Customer identity and access management (CIAM) startup Descope today emerged from stealth with $53 million in seed funding, including investments from leaders at Microsoft and CrowdStrike. The vendor offers a low-code/no-code passwordless authentication platform for app developers, aiming to “de-scope” authentication with drag-and-drop flows.

Descope was founded last year, with co-founder Rishi Bhargava having previously done the same for Demisto, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2019 for $560 million. Bhargava explained that Descope' has a team of around 30 employees and its product is currently in public beta for business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) applications, and has customers in production.

The Descope team saw “this whole customer identity inside of applications is a big challenge,” Bhargava told SDxCentral, adding that the platform is designed to easily build authentication into applications in a secure manner. “One of our core differentiators we have realized is how do you enable the entire user journey with drag-and-drop flows … you actually start to stitch together workflow and then you are able to deliver that into your application with a few lines of code.”

Descope can create authentication flows and user-facing screens using a visual workflow designer. It offers different integration options from no/low code to well-documented software development kits and APIs, and enables users to select from a variety of passwordless authentication methods based on passwordless protocols, including WebAuthn and FIDO2, while adapting to emerging industry standards.

“What we basically are delivering is enabling passwordless authentication across different varieties of authentication methods from biometrics to magic links to [one-time password],” Bhargava said. “We believe right now moving to an authentication platform, which enables passwordless easily, will be very important for organizations.”

Descope’s seed funding round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and GGV Capital, with participation from Unusual Ventures, Dell Technologies Capital, Cerca, Tech Aviv, J Ventures, and Silicon Valley CISO Investments (SVCI).

The startup plans to use the funding to expand its go-to-market efforts and product investments. "We do plan to grow but moderately in today's environments," Bhargava explained.

Individual angel investors include CrowdStrike co-Founder and CEO George Kurtz, Microsoft Chairman John Thompson, Rubrik co-Founder and CEO Bipul Sinha, and Wiz co-Founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport.

CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform has an Identity Zero Trust module based on its Preempt acquisition. Microsoft also offers identity and access management including its Azure AD software-as-a-service (SaaS)-delivered converged IAM platform, which is part of its rebranded Entra IAM product family.

Bhargava claims Descope does not overlap with those services. “There are a lot of different solutions within that space," he explained. "CrowdStrike does not offer anything for CIAM, they are more identity risk, identity governance, and understanding the identity inside of the organization. Same with Microsoft Azure AD. They are an integration we actually enable you to go connect with Azure AD. I see all of them as more integration collaborators, not formal partnerships at this point of time.”

The big players in the CIAM field that Descope does compete with include several access management market leaders identified by Gartner, such as Okta, Ping Identity, and ForgeRock.

Okta acquired CIAM startup Auth0 in 2021. “Auth0 from Okta is, I would say, our No. 1 competitor when we look out there,” Bhargava said.

“I always welcome competition because I believe markets evolve better products when there is competition. So I feel it's a good sign for the industry that more players are coming into the space,” he said. “More competition will mean more awareness, which means more application developers will build the new applications with a passwordless future in mind.”

Descope’s differentiation is “two big value props” – easy-start authentication integration and various passwordless authentication method options, Bhargava touted.

He also noted Descope’s design is built on zero-trust principles.

“We believe in the zero-trust model," Bhargava said. "There are a lot of areas where internally when we are building security for our own company or our own products, we absolutely start with zero trust. ... Having no password is a zero-trust principle because you're saying you need to prove yourself when you come in with a device and device with you, so that is at least a lower level of trust."

Photo: Descope Team. Source: Descope