The Feature You'll Rebuild Three Times: Authorization at Scale: Pavan Kulkarni at ERC

Authorization is a critical feature for B2B SaaS applications that evolves with a company's growth, fundamentally reshaping technical architecture at each stage. Pavan Kulkarni, Engineering Manager at WorkOS, highlighted this during his talk at the Enterprise Ready Conference 2025, emphasizing the distinction between authentication and authorization and the latter's importance in enterprise trust and compliance. Using Figma as a case study, he illustrated the evolution of authorization systems, from primitive permissions to complex attribute-based access controls, demonstrating how these systems must adapt quickly as companies scale, especially with the rise of AI agents and AI-native features that introduce new complexities. WorkOS's solution, AuthKit, aims to simplify authorization management for rapidly growing companies by providing a flexible system that evolves with customer needs, avoiding the need for complete rewrites at each stage of development. Kulkarni's insights underline the necessity for B2B SaaS companies to prioritize authorization as a core component of their product strategy, accommodating the intricate access management requirements of enterprise clients.

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