Denizen

← Back to Kevin's homepagePublished: 2016 July 20

Started 2014 June, released 2014 August, shut down 2015 June

Ryan and I built a “user management as a service” platform. When we started in 2014, there were several services (DailyCred, Stormpath, UserApp, Janrain, &c.) that offered backend-only user management. These required you to provide your own visual design and implementation.

We wanted to build something similar to Stripe’s Checkout: a drop-in <script> that would provide user registration, login, and payments flows as a visually attractive, ready-to-go popup. Our intended target market was small teams and startups who needed to focus on their core product experience and launch quickly. After launching we discovered what was obvious in hindsight: customers needed to integrate our service before they launched, but it’s very difficult to find companies that haven’t yet launched (and the ones who’ve already launched have zero interest in reworking their login and payment flows).

There is at least one service doing this today, Memberful, though I have no idea how it’s working out for them.

8 minute video walkthrough

Homepage screenshot