July 2022 Summaries

PropelAuth, a remote company founded in 2021 that provides end-to-end authentication tools tailored to B2B businesses, raised a $2.59 million seed round after completing Y Combinator’s W22 cohort. The investment included Tiger Global, 8-Bit Capital, Soma Capital, Y Combinator, and 16 additional firms and angel investors, and will support product development, hiring, and developer-relations efforts to grow its user base. Founded by former Palantir and SafeGraph engineering leader Andrew Israel, the three-person company aims to address B2B authentication needs that many consumer-focused providers do not fully support, offering configurable roles, customer organizations and groups, user administration, self-service interfaces, and integrations with major web frameworks. PropelAuth also introduced a “Free till Funded” initiative, allowing early-stage startups to use its growth plan without charge until they raise $1 million, seeking to reduce costs and uncertainty for founders in an unpredictable fundraising environment.

PugSQL is presented as an alternative to using SQLAlchemy directly in FastAPI applications for developers who prefer raw SQL over an ORM. It lets developers store named SQL queries in separate files, define their parameters and return types, and invoke them as Python functions after connecting the module to a database. In a FastAPI URL-shortening example, a route retrieves a URL by slug through a PugSQL query and returns either a redirect or a 404 error. This approach emphasizes separation of concerns by keeping application logic, SQL operations, and database testing distinct, while allowing query functions to be mocked and independently verified through integration tests.

Multi-tenant SaaS applications can identify customers through customer-specific subdomains, URL paths, query parameters, or browser localStorage, with each option affecting infrastructure flexibility, development, and user experience. Subdomains can support DNS-level routing to dedicated infrastructure or geographic regions but complicate local development because localhost subdomains require additional configuration. Customer names or IDs in URL paths are presented as the preferred default because they are widely supported by frontend and backend frameworks, work smoothly in local and test environments, and clearly identify the active customer. Query parameters offer similar functionality but can seem less permanent and may be altered during actions such as form submissions. LocalStorage-based account selection avoids tying shared content to a particular organization in URLs, as seen in services such as Notion, but can create friction when users must determine or switch to the correct account.

On July 7, 2022, PropelAuth announced enhanced Organization features and updated front-end and back-end libraries aimed at simplifying authentication management for B2B companies. Customers can create and manage organizations for users, verify membership by organization name or ID, use URL-safe slugs, invite approved users, disable public signups for private beta programs, and allow users with whitelisted email domains to join automatically. The updates expand PropelAuth’s self-service B2B offering, which includes Organizations, Groups, customizable authentication pages, and ready-to-use interfaces for creating organizations, inviting coworkers, and assigning roles. PropelAuth positions these capabilities as an affordable alternative to building custom authentication systems or paying for enterprise-focused B2B features from other providers.

React applications can implement organization-specific URLs for B2B multi-tenant products by combining React Router with PropelAuth, using routes such as `/org/:orgName` to identify the organization being viewed. The setup places `BrowserRouter` and PropelAuth’s `RequiredAuthProvider` at the application root, with the latter redirecting unauthenticated users to login automatically. A home route can retrieve a signed-in user’s organizations through PropelAuth’s `orgHelper`, display links using each organization’s URL-safe name, and direct users without memberships to create an organization or request an invitation. The organization view reads the route parameter and checks client-side membership through `getOrgByName` to provide an immediate “not found” or access-denied experience, but this browser-side check is not secure because users can alter client code. Sensitive data and actual authorization decisions should therefore be enforced server-side, such as through PropelAuth Express middleware that verifies the user belongs to the requested organization, while client-side validation remains useful for improving responsiveness and user experience.