Clerk, Inc.
Clerk provides complete authentication and user management solutions for modern web applications, enabling developers to launch faster with best-in-class security and user experience. The company is expanding from authentication into full user management with business primitives like billing and authorization.
Founding Story
Clerk was founded in March 2019 by brothers Colin and Braden Sidoti with a simple insight: many third-party service integrations are abstracted onto the User object (like user.subscribe() and user.email()). They imagined a service could offer a User object with these extensions built-in. They started by building an incredibly easy-to-use authentication service that would enable them to extend the User object in the future. The founders aimed to capitalize on the shift in developer tools from APIs to components and the rise of React to make building applications significantly easier.
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Leadership
Founders
Colin Sidoti
Co-founder and CEO of Clerk. Has a degree from MIT and a degree in computer science from University of California, Berkeley. Prior to Clerk, he was co-founder and CTO of Harbor Inc., a software development consultancy. Also worked as an independent consultant and web developer.
Braden Sidoti
Co-founder and CTO of Clerk. Graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and previously worked at Uber and Inspirato. Brother of Colin Sidoti.
Executive Team
Colin Sidoti
Co-Founder & CEO
MIT graduate with computer science degree from UC Berkeley. Previously co-founder and CTO of Harbor Inc.
Braden Sidoti
Co-Founder & CTO
Graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. Previously worked at Uber and Inspirato.
Business Model
Revenue Model
API usage-based pricing and subscription tiers. Primary revenue from monthly recurring users (MRU) and monthly recurring organizations (MRO) with add-ons for B2B authentication, billing (0.7% of billing volume), and administration features. Self-serve platform with usage-based pricing.
Pricing Tiers
50,000 MRU limit per app, unlimited applications, 3 dashboard seats, up to 5 user impersonations, APIs and prebuilt UIs, most authentication features, custom domain, fixed 7-day session lifetime
Everything in Hobby plus: 50,000 MRU included per app ($0.02/mo each additional), 1 Enterprise connection included ($75/mo each additional), remove Clerk branding, MFA, satellite domains ($10/mo each), custom session lifetime, SMS authentication
Everything in Pro plus: 10 dashboard seats included ($20/mo each additional), SOC2 Report & HIPAA compliance, enhanced dashboard roles, priority support, audit logs (coming soon)
Everything in Business plus: annual committed use discounts, 99.99% Uptime SLA, premium support SLA with dedicated Slack channel, onboarding & migration support
Target Markets
- React and Next.js developers
- Modern web framework developers (Remix, Astro, etc.)
- SaaS companies (B2C and B2B)
- AI/ML companies
- Fintech companies
- E-commerce platforms
- SaaS applications requiring user authentication
- B2B multi-tenant applications
- AI applications and agentic workflows
- Fintech applications
- E-commerce platforms
- React and Next.js applications
- Browserbase
- Inngest
- Profound
- Braintrust
History & Milestones
Raised $50M Series C led by Menlo Ventures and Anthropic's Anthology Fund; scaled to manage over 200 million users across 15,000+ applications
Raised $30M Series B led by CRV with strategic investment from Stripe; announced expansion into authorization
Passkeys launched in beta
Passkeys became generally available
Crossed 1 million managed users
