We have a problem. The first step to solving that problem is acknowledging it exists. And the second step to solving that problem is start using Auth0.

Twenty years ago, most of us had maybe one password, and most often a single identity. Today, it’s almost impossible to manage without a password manager and we have multiple sources of identity and authentication. Managing our digital personas and our digital identities has become something that most humans in the connected world need to do.

As a corollary, if you are a company, and I mean *any* kind of company, not just a technology company, you have to manage digital identity and authentication for not only your own employees, but for your customers, partners, service providers and more. And even today in 2015, every single company tends to roll their own solution for managing login and authentication. Think about that for a second.

It sounds archaic today to recall that the first step in starting a company at one point was ordering servers and equipment. We don’t do that any more. We spin up instances on AWS or if you’re even hipper then perhaps you’re using Docker containers. Likewise you don’t get phone lines from AT&T and connect them to dialogic board anymore, you make an API call on Twilio.

Then why is it that so many developers are still rolling their own code for login, identity, authentication, password recovery and more? It simply doesn’t make any sense. This is why I am so excited to formally announce K9 Ventures’ investment in Auth0.

Auth0 is an identity-as-a-service platform for developers that makes strong authentication and authorization simple to implement for developers and IT administrators by augmenting and extending existing or new identity environments. With Auth0, developers do not need to become experts in authorization, authentication, identity management and security. Instead, then drop in Auth0’s cloud service and and leverage decades of expertise in each of these areas with just a few lines of code.

Information hacks are becoming increasingly common. In most cases hackers are looking for either credit card/payment credentials or they are looking for personally identifying information. By using services like Stripe, companies can limit their exposure to being vulnerable to payment information hacks, but they still remain vulnerable to personally identifying information hacks. Using a platform like Auth0 for storing personally identifying information can make it possible for even an individual developer to take advantage of the best-in-class information security practices, without having to re-invent the vault each time.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Jon Gelsey, the CEO of Auth0, for many years. The co-founders of Auth0, Eugenio Pace and Matias Woloski literally wrote the book on identity and access control (A Guide to Claims-Based Identity and Access Control). And the product that Auth0 has built blew me away with how well thought through and engineered it is. Auth0 is headquartered in Bellevue, WA, but having known Jon for many years and the incredible strength of the product became the driving factors for me to make a rare exception to K9’s geography constraints for investing in Auth0.

Auth0 is the Twilio for identity, login and authentication — that is how I think about it. They’ve developed interfaces for almost any language or platform you can imagine using and have APIs which are elegantly and cleanly designed to make it possible to integrate Auth0 within minutes, yet have the flexibility to make it do complex things. It is both low threshold and high ceiling.

K9 Ventures is proud to co-invest along-side Bessemer Venture Partners in the Seed and Series A for Auth0. If you’re a developer building a product or service that requires login and authentication (and which product doesn’t!?) then you should be using Auth0. You can start by visiting them on the web at http://auth0.com.

You may also follow me on @Twitter at @ManuKumar, and for all things @K9Ventures K9 Ventures is also on Facebook and Google+.