. Developers make decisions over longer cycles. They’ll evaluate performance, deployment cost, ops cost, maintenance, and real production scenarios. Let them use it freely and deeply. If your product is good, they’ll come back and push you to sell.
Aditya Anand:
What’s next for ScaleKit in the next six to twelve months?
Ravi Madabhushi:
We’re building more authentication capabilities for B2B products. We started with SAML SSO as a service and SCIM provisioning as a service, so any B2B product going after enterprises can get these critical capabilities in hours or a day. Next, we’re expanding to be your entire authentication engine, not just enterprise auth, but all auth: passwords, passwordless, social, and enterprise. If you’re building a B2B product, you should be able to use ScaleKit for the next ten years without touching auth.
After that, we’ll add authorization. It’s not just who to let in, but what roles and permissions they have, what they can and cannot do. We aim to be the authentication, user management, and access management layer for your B2B application.
Aditya Anand:
Ravi, thank you so much for doing this. This has been a very insightful conversation. Authentication is integral to the journey; it has to be solved for you to accomplish your mission. This was super educational for me and, I’m sure, for the audience.
Ravi Madabhushi:
Thank you so much, Adi. Thanks for having me.
Aditya Anand:
Perfect. Awesome.