TypeScript Framework, Better Auth, Becomes 3rd Ethiopian Startup Accepted into Y Combinator

Ethiopian startup, Better Auth, has been accepted into Y Combinator’s Spring 2025 Cohort, receiving $500,000 in seed funding, according to local reports.

The seven-month-old open-source authentication framework for the TypeScript programming language, is helping developers to easily add authentication features to their projects.

According to the website, the framework provides a comprehensive authentication suite, incorporating multi-factor, social, and multi-tenant capabilities, and is framework-agnostic, meaning it is flexible to work alongside any other frameworks within the TypeScript ecosystem.

According to co-creator Bereket, several popular open-source projects have adopted Better Auth for authentication, including:

• Follow – a content organization tool with 23K stars
• Dokploy – a self-hosted application deployment platform with 17.5k stars
• Shiro – a personal media server project with 3.7k stars
• Cloudflare SaaS Stack – a starter kit for building SaaS products on Cloudflare with 3.4K stars
• Mail0 – an open-source AI email solution currently in development with 3.2K stars

“The project’s popularity on GitHub, with over 10,000 stars and numerous forks, indicates a strong level of interest and adoption,” Bereket told Shega.

“It means tens of thousands of the developer community across the world are showing their support,” he added.

Y Combinator, renowned for supporting successful ventures like GitLab, Mattermost, Amplitude, and Font Awesome, is placing its bet on Better Auth’s potential. This move may be driven by TypeScript’s growing popularity, now used in 38% of web projects – up from 12% in 2017 – and expected to rise further, especially in large-scale applications.

In Africa, Y Combinator has primarily backed fintech startups like Flutterwave and PayStack from Nigeria, making Better Auth the first known software tool to receive its support. However, the accelerator has significantly scaled back its funding for African startups in recent years.

African representation reached its peak during the Winter 2022 batch, with 24 startups from the continent taking part.

The S22 batch featured only seven African startups, while the W23 batch and W24 batches had just three.

The three-month program is set to kick off in early April 2025, but Addis Ababa-based Better Auth is facing an unexpected hurdle – the co-founders have been denied visas by the U.S. embassy in Ethiopia.

While they remain hopeful that a support letter from YC will resolve the issue, the situation has sparked a social media outcry, highlighting the ongoing visa challenges faced by African entrepreneurs.