Identity is a product, not a checkbox

Most companies talk about identity the way they talk about plumbing: necessary, invisible, someone else's job. That framing is exactly why so many login and access experiences are quietly terrible.

The reframe

Identity is the first product surface every user touches and the last one they leave. It is also the substrate every other product runs on top of. Treat it that way and three things change:

1. Onboarding becomes a growth lever, not a security tax.
2. Access reviews become a trust signal, not a quarterly fire drill.
3. Authentication choices become brand decisions — passkeys vs. SMS vs. SSO is a positioning question as much as a security one.

A simple test

Ask your team: "What is the metric our identity surface is optimizing this quarter?"

If the answer is silence, or "uh, uptime," you don't have an identity product. You have plumbing with a logo on it.