Clef (acquired by Twilio in 2017)

Clef replaces passwords on the web. Walk up to any computer, hold up your phone, and Clef instantly logs you in. --------------- In five years, the password will be extinct. Computers have taken over our lives and our industries — everything we know is moving to the cloud and hiding behind a six character password. Target, Adobe, and AT&T’s breaches are making the nightly news, and two similar compromises happen every day. Traditional two-factor puts a band-aid on passwords by adding extra hurdles to logging in. The result is even more frustrating than passwords and has been entirely ignored by non-technical consumers. Meanwhile, mobile technology has spread at a pace 100 times faster than the personal computer. Every consumer carries a smartphone, enabling a new generation of technology more personal than ever before. Clef uses those smartphones to solve the password problem. When you walk up to any computer in the world, Clef recognizes your phone instead of anything you need to remember or type. Modern cryptography in your pocket replaces the six characters in your head; forgotten passwords become a thing of the past. Our technology is already powering logins on more than 100,000 websites and we’ve just passed Google Authenticator as the most installed two-factor option in WordPress. The New York Times, Economist, LA Times, BBC, and Inc. Magazine herald Clef as the future of authentication and security giant CloudFlare recommends Clef to the customers they protect. Learn more at http://getclef.com.