Janrain

Janrain
Company type	Private
Industry	Software, Customer identity and access management
Founded	2002
Founder	Larry Drebes
Fate	Acquired by Akamai Technologies in January 2019
Headquarters	Portland, Oregon, United States
Area served	Worldwide
Key people	Larry Drebes (Founder, former CEO and CTO), Jim Kaskade (CEO until late 2019)
Products	Customer identity and access management software (e.g., Janrain Engage, Janrain Capture, Janrain Federate)
Number of employees	Approximately 120–170 (varied between 2011 and 2015)
Parent	Akamai Technologies

Janrain, occasionally presented as JanRain, is a provider of customer identity and access management (CIAM) software based in Portland, Oregon, USA. Established in 2002 by Larry Drebes, the company focuses on solutions for managing customer identities and access. In January 2019, Akamai Technologies acquired Janrain, thereby strengthening Akamai's offerings in identity security and access control.

History

Founded in 2002 in Portland by Larry Drebes, who held the roles of chief executive officer (CEO) and later chief technology officer (CTO) as of 2016, Janrain derives its name from the typically rainy January weather in Portland. The company has earned recognition as a top provider in the customer profile and identity management space. Drebes foresaw the rise of social media early on and contributed to the development of the OpenID protocol, which offers decentralized authentication. Janrain was among the founding members of the OpenID Foundation and has been an active advocate for OpenID technology. Operating as a private entity, Janrain has experienced consistent growth since its inception.

In December 2009, Janrain secured $3.25 million in venture capital funding from DFJ Frontier, RPM Ventures, and Anthem Venture Partners to advance its OpenID-based authentication technology. By mid-2011, the company employed approximately 60 staff members. In August 2011, it obtained $15.5 million in financing led by Emergence Capital Partners to fuel recruitment and marketing efforts; Emergence’s founder Brian Jacobs also joined Janrain’s board of directors. By January 2013, the workforce had expanded to 170 employees, supported by a $33 million funding round—one of Oregon’s largest for an internet enterprise—led by Millennium Technology Value Partners with participation from existing backers and strategic partners such as Salesforce.com. Overall funding totaled about $52–53 million, placing Janrain among Oregon’s most well-funded technology startups. These funds were allocated toward scaling sales teams, boosting engineering capabilities, enhancing products, and entering global markets.

In February 2013, Janrain collaborated with Austin-based Umbel to merge real-time audience analytics with its User Management Platform, improving actionable insights derived from social data. The company acquired startup Arktan in December 2014 to broaden its data services portfolio. At that time, Janrain had roughly 160 employees and recorded $14.3 million in revenue for 2014 with a three-year growth rate of 294%. International expansion included launching a data center in China in 2015. By September that year, Janrain’s headcount was around 120 employees mainly based in Portland, having raised a total of $52.8 million to date. December 2015 saw the closing of a $27 million Series D funding round led by HighBar Partners.

Janrain’s main office is situated within the historic Dekum Building downtown Portland, occupying several floors since moving there initially in 2009 and fully expanding by 2013. The workspace combines modern elements with Romanesque architecture featuring open layouts, glass partitions, collaborative areas including a game room, and conference rooms named after local landmarks. A former basketball court was converted into meeting rooms. The company embraces remote work policies—a distinctive practice within Portland’s tech community—and operates additional offices in Frankfurt, London, and Paris.

In April 2016, Jim Kaskade took over as CEO; he subsequently left in late 2019 to become CEO at Conversica.

Clients

By the end of 2009, Janrain's solutions were implemented on websites for prominent companies including EMI Music, Fox News, Kmart, Sears, and Universal Music Group. In 2011, the Dr Pepper Snapple Group incorporated Janrain's identity management offerings, joining a client list that already featured Intel and MTV. The customer base grew by January 2013 to encompass Avis, BBC, Channel 4, Comedy Central, Financial Times, Fox Networks, Mattel, NPR, Pac-12 Conference, Philips, Samsung, and Whole Foods Market. By late 2014, Pfizer had joined as a client, followed by AMC in September 2015.

Technology

Janrain’s leading SaaS solution, RPX, facilitated on-site acceptance of OpenID accounts and was adopted by more than 170,000 websites by December 2009. The company’s product lineup includes "Janrain Engage," which supports social sharing; "Janrain Capture," designed for gathering profile data and enabling cross-site sharing; and "Janrain Federate," which provides single sign-on capabilities. A one-click Facebook sharing feature was introduced in 2012 to enhance user control over social interactions. By January 2013, Janrain’s technology powered over 350,000 websites globally.

The Janrain User Management Platform (JUMP) integrates user profiles from various websites and social identities to facilitate personalized marketing through social login options such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Twitter, among others. Leveraging demographic details like age and location allows marketers to deliver more targeted advertisements. Janrain prioritizes adherence to privacy regulations and limits initial data requests to foster user confidence; legal oversight in these areas is provided by technology attorney Lewis Barr.

In June 2014, Janrain unveiled "Janrain User-Generated Content" (UGC), a suite designed to boost brand engagement via features including comments, activity streams, live chat, social post aggregation, and enhanced social sharing—tools aimed at creating tailored brand experiences. The "Social Profile Navigator" gives users insight into the social media information they share. The acquisition of Arktan in 2014 augmented Janrain’s capabilities in analyzing Facebook data for interactive elements such as comments and polls; Arktan also developed social television technologies and partnered with Facebook India during the 2014 Indian Premier League cricket season to incorporate real-time social data into broadcasts.

Jyte

Jyte was a community-oriented platform launched by JanRain in January 2007; its name stood for "Just You Tell 'Em." The site allowed users to publish "claims"—assertive statements about themselves, others, or various subjects—accompanied by optional commentary and user-chosen tags. Community members could express agreement or disagreement with claims through voting, with vote tallies and comments openly visible. Jyte sought to create an online "democracy" by capturing a wide range of perspectives.

Additionally, users could award each other "cred," brief descriptors signaling expertise or reliability in specific areas that contributed to an individual’s overall "cred score." This mechanism was intended to highlight reputation and interests within the community.

Built primarily using Ruby on Rails, Jyte connected with other platforms via multiple APIs and relied solely on OpenID for user authentication. This model supported a portable and weighted reputation system across different sites that could benefit users both online and offline. Jyte was known as a source of varied opinions within internet discussions.

The platform was acquired by AboutUs in 2010 before being discontinued thereafter.

Reception

Between 2012 and 2015, Inc. placed Janrain at positions 264, 455, 723, and 1,412 in its yearly "Inc. 5000 Rank." The company earned the distinction of being a "Five-Time Inc. 5000 Honoree" in 2015, securing the 109th spot among Portland's leading businesses and ranking 19th within Oregon. In January 2014, Janrain was awarded the CRM Watchlist by Paul Greenberg for ZDNet, with Greenberg noting Janrain's entry as the most well-crafted submission that year. Additionally, Deloitte positioned Janrain at number 73 in 2014 and number 252 in 2015 on its "Technology Fast 500," highlighting growth rates of 1,741% and 291%, respectively.