Bereket Engida, a self-taught programmer from Ethiopia, has quietly built what some developers say is the best authentication tool they’ve ever used. His startup, Better Auth, offers an open-source framework that simplifies user authentication and has caught the attention of big-name investors.
Engida started programming at 18 after being declined help by a friend, and he continued to build projects remotely while working on various jobs. However, he consistently saw a problem – authentication – which existing tools couldn’t solve effectively. Engida built his own authentication framework using TypeScript, allowing developers to access user data via open-source libraries, support common permissions use cases, and scale with plug-ins.
Better Auth has gained traction among early-stage AI startups and clocked 150,000+ weekly downloads, 15,000+ GitHub stars, and a community of over 6,000 Discord members. The library lets developers implement authentication flows directly on their databases and embed it on the back-end, keeping user data on-premise.
The startup recently raised $5 million in seed funding from prominent investors and will focus on improving its core features while launching a paid enterprise infrastructure. Engida aims to scale without trading away the product’s community-built feel by hiring a small team to maintain the codebase and expand documentation.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/25/this-self-taught-ethiopian-dev-built-an-authentication-tool-and-got-into-yc