You.com is trusted GenAI, providing accurate answers to complex questions and automating workflows to make you more productive. You.com is your assistant, researcher, problem solver, and fact checker for your most complex business questions, problems, and agentic workflows. They faced a dilemma: How do you deliver the simplicity individual users crave while enforcing the security that enterprises demand? You.com needed a solution to simultaneously meet their B2C and B2B authentication needs, and this is how Descope helped them build it.
About You.com
Founded in 2020 by Salesforce veterans, You.com has consistently pushed the AI envelope. The company began with the idea for a more personalized search platform, one that more readily understood user intent and preferences. After launching in late 2021, You.com quickly became the first to deliver multimodal AI chat capabilities with real-time internet access in search. Named one of Time's "Best Inventions of 2022," their platform now drives productivity for millions of users and enterprise teams across finance, law, and biotech sectors.
Saurabh Sharma, You.com Chief Product Officer, said:
“You.com is an AI-powered productivity engine that anyone—individuals and organizations—can use to tailor the latest LLMs (Large Language Models) for any task. Our customizable AI assistants support countless use cases, from personal research projects to large-scale content generation.”
The company serves diverse stakeholders through their platform:
Individual users seeking AI-powered productivity tools
Enterprise clients requiring secure team collaboration
Business partners accessing API integrations
Creating a personalized experience for every type of user was paramount. Yet, because You.com served such distinct audiences, they needed an authentication solution that could cater to expectations that are often at odds: strong, fully featured security and a seamless user experience.
As their platform continued to evolve in the B2B space, their need for enterprise-grade authentication features grew. Implementing single sign-on (SSO), multi-tenancy, and more robust security quickly became core concerns as they sought a new, comprehensive solution.
When the worlds of B2B and B2C collide
Now equal parts consumer product and enterprise solution, You.com found themselves straddling two worlds, each with distinct authentication needs. Individual users were looking for a quickfire, friction-free experience, and enterprise clients required ironclad security with robust SSO capabilities.
Saurabh said:
"We wanted B2B and B2C authentication as a combined solution, not two separate products—similar to how You.com supports both businesses and individuals. We needed strong security and SSO for enterprise customers, and we wanted to maintain our existing consumer authentication experience for consumers. However, the real challenge was achieving all of this without disrupting our current user base."
The evaluation criteria for a new solution became clear: seamless B2C and B2B integration, advanced security features like bot protection, easy migration capabilities, and developer-friendly implementation with top-tier support. Most importantly, You.com needed a platform that could maintain their carefully crafted user experiences while adding enterprise-grade security.
Their existing auth provider could only support both B2C and B2B use cases as totally separate products, requiring a complete rebuild of the You.com authentication stack. However, the company wasn't willing to redo their auth from the ground up—which is what led them to Descope.
The Descope experience
Descope offered You.com enterprise-ready and consumer-friendly options that ticked crucial boxes: a drag & drop workflow editor, self-configurable SSO for enterprise customers, adaptive MFA, and hands-on support. By unifying both sides of their authentication, they could significantly lower the total cost of ownership and reduce the engineering cycles spent on identity management.
You.com wanted to keep their existing B2C identity journey intact, including branding and auth methods. Thanks to Descope's limitlessly customizable styles and broad authentication options—including those You.com previously used for B2C users—they were able to migrate 6.5 million users without disrupting or changing the end-user experience.
Seamless migration to Descope
The implementation process proved surprisingly simple for such a complex challenge. Descope's support team provided a custom migration script template that enabled batch processing from their previous provider, achieving a migration speed of 1,000 users every 1.5 seconds. More importantly, You.com maintained all user IDs and experienced zero downtime during the entire process.
The technical implementation delivered immediate results:
Flows for email OTP and social login with Apple/Google
Self-service SSO configuration for enterprise clients
Seamless integration with Next.js 14 infrastructure
David Li, You.com Senior Software Engineer, said:
"The migration went remarkably smoothly. We maintained all user IDs and experienced no downtime during the bulk migration. Descope's support was engaged with our team from the start, making what could have been a months-long project into a straightforward operation."
The success of the implementation has positioned You.com to expand their authentication capabilities even further. With Descope in place, they can easily add new authentication methods and security features as their enterprise customer base grows, all while maintaining the streamlined experience their users expect.
To unifying authentication, and beyond!
The impact on You.com operations has been significant. Enterprise customer onboarding that usually requires extensive engineering support now happens through self-service workflows, dramatically reducing both implementation time and support overhead.
Processes that typically chiseled time from the engineering roadmap could now be accomplished in a single call, with You.com business customers configuring their own SSO through a guided interface. Built-in OAuth and bot protection meant they enjoyed resilient security out of the box, while Descope Styles allowed You.com to offer a fully customizable, white-labeled experience for each enterprise customer.
David said:
"We love Descope SSO flows from a CX standpoint. A customer we onboarded just told us it was the fastest implementation ever. It usually takes weeks but we were done in 15 minutes— small talk included!"
Their engineering team, freed from managing SSO configurations and authentication features, can focus entirely on enhancing their core platform. Just a few months after going live, You.com already has close to 1000 B2B tenants managed effortlessly with Descope.
Moreover, the simplified authentication process has improved the experience for both individual users and enterprise customers—a win-win that perfectly aligns with the You.com mission.
Saurabh said:
"By unifying our B2C and B2B identity under Descope, we've built a foundation that can scale with enterprise customers while maintaining the simplicity consumers expect. We now have an authentication system that treats business and individual customers the same way that You.com does: equally."
Descope is a flexible, drag-and-drop CIAM platform that helps organizations easily add authentication, authorization, and identity management to their apps. Customers use us for initiatives such as passwordless authentication, SSO, identity federation, strong MFA, identity orchestration, and fraud prevention.
To get started with Descope, sign up for a Free Forever account. If you have questions about our platform, book time with our auth experts.
