NAME OF STARTUP: Multifactor
FOUNDED IN (Year): 2025
FOUNDER’S NAME: Vivek Nair & Colin Roberts
THE IDEA: What is the problem being solved by your startup / business?:
Multifactor is a revolutionary account and identity platform designed for the modern era of AI and collaboration. Moving far beyond the limitations of traditional password managers, our application allows you to securely share access to any online account with both humans and AI agents. Using our groundbreaking technology, you can grant temporary, one-click access through a simple, revocable link—just like sharing a Google Doc—without ever exposing your underlying passwords or credentials.
For organizations, Multifactor provides the essential security layer for agentic automation. We deliver granular, role-based access controls and a complete, durable audit trail for every action, solving the critical AAA threat of Authentication, Authorization, and Auditing. This enables companies to safely deploy fleets of AI agents and manage team access with unprecedented control and visibility. Whether for personal use or enterprise-scale deployment, Multifactor is the definitive platform for secure, seamless, and auditable access in the agentic era.
THE FOUNDER’S STORY: When and how did you come up with the idea for the business?:
We came up with the idea when we both kept running into the same fundamental problem in our respective fields: sharing account access was messy and deeply insecure. For years, we saw teams using clunky workarounds like sharing passwords, which was a constant security risk. We knew there had to be a better way to manage collaborative access.
That all changed with the recent explosion of AI agents.
Suddenly, the power and utility of programmatic account sharing became incredibly obvious, but so did the catastrophic risk. The “bad habit” of sharing credentials became a multi-million dollar vulnerability when applied to automated systems. The idea we’d been working on for years wasn’t just a useful tool anymore—it was an essential platform needed to safely unlock the future of AI.
WHO IS THE CUSTOMER: What is the typical profile of your target customer? Where would they be located?:
Our initial customer is any individual or small team that currently uses a password manager but is frustrated by its limitations around secure sharing and collaboration.
However, our ideal long-term customer is the forward-thinking enterprise that wants to leverage the power of automation. The typical profile is a business with a CISO concerned about the massive security risks of AI agent adoption, or a Head of Engineering who needs to empower their team to build automated workflows across multiple company accounts. Any organization that wants to unlock the productivity of AI agents without compromising on security, access control, and auditability is a perfect fit.
While our market is global, these customers are initially concentrated in technology hubs across North America and Europe where AI adoption is highest.
LESSONS TO SHARE: What 3 key lessons from your startup journey you’d like to share with aspiring entrepreneurs?:
First, solve foundational problems from first principles. We didn’t set out to build a slightly better password manager. We asked what identity and access must look like in an era of AI agents. Tackling the hard, infrastructural challenges is where you can create massive, defensible value, rather than just iterating on existing solutions.
Second, understand the difference between a good idea and a timely one. We saw the flaws in account sharing years ago, but the “hair-on-fire” moment for the market arrived with the explosion of AI agents. Have conviction in your vision, but be ready to act with overwhelming force when the market timing is perfect.
Third, find a co-founder who is your true counterpart, not your clone. Our team is built on a ‘Red Team/Blue Team’ dynamic—one of us knows how systems break (offense), and the other knows how to build them to be unbreakable (defense). This complete coverage of the problem space is our biggest asset.
Email: colin@multifactor.com
HQ City: San Francisco
Website URL: https://multifactor.com
Number of Employees: 1-5
Connect On Twitter: @multifactorcom
