Descope is a company that helps developers build secure, frictionless authentication and user journeys for any application. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Descope co-founder Rishi Bhargava to learn more about the company.
Rishi Bhargava’s Background
What is Rishi Bhargava’s background? Bhargava said:
“In a career spanning over 20 years, I’ve run product, strategy, go-to-market, and engineering for category-creating cybersecurity startups and large enterprises.”
“Before Descope, I served as VP of Product Strategy at Palo Alto Networks, which I joined from the acquisition of Demisto, a security orchestration startup. I was co-founder at Demisto and helped grow it into a SOAR leader within 3 years before being acquired.”
“Prior to Demisto, I was VP and GM of the Datacenter Group at Intel Security, launched multiple products at McAfee (acquired by Intel), and played a key role in product strategy and growth at change management startup Solidcore (acquired by McAfee).”
Formation Of Descope
How did the idea for the company come together? Bhargava shared:
“In the early 2010s, I was working at McAfee alongside Slavik Markovich. Slavik had purchased a “way nicer” coffee machine in his own office than the one in the main office of a multi-million dollar enterprise (it was a high-end espresso machine). I wasn’t a huge coffee drinker, but the temptation to use Slavik’s machine was too high, and eventually, I started heading into his office almost every morning.”
“As time went on, we became closer colleagues and ultimately decided to partner up with Dan Sarel and Guy Rinat to co-found Demisto together in 2015, which was later acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019 for $560 million.“
“Fast forward, and our same group of four, along with the first four Demisto employees, wanted to solve an issue our own families were struggling with – remembering our passwords. We set out to create technology that simplified passwordless authentication for developers and, subsequently, the end customer, leading to the launch of our second initiative together, Descope.“
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Bhargava reflected:
“Several memories come to mind, such as launching on Product Hunt and winning #2 Product of the Day, getting our first enterprise customer a few months after launch, or getting named in the Redpoint InfraRed 100. But my favorite memory has to be when we worked closely with Microsoft to disclose a serious misconfiguration affecting millions of users that used “Log in with Microsoft” on any app. nOAuth was widely reported by the press, acknowledged by Microsoft and CrowdStrike, and led to increased developer awareness about fixing the critical issue and keeping their apps secure.”
“Our team has decades of security experience that belies Descope’s young age as a company. We are committed to keeping our customers’ auth secure as well as being on the forefront of authentication security research – nOAuth was a shining example of this commitment.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Bhargava explained:
“Descope is a drag-and-drop customer authentication and identity management platform. Our no / low code CIAM solution helps customers easily create and customize their entire user journey using visual workflows – from authentication and authorization to MFA and federation. We also provide a connector ecosystem with dozens of third-party services for use cases such as identity verification, fraud prevention, risk-based authentication, and identity orchestration.”
“Our customers use Descope to improve their user onboarding with passwordless authentication, enhance security with MFA and step-up controls, and unify customer identities across business properties.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Bhargava and the team faced in building the company? Bhargava acknowledged:
“Raising awareness of the benefits of passwordless authentication – particularly navigating objections around using passkeys and biometrics – has been a challenge for the entire industry, not just Descope. A good number of people still feel a “sense of security” with passwords that is misguided if we check reality. People also still believe biometrics invade their privacy, which is not true when you use FIDO-based authentication.”
“We regularly put out informative blogs, industry report summaries, and customer stories that share real benefits that come from going passwordless. It has also been heartening to see a flurry of large organizations like Google, GitHub, TikTok, Best Buy, and Amazon embrace passkey authentication. We’re eagerly awaiting the day when people’s first thought is ‘why not?’ instead of ‘why?’ when it comes to getting rid of passwords.”
Evolution Of Descope’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Bhargava noted:
“Since launching, we’ve released an array of product enhancements and updates in order to continue streamlining the developer and end-user experience.”
“Soon after launching from stealth, we released capabilities that help any organization add passkeys to their app without changing their identity provider. Organizations using Amazon Cognito, Auth0, Firebase, or other providers can now use Descope to add passkeys with the help of OpenID Connect federated authentication.”
“In June 2023, we launched a plug-and-play connectors ecosystem to help customers weave in data and actions from external products in their user journey flows. Popular use cases include fraud prevention with reCAPTCHA Enterprise, identity orchestration with HubSpot and Segment, and breached password detection with Have I Been Pwned.”
“In October, we also released deep identity federation capabilities, allowing organizations to centralize user identity management across disparate customer-facing applications.”
“In December, we launched the availability of our Fine-Grained Authorization (FGA), to enable customers to easily create granular access control for their applications using SDKs and APIs.”
“Lastly, we also announced multi-region data residency including a datacenter in the EU, enabling EU-based customers to store and process their customer data in their preferred region.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Bhargava cited:
“Since launching, over 400 organizations are in production with Descope and 1000s of developers are using our free tier.”
“We’ve also had major customer wins, including a cloud data provider with over $1 billion in revenue, a digital adoption platform with over 5000 enterprise customers, an online retailer with over $600 million in revenue, and a communications provider with over 17,000 B2B enterprise customers.”
“Our Hello World Startup Program cohort now consists of over 50 startups, with that number expected to grow significantly this year.”
“Lastly, we’ve received notable industry recognitions, including securing a spot on Fortune’s inaugural Cyber 60 list and the Inaugural Redpoint InfraRed 100. “
Customer Success Stories
After asking Bhargava about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Two specific stories come to mind.”
“The first is Branch Insurance, a leading modern insurance provider covering 100s of millions of Americans. Branch uses Descope to provide strong, risk-based MFA for their users by working in concert with Amazon Cognito. Descope’s MFA capabilities help Branch enhance user protection and stay compliant with industry regulations without adding undue friction for legitimate users.”
“The second is GradRight, a leading EdFinTech platform based out of India that serves over 55,000 students and has processed over $1.75 billion in loan requests. GradRight uses Descope to provide personalized onboarding journeys to their three discrete stakeholders (students, university admins, loan officers) and prevent OTP bot attacks on their login pages.”
Funding
Upon asking Bhargava about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“In February 2023, Descope launched from stealth and announced a $53 million funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Notable Capital (previously GGV Capital). Other investors include Dell Technologies Capital, Unusual Ventures, and individual investors such as the CEOs of CrowdStrike, Rubrik, and Wiz.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Bhargava assessed:
“Descope sits at the intersection of multiple large and growing markets. By 2028, the CIAM market is projected to grow to $18 billion, the MFA market is projected to grow to $34.8 billion, and the Passwordless Authentication market is projected to grow to $21.2 billion, according to Markets & Markets.”
“Descope target customer segments include early-stage startups, growth stage companies, and midsize enterprises.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Bhargava affirmed:
“Our visual workflow editor is the unique approach we bring to the CIAM space. Descope Flows help customers create, customize, and modify their user journeys in a workflow. These flows cover everything from user-facing screens and authentication logic to progressive profiling and third-party integrations. Using Flows has helped our customers:
- Greatly reduce setup and implementation time.
- Customize their auth process to their app’s specific needs without heavy coding.
- Modify their user journeys without redeploying the app or touching the codebase.
Descope is built on a flexible and scalable multi-tenant architecture that can support advanced enterprise requirements. Lastly, while many of our customers use Descope Flows, we also offer other implementation options like SDKs and APIs to serve developers with different preferences.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Bhargava concluded:
“We have set ambitious customer adoption and product enhancement goals for the year ahead. On the product front, we aim to continue building out our connectors ecosystem based on a set roadmap as well as derived from customer use case requirements. We are also working on two new authentication methods that further reduce friction, improve security, and save money for our customers. Lastly, we continue to be committed to providing an excellent developer experience and plan to launch a host of new SDKs and support for more languages and frameworks.”
