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Why We Invested in Strivacity

As digital transformation grows, so do the number of consumer-facing applications developed each month, offering exciting new As digital transformation grows, so do the number of consumer-facing applications developed each month, offering exciting new services and experiences. These innovative, improved applications always require a customer identity component, including registering, maintaining, and evolving user account details and privileges over time. Additionally, the data collected must be appropriately protected according to the laws of a given region. The customer identity and access piece is not easy to get “right” – despite the many requirements, the experience must also be seamless for the user and easy to adapt going forward.

For these reasons and more, customer identity and access management initiatives are complex. Most developers would prefer to use a specialized platform to help with the development and maintenance of the function, enabling them to focus on the differentiating aspects of their application. Teams need a best-in-class tool that will integrate easily and quickly, meeting all requirements without much undue lift from their teams. Specialized solutions have been developed to address this, known within the security industry as Customer Identity and Access Management, or CIAM. Due to incredible demand, we have seen rapid growth and strategic activity in the identity space, including the growth of Ping Identity (in which Ten Eleven was an investor) and of Okta and their acquisition of Auth0.

However, current CIAM solutions are still not as easy to integrate and deploy as one might expect, often requiring more development hours than teams wish to allocate. Data privacy issues are still tricky for teams to navigate with the current solutions, with regionalized requirements regularly evolving. So while progress has been made, white space still exists for a customer identity solution that is easier and faster for developers and brands to deploy and more flexible to manage on an ongoing basis. As Gartner mentions in its November 2021 Magic Quadrant report on the Access Management space, “CIAM, legacy AM project migrations and API-centric application development are driving demand for easier ways of implementing modern experiences for user access, including an increased need for AM developer tools and identity orchestration.”

However, current CIAM solutions are still not as easy to integrate and deploy as one might expect, often requiring more development hours than teams wish to allocate. Data privacy issues are still tricky for teams to navigate with the current solutions, with regionalized requirements regularly evolving. So while progress has been made, white space still exists for a customer identity solution that is easier and faster for developers and brands to deploy and more flexible to manage on an ongoing basis. As Gartner mentions in its November 2021 Magic Quadrant report on the Access Management space, “CIAM, legacy AM project migrations and API-centric application development are driving demand for easier ways of implementing modern experiences for user access, including an increased need for AM developer tools and identity orchestration.”

That’s why today, we’re thrilled to announce our investment in Strivacity. Strivacity is the first customer-focused access management developer tool that is cloud-born, built to answer clients’ modern customer identity challenges at scale. It’s easy for developers to use, simple to manage by security teams, and makes marketing happy with its CX-focused design. The company prides itself on a “no-code” approach, reducing development and operational costs by 50%. The company also has built its solution to meet data localization requirements and uses a unique Isolation-by-Design approach that means zero shared infrastructure or services.

We admire the experience and approach of Strivacity’s co-founders, Keith Graham and Stephen Cox. They have worked together for quite some time, including at SecureAuth. Teams are always the most important of our early investment decision, and we have great respect for how they work together and the talent they have attracted to their cause. The team is already international, with a strong engineering team in Hungary. The sales and marketing teams are formed and ready to grow with a capital infusion from the funding round.

We believe that identity is at the heart of security. As prior investors in Ping Identity, we know how vital the identity layer is to any organization’s security and overall customer experience. Our use of the digital technologies that run our lives depends on high integrity, easy-to-implement, adaptable identity solutions. And we know that Strivacity is the next big player in the customer identity and access space. Congrats to the team and looking forward to what’s next! We are thrilled to support Keith and Stephen today and will be along for every step of the journey ahead, prepared to help however best we can.

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