Weekly AI Recap: API Auth in Minutes, Not Weeks: Oneloop's Story

Welcome to Homebase Edition #18 - A weekly newsletter bringing you stories & insights from smart founders & tech leaders who are leveraging AI to build game-changing companies.

What’s on tap today:

• Weekly Founder Story

• Weekly AI Headline Recap

• What's trending in AI

AI FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT
1 Founder story

How Oneloop's Seed Funding Is Set to Streamline API Authentication for Developers

Building software involves a lot of necessary but boring tasks. One that really bugs developers is setting up API authentication. It's super important for security, but it's also a real pain to deal with.

This is where Oneloop comes in. Founded by Saurabh Jain and Aahan Sawhney, Oneloop emerged in June 2024 with seed funding and an ambitious goal: to solve this persistent challenge in modern development.

They've achieved:

💰 Raised seed round to fund API authentication solution
👥 Built a core team of 3, including two technical co-founders
🚀 Launched Oneloop in June 2024, offering rapid API auth setup
🤝 Onboarded initial clients, validating product in real dev environments
🛠️ Created a platform reducing API authentication time from weeks to minutes

Oneloop's early traction is a testament to the power of domain expertise coupled with market insight. Jain and Sawhney, veterans of the code trenches, intimately understand the problem they're solving.

This firsthand experience forms the bedrock of their approach, informing every decision from product development to go-to-market strategy.



How they did it: 

🔍 Built API authentication tool based on their own coding struggles
🤝 Gathered feedback from fellow developers to refine their solution
🧪 Streamlined API security setup, reducing it from weeks to minutes
👂 Iterated product based on input from initial design partners
🔄 Alternated between improving product and pursuing market traction
💼 Offered time-saving auth solution to speed-focused startups



Key Highlights:

• Connected with early adopters at developer meetups and hackathons

• Built community presence instead of relying on cold outreach for customer acquisition

• Tackled the challenge of dividing time between product improvements and sales efforts

• Prioritized creating shareable features to encourage word-of-mouth growth among developers

• Exploring LLM integration for automating API test response generation

Read more about Lleverage's journey here! 🔥🔥🔥

HEADLINE ROUNDUP
Headline recap

• Amazon hires Covariant founders and licenses foundation models for warehouse robot fleets. (TC)

• Elon Musk’s xAI brings the world’s most powerful AI training cluster online with 100K Nvidia H100 GPUs in just 122 days, set to double by year-end. (X)

• California legislature passes bill to restrict AI use in recreating deceased celebrities without consent, awaiting governor's signature. (DD)

• Apple and Nvidia are in discussions to join OpenAI's $100B funding round. (AIN)

• Talk to Claude: Set for release in October, Amazon’s revamped Alexa assistant will reportedly be powered by a custom version of Anthropic’s Claude model. (R)

TRENDS
What's trending in AI

6clicks - AI-Powered Risk Assessment Platform

• Founded: June 2019

• Employees: 51-100

• Total Funding: $15.8M

• Latest Funding Round: Series A

• Location: Melbourne, Australia

• Website: www.6clicks.com

6clicks offers a solution that automates risk assessments, compliance processes, and mitigation strategies. Their platform simplifies risk management for businesses across various sectors.

Why it matters: AI-powered risk management tools cut assessment time from weeks to hours, slashing costs and freeing up resources. They catch an average of 30% more potential risks than manual processes, reducing oversight failures. For small businesses, these tools provide sophisticated risk analysis at a fraction of the cost, leveling the playing field in highly regulated markets.

The big picture: We're likely to see a new breed of agile companies emerge, entering markets previously inaccessible due to high compliance costs. This could lead to more competitive markets and better services for consumers. However, risk management professionals may need to upskill to focus on strategic planning rather than routine assessments. The question of AI bias and accountability also looms large – who's responsible when an AI system misses a critical risk?