Contributors
Start with Identity is a non-profit, vendor-neutral project. Everything on it, the vendor profiles, the rankings, the standards deep-dives, the glossary, the jobs board, is collected, written, and reviewed by people who work in identity for a living. There is no sponsorship, no paid placement, and no anonymous house voice. Every contribution ships with a name on it.
This page is the public record of that work: who founded the project, who builds it, and how to put your own name here. If you want the background first, read about the project, the community vision and mission, and the scoring methodology that every evaluation follows.
Founder
Deepak Gupta
Deepak Gupta founded Start with Identity to give identity practitioners a reference that answers to them rather than to vendor marketing budgets. He has spent his career on the building side of the problem: founding a customer identity platform and building it from scratch as board member, CTO, and CISO, and shipping authentication systems that had to survive real production traffic.
He sets the editorial direction here, funds the project, and writes and reviews alongside everyone else on this page. He does not get a bigger byline for it. Every ranking, vendor profile, and guide goes through the same published methodology, and no vendor can pay to change a score.
He writes on identity, authentication, and AI security at guptadeepak.com, and a selection of that work, alongside other practitioners', is indexed in the resources library. His profile in the experts directory covers the platform-building side. Corrections and disagreements are welcome and go through the same route as everyone else's: the contact form.
- Founded LoginRadius (2013), a customer identity platform serving more than 1 billion user identities, as board member, CTO, and CISO
- Founded GrackerAI (2024), a generative engine optimization platform for B2B cybersecurity vendors
- 5 granted patents across DDoS defense, IoT authentication, searchable encryption, and AI-based fake-news detection
- Ran SOC 2, ISO, GDPR, and CCPA programs as CISO
- Author of 7 books on security and privacy, with bylines in Forbes, Entrepreneur, VentureBeat, and Fast Company
- Advisory board member at DevNetwork and the Desai Accelerator, University of Michigan
Source: guptadeepak.com/about. We publish checkable claims only.
What the founder is accountable for
- Independence
- No vendor pays for coverage, placement, or a score. If that ever changes, it gets disclosed on the page it affects. See the disclaimer.
- A published method
- Scores are not opinions with numbers attached. The methodology explains how each capability is weighted, dated, and re-reviewed.
- Credit where it is due
- Contributors keep their byline and their voice. The founder's name carries no more weight in review than anyone else's.
Community contributors
Contributors are credited by name, with a link to their own profile, on the work they ship and on this board. Curate news, scout jobs, write a guide, host an interview, or keep a glossary entry honest: it all counts, and it all gets a byline.
How it works
- Pick somethingChoose a volunteer role or just send a contribution: a news brief, a correction, a guide, a job lead, or an interview.
- Ship it with usWe review for accuracy and the editorial standard, then publish. You keep your voice; we keep the bar high.
- Get creditedYour work goes up with your name and a link to your profile, and your name joins this page.
Where to go next
- AboutWhat Start with Identity covers, and the editorial standards behind it.
- CommunityVision, mission, values, and the open volunteer roles.
- MethodologyHow vendors are scored, dated, signed, and re-reviewed.
- Start hereThe guided path through IAM, CIAM, PAM, IGA, and Zero Trust.
- Experts directoryProfiles of the standards authors and architects who shaped identity.
- Jobs boardOpen identity roles, curated by community jobs scouts.