We’re excited to share some major news from the FusionAuth team. It’s the right time for evolution as FusionAuth continues to grow our developer-first CIAM platform faster than ever.
With that in mind, we’re thrilled that Brian Bell has accepted the role as our new Chief Executive Officer, succeeding founder Brian Pontarelli. Brian Pontarelli has always been a developer first and foremost, and he will be transitioning to the role of Chief Technology Officer.
Why Brian Bell and Why Now?
For Brian Bell, FusionAuth represents the perfect storm of market opportunity and product-market fit. He’s spent over two decades building companies at the intersection of identity, security, and developer tools. Most recently as CEO of Split Software, he scaled a developer-focused platform through rapid growth and a successful exit to Harness. Before that, he helped build identity solutions at Ping Identity and scaled developer-centric products at Zuora.
What excites Brian most about FusionAuth? The same thing that excites our customers: we’ve built something that just works, scales beautifully, and doesn’t get in developers’ way.
“This market is booming as companies race to deliver seamless, secure digital experiences across web, mobile, and AI-powered platforms. CIAM has become a critical component in handling complex identity needs in human-AI-machine ecosystems, making it essential for modern application architectures. FusionAuth is uniquely positioned to lead this next era – and the market momentum we’re seeing is just the beginning.”
For our founder Brian Pontarelli, this transition feels natural. After building FusionAuth from the ground up with a relentless focus on developer experience, he’s ready to dive deeper into what he loves most: the technology itself.
“Building FusionAuth has been incredible,” Brian reflects. “What I’m most proud of is how we’ve stayed true to our developer-first roots while growing faster than the competition with minimal outside capital. Brian Bell gets what we’ve built here – and he has the experience to take us to the next level while keeping the product and developers at the center of everything we do.”
Customer Success Stories: Scale That Speaks
Our customers continue to achieve remarkable results with FusionAuth. Here are just a few highlights from recent case studies:
Bilt: Fintech-Grade Authentication
Bilt chose FusionAuth for their financial technology platform, requiring the highest levels of security and compliance for their rewards and payments ecosystem.
“FusionAuth has been an excellent partner, delivers the necessary functionality and performance, and maintains active development cycles.” - Bilt CTO Kosta Krauth
Betty Blocks: 10,000+ Applications at Scale
Betty Blocks, a leading low-code development platform, has scaled to over 10,000 applications using FusionAuth. Each application serves between 100 to 10,000 users, demonstrating our ability to handle massive scale while maintaining performance.
“If you’re a bigger company, you might have 10-20 applications using FusionAuth, but with us, it goes into the multiple thousands of applications running on a very small amount of FusionAuth servers. You can use it at a really big scale and continue to be performant as well.” - Betty Blocks Co-Founder Chris Obdam
WeRoad: From Homegrown to Professional Authentication
WeRoad replaced their homegrown authentication system with FusionAuth to support their rapid international expansion. The migration enabled them to focus on core business features while ensuring security across multiple markets.
“We like the customization. Our designers created a custom theme with animated clouds in the background. It’s fully customizable because we were able to make a nice login form.” - WeRoad DevOps Lead Roberto Dedoro
Powerful Medical: Enterprise-Grade Security for Healthcare
Powerful Medical leveraged FusionAuth’s enterprise features to meet strict healthcare compliance requirements while maintaining the flexibility needed for their medical software platform.
“The combination of these requirements eliminated all the competition and only FusionAuth was left standing. Auth0 came in second, but it did not provide On-Premise deployability.” - Powerful Medical CTO Simon Rovder
We’re constantly adding more case studies from FusionAuth customers. Make sure to check out the Customers section of the blog to stay up to date.
Educational Content: Empowering the Developer Community
We’ve always felt strongly about our commitment to a more secure Internet. One of the areas where we’ve focused that commitment is in educational video content. Check out the FusionAuth YouTube channel featuring:
AuthCon 2024 Recordings
All talks from AuthCon, the world’s first authentication-focused conference are now available in a YouTube playlist. You will find videos covering topics like:
- Advanced authentication patterns
- Zero-trust architecture implementation
- Modern identity security best practices
- OAuth and OIDC deep dives
We’ve also ramped up our YouTube Shorts library with quick, digestible explanations of complex identity concepts. Here’s what you can learn about in 90 seconds or less:
- Passwordless Authentication: Understanding the security benefits and implementation challenges
- The IdP Tax: Why vendor lock-in costs more than just money
- Authorization Code Grants: OAuth flows explained simply
- Multi-Factor Authentication: Beyond just SMS codes
Subscribe to our channel for regular updates and new educational content.
What This Means for You
This leadership transition strengthens FusionAuth’s position as the developer-first CIAM solution. Brian’s experience scaling developer-focused companies means we’ll continue prioritizing:
- Developer Experience: Our API-first approach and comprehensive documentation remain central to everything we build.
- Deployment Flexibility: Download, deploy anywhere, or use our cloud – your choice, always.
- Transparent Pricing: No hidden fees, no per-identity-provider charges, no vendor lock-in.
- Unmatched scalability: Single-tenant architecture with the performance and security enterprise customers demand.
- Open Standards: Our commitment to standards-based development continues.
The Road Ahead
As Dan Moss of Updata Partners noted:
“Since taking a strategic investment from Updata Partners 18 months ago, FusionAuth has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue, cementing its position as one of the fastest-growing companies in the CIAM space. The opportunity ahead of us is enormous and Brian Bell is the right person to take FusionAuth to the next phase of our growth.”
The identity and access management market is evolving rapidly. With AI, IoT, and increasingly complex application architectures, the need for flexible, developer-friendly authentication solutions has never been greater. FusionAuth is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation.
Get Started Today
Whether you’re building your first application or scaling to millions of users like Betty Blocks, FusionAuth adapts to your needs:
- Download and deploy in minutes with our self-hosted option
- Start with FusionAuth Cloud for managed infrastructure
- Integrate seamlessly with our comprehensive SDKs and APIs
- Scale confidently with our single-tenant architecture
Ready to see why developers and enterprises choose FusionAuth? Schedule a demo or start building today.
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