Veriam, a company specializing in secure access and subscription management solutions, is redefining how SaaS startups handle data access, billing, and identity management
What inspired the founding of Veriam, and could you tell us more about the people behind the company?
Veriam was founded by Martijn Kaag, Raymond Roelands, and myself. We were motivated by the need for accurate, reliable metrics necessary to build a sustainable society. We founded a company with this purpose, Metrics Matter, but we quickly identified a critical gap—infrastructure for exchanging ESG data securely, and at scale within supply chains. Specifically, we found that fragmented authentication, authorisation, and subscription management systems were standing in the way of effective ESG data sharing. This was how Veriam came to be.
With our combined experience in the industry, we were confident that we could create a better solution. Since starting Veriam in January of this year, we’ve been focused on developing a platform that integrates authentication and authorization with subscription, invoicing, payments, and licensing.
It’s important to note that our platform’s value goes beyond ESG, bringing significant value to all SaaS providers looking to manage access and subscriptions for any type of cloud-hosted data or digital product.
What vision does Veriam have for the future of secure identity and access management, and what steps are being taken to achieve this vision?
Veriam envisions a future where our access and subscription management platform facilitates the secure, easy exchange of data, helping businesses grow while giving users a single login for all products, subscriptions, and data across any organization using Veriam.
As a Veriam user, managing your access and billing in one place with a single login speeds up onboarding, saves time, and reduces costs. This integrated approach can lead to significant savings across supply chains, with billions of euros in potential savings for service providers and their customers or partners.
The benefit of Veriam’s reusable login is driven by widespread use. This is why we’re adopting a growth model similar to platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, offering our access management feature for free to SaaS startups. Users can easily invite their customers or partners to join. As our platform expands, we will introduce premium services, generating revenue while remaining committed to our social mission.
How does Veriam identify the needs of its primary audience, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises, and tailor its offerings to meet those needs?
At Veriam, we focus on understanding the unique challenges that small and medium-sized SaaS providers face, especially when it comes to managing access and subscriptions with limited resources. We know that many traditional solutions can be costly and complex, so we’ve designed Veriam to be affordable, easy to use, and quick to set up. By offering a free access management feature, we’re enabling startups to securely manage user accounts without the high costs or complexity. We want to give smaller businesses the tools they need to succeed, no matter their size.
Many companies face challenges related to access management. What are some of the unique challenges Veriam encounters, and how does it address them?
SaaS startups face extensive challenges in access management, particularly when integrating complex systems that often require significant custom code and time-consuming maintenance. Veriam addresses these challenges by offering a flexible, out-of-the-box SaaS solution that minimizes coding and setup effort, enabling easy integration with existing platforms. This reduces the workload on IT teams, accelerates deployment, and ensures robust, compliant access management without the usual integration hassles.
What differentiates Veriam’s platform from other identity and access management solutions on the market?
What sets Veriam apart from other identity and access management solutions is our unified approach that combines access and subscription management into a single platform. This design makes the user experience simple, allowing for quick setup and management. Users can log in once to access all their product subscriptions and data across any organization using Veriam, which enhances usability and integration.
We also help service providers by reducing integration code by 99%, making it much easier to implement our solution.
In what ways does Veriam’s solution specifically enable smaller organizations to manage security and access as efficiently as larger enterprises?
Our solution helps smaller organizations efficiently manage security and access by offering our access management feature for free. Unlike larger companies with the resources for complex systems, smaller businesses can leverage our platform without incurring high costs. Our platform is easy to use and quick to implement, making it an ideal solution for companies with limited resources.
We make the integration process simple, allowing users to set it up with fewer than 10 lines of code. This cuts the usual integration workload by 99%, enabling smaller organizations to adopt our solution quickly and focus on what they do best instead of dealing with complicated technical issues.
What are some of the biggest challenges the team has faced since launching, and how have these shaped Veriam’s approach or products?
One of the main challenges Veriam faces is creating a new market segment that doesn’t currently exist. We are competing against large, established organizations with significant user bases and valuations, which adds pressure to our efforts. Then, our approach involves targeting multiple verticals simultaneously, making our challenge more complex than if we were solely focused on identity and access management.
How does Veriam envision its growth in the next few years, and are there any new features or expansions currently in development?
Our primary focus is on releasing the first fully integrated solution that combines identity and access management with subscription management, invoicing, payments, and licensing. This unique approach makes integration easier for users, allowing them to tap into all of these features with less than 10 lines of code.
We’re also working on integrating more third-party identity providers and enhancing data validation capabilities. Ultimately, the plan is to build a marketplace that allows customers to purchase software directly through our platform. Our main objective, however, is to make it easier for users to integrate their existing identities while allowing third-party providers to connect easily with our solution.
Which trends in identity and subscription management do you see as most significant for Veriam’s future direction?
Identity and access management is set to expand as more services transition from on-premise to SaaS solutions, which will call for new methods to secure these environments. Similarly, subscription management is evolving, with traditional perpetual licenses giving way to on-demand solutions.
We also see account reusability becoming increasingly important. We’ve already seen this shift in other areas where users log in with Google or Microsoft, instead of creating new credentials. Then, in payments, users have one PayPal account rather than sharing card details with each service provider. Proprietary accounts are likely to fade away. With our solution that combines identity management, access control, and subscription management, Veriam is well-positioned to lead in this evolving landscape.
What role does customer feedback play in Veriam’s ongoing development, and how is it integrated into product improvements?
Customer feedback is central to Veriam’s ongoing development. We actively collect insights from clients to understand their evolving access and subscription management needs and pain points. This feedback is systematically analyzed and prioritized, allowing us to make targeted product enhancements that improve functionality, ease of use, and integration. By aligning our development closely with customer input, Veriam ensures that our solutions continuously adapt to and address real-world challenges.
What are three key pieces of advice you would offer other founders who are just starting their entrepreneurial journey?
Create a balanced team: Surround yourself with people who complement your strengths and skills to build a strong foundation, whether they’re co-founders, executive team members, or initial employees. Trust and a clear division of responsibilities can make decision-making and execution significantly easier and faster.
Stay close to your customers: Early customer feedback is invaluable. Use it to validate and refine your product, and keep an open feedback loop to ensure your solution evolves with real customer needs.
Focus on sustainable growth: It’s easy to chase quick wins, but it’s important to prioritize building a scalable, resilient business model. Stay agile, but set clear goals and metrics to ensure your growth is both strategic and manageable.
Could you share some of the core values driving Veriam, and how these values shape the everyday work and decision-making processes within the company?
At Veriam, we focus on accessibility and sustainability as the backbone of our work. We want to make access and subscription management easy and affordable, especially for smaller organizations that often face resource limitations. This means developing tools that are straightforward to implement and use, so more businesses can handle security and data sharing without extensive setup.
Sustainability is central to our mission. A major driver of our solution is supporting global regulations on Scope 3 CO2 emissions, which require businesses to securely exchange CO2 data across their supply chains. Our platform is designed to provide a strong solution for this need.
Photographer Suzan Alberts
Thank you Jeroen de Bruijn for the Interview
Statements of the author and the interviewee do not necessarily represent the editors and the publisher opinion again.
