Get live statistics and analysis of Colin | clerk.com's profile on X / Twitter

Lead clerk at @ClerkDev

397 following4k followers

The Visionary

Colin is the forward-thinking leader of ClerkDev, pioneering best practices in authentication and developer tools. With a data-driven mindset and a passion for simplifying SaaS building, he champions thoughtful innovation over hype. His vision embraces both product expansion and maintaining integrity in security standards.

Impressions
113.4k10.4k
$21.26
Likes
721-45
75%
Retweets
25-2
3%
Replies
726
8%
Bookmarks
13928
15%

Top users who interacted with Colin | clerk.com over the last 14 days

@TimZolleis

Im absolutely right

1 interactions
@the_mewc

building calcs.com for structural engineers and manufacturing indiehacking apps like chartcastr.com for data analysts

1 interactions
@_mohdziyad

Somehow, I’ll outfox every box they try to throw me in

1 interactions
@1FineBreed

Tech Advocate | Music Addict | Ambivert | Chelsea FC | SWE | Opinions are mine only

1 interactions

You’re so tuned into 'buy best practice' that you probably judge your morning coffee by the ISO certification of its beans while lecturing others on why instant coffee is just hype—don’t worry, your tweets have more buzz than your espresso machine!

Successfully forged a pivotal partnership with Stripe, making SaaS building ‘really, really, ridiculously easy’ and setting Clerk apart as an innovator in developer tooling.

To reshape the developer tools ecosystem by enabling builders to adopt secure, scalable, and best-practice solutions effortlessly, while driving the evolution of SaaS beyond traditional boundaries.

Colin values data over hype, prefers innovation grounded in practical benefits, and believes in simplifying complexity rather than adding unnecessary options. He champions the importance of best practices and holds a strong stance against legacy methods that no longer serve users well.

A clear strategic thinker, Colin skillfully balances product innovation with customer demands, all while maintaining a strong and principled stance on security and user experience.

Sometimes so focused on best practices and the bigger picture, Colin may come across as dismissive of traditional enterprise preferences, potentially alienating risk-averse stakeholders.

To grow your audience on X, lean more into sharing bite-sized insights and storytelling around your data-backed decisions and enterprise anecdotes. Engaging with developer communities via AMAs or quick polls about emerging tools could also boost interaction and follower connection.

Fun fact: Colin proudly led Clerk to reject outdated security features like LUNS-based password validation, even when pressured by enterprise clients—prioritizing integrity over easy wins!

Top tweets of Colin | clerk.com

The money is cool and all, but let's talk more about this @Stripe partnership. tl;dr: Together, we're going to make building a SaaS really, really, ridiculously easy. But let me explain that "really, really" part🧵 clerk.com/blog/series-b

243k

Never been a fan of multi-stage fund hate from pure seed funds. Here's our anecdote: @villi passed on our seed extension and said he wanted to wait until the A because the space was competitive @a16z didn't 🤷‍♂️

171k

Clerk has reached a clear fork in the road: 1. Focus on enterprise sales Hire an outbound sales team, bump our prices, and focus our engineering efforts on adding extra knobs that enterprises want. Basically just copy the Auth0 playbook on a more modern toolchain. 2. Focus on product expansion Create additional tools for billing, CRM, analytics, etc. These product verticals are heavily dependent on customer data, so we can lean on our user management roots to bootstrap our offering. This is Rippling's "compound startup" playbook, but using customer data as the foundation instead of employee data: #why-should-startups-broaden-their-scope">rippling.com/blog/rippling-… --- We're doing 2. We know it's a bit unexpected... "What do you mean you're building a payments integration? You're an auth company!" On the other hand: it's not 🙂 A Stripe integration is almost our most requested feature on feedback.clerk.com, so clearly there's demand. We see it as a broader shift in developer tools: developers want to "buy best practice" instead of piecing it together themselves – and it's happening up and down the stack: * Serverless instead of DIY infra * One step further: @nextjs "framework-defined infra" instead of DIY serverless (h/t @cramforce) * Stripe Checkout instead of DIY checkout * @inngest instead of re-reading Brandur's "Transactionally Staged Job Drains" for the Nth time and building a DIY job drain (h/t @itstonyhb) * @convex_dev keeping the client updated instead of DIY webhook hell (h/t @jamwt) * etc etc etc There's still innovation on the other side (e.g. kubernetes), but we see that more as tools for tool-builders than for mass-market adoption. Since Clerk is playing into this trend by selling best practice for auth, it's not surprising that our customers are saying "do it for more things" instead of "give me a bunch of auth knobs" – they wouldn't have picked Clerk if they wanted more knobs! --- To be clear, this doesn't mean we're giving up on enterprise sales. We expect the sales will come as more enterprises adopt the "buy best practice" mindset - and we already see it starting. What is really means is that we won't force ourselves up market early, and that we've needed to grow comfortable telling enterprises "no" when they ask for a knob that we think shouldn't exist. Let me give you a concrete example. At some point, we had an enterprise demand LUNS-based password validation (Lowercase, Uppercase, Number, Symbol) You've seen this before, probably in an auth flow that you hate. You probably even have a default memorized password that you use when websites demand the requirement. We built the feature to win the sale (screenshot below), but the whole thing just felt icky. LUNS hasn't been best practice for over a decade, and it's advised against in NIST 800-63B, which is the foremost guidance for how to implement authentication factors. At this point, we regret it. We don't want this footgun in our product, and soon we'll be clearly marking it as "Bad practice: please do not use" We're avoiding more options like this because they dilute our offering, and create an opportunity for a competitor to be better at selling best practice. We don't want that to happen. Ultimately, we're confident that the "buy best practice" mindset will reach all enterprises eventually. It's no different than when enterprises were afraid of the cloud. While we wait, we can build more great products in other verticals.

55k

We're up! 🚀 Joined the .new club with og.new All credit to @fady_mak so far! I haven't done much of anything yet. (DNS has only been propagating for like 6 minutes, so you might see a dead link)

18k

Teaser of our Stripe integration! @ClerkDev will keep track of the plan your user subscribes to, and make it easy to verify the plan from your backend with: if( auth().has({ plan: "user:pro" }) ){ ... }

36k

Most engaged tweets of Colin | clerk.com

Clerk has reached a clear fork in the road: 1. Focus on enterprise sales Hire an outbound sales team, bump our prices, and focus our engineering efforts on adding extra knobs that enterprises want. Basically just copy the Auth0 playbook on a more modern toolchain. 2. Focus on product expansion Create additional tools for billing, CRM, analytics, etc. These product verticals are heavily dependent on customer data, so we can lean on our user management roots to bootstrap our offering. This is Rippling's "compound startup" playbook, but using customer data as the foundation instead of employee data: #why-should-startups-broaden-their-scope">rippling.com/blog/rippling-… --- We're doing 2. We know it's a bit unexpected... "What do you mean you're building a payments integration? You're an auth company!" On the other hand: it's not 🙂 A Stripe integration is almost our most requested feature on feedback.clerk.com, so clearly there's demand. We see it as a broader shift in developer tools: developers want to "buy best practice" instead of piecing it together themselves – and it's happening up and down the stack: * Serverless instead of DIY infra * One step further: @nextjs "framework-defined infra" instead of DIY serverless (h/t @cramforce) * Stripe Checkout instead of DIY checkout * @inngest instead of re-reading Brandur's "Transactionally Staged Job Drains" for the Nth time and building a DIY job drain (h/t @itstonyhb) * @convex_dev keeping the client updated instead of DIY webhook hell (h/t @jamwt) * etc etc etc There's still innovation on the other side (e.g. kubernetes), but we see that more as tools for tool-builders than for mass-market adoption. Since Clerk is playing into this trend by selling best practice for auth, it's not surprising that our customers are saying "do it for more things" instead of "give me a bunch of auth knobs" – they wouldn't have picked Clerk if they wanted more knobs! --- To be clear, this doesn't mean we're giving up on enterprise sales. We expect the sales will come as more enterprises adopt the "buy best practice" mindset - and we already see it starting. What is really means is that we won't force ourselves up market early, and that we've needed to grow comfortable telling enterprises "no" when they ask for a knob that we think shouldn't exist. Let me give you a concrete example. At some point, we had an enterprise demand LUNS-based password validation (Lowercase, Uppercase, Number, Symbol) You've seen this before, probably in an auth flow that you hate. You probably even have a default memorized password that you use when websites demand the requirement. We built the feature to win the sale (screenshot below), but the whole thing just felt icky. LUNS hasn't been best practice for over a decade, and it's advised against in NIST 800-63B, which is the foremost guidance for how to implement authentication factors. At this point, we regret it. We don't want this footgun in our product, and soon we'll be clearly marking it as "Bad practice: please do not use" We're avoiding more options like this because they dilute our offering, and create an opportunity for a competitor to be better at selling best practice. We don't want that to happen. Ultimately, we're confident that the "buy best practice" mindset will reach all enterprises eventually. It's no different than when enterprises were afraid of the cloud. While we wait, we can build more great products in other verticals.

55k

Fun bug on @peer_rich's personal site... The footer shows 2024, but the footer has: {new Date().getFullYear()} Looks to be cached at the build step. What's the best way to solve this?

21k

The money is cool and all, but let's talk more about this @Stripe partnership. tl;dr: Together, we're going to make building a SaaS really, really, ridiculously easy. But let me explain that "really, really" part🧵 clerk.com/blog/series-b

243k

Never been a fan of multi-stage fund hate from pure seed funds. Here's our anecdote: @villi passed on our seed extension and said he wanted to wait until the A because the space was competitive @a16z didn't 🤷‍♂️

171k

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