Better Auth, by a self-taught Ethiopian dev, raises $5M from Peak XV, YC

Why does a JavaScript auth library have to raise five million?

Because the author of this library is an ambitious startup founder and would like to grow his tool into a business.

And many have done this before (selling auth). 0auth, Clerk, Supabase, etc.

Any more I'm missing?

That this is not an oauth backend but a frontend library that you hook into something.

That doesn't sound right. The initialisation code has a database connection string argument. YOu wouldn't do that from a frontend.

This library just hashes passwords and handles oauth2 callbacks. But it also requires a database to "store user data", which is really out of scope of an auth library. But I would like to hear how one goes from a country I've never heard about before to raising 5 mil as a JavaScript library "startup".

> from a country I've never heard about before

How is your lack of geographical knowledge relevant to any of this?

> How is your lack of geographical knowledge relevant to any of this?

It doesn't matter where the country is located on the map. If you happen to be a citizen of a developing country, your opportunities are extremely limited, and that is why I'm curious how he managed to get into the US and make a startup out of something that doesn't make sense to be one.