“Passwords are ridiculous,” said Ryan Shea. “It’s such a hassle to deal with passwords on 100 different sites.”
We’ve all felt that way at one time or another. The difference is that Shea is doing something about it – and Forbes Magazine has noticed, naming him one of their “30 Under 30” innovators in consumer technology for the internet application and company he cofounded called OneName.
“We like to think about it as a digital passport to the web so users sign up and they get a user name and a profile,” said the 24-year-old Secaucus High School graduate about his creation. “They can log into apps with it.”
Similar to Facebook Login, which allows users to click on a button to automatically log in to apps and web pages, OneName serves the same function, but with an important difference.
“When you logging in using Facebook Login, all your data is being stored with Facebook,” he said. “They are tracking what apps you log into. They are working with advertisers to basically broker your data. Our login is different in that there is no third party, no middleman, no custodian that gets in the way.
“In our system users are in complete control of their identity,” he continued. “They are the sole guardians of their private information. They are the only ones who have the ability to edit their profile. There’s no company holding it on their behalf. And so the profile you get is kind of like a page that’s meant to represent you, your digital self.”
That means users can choose to include exactly how much – or how little – information they want to present to the public. They can also transmit and receive money using bitcoins.
“We like to think about it as a digital passport to the web.” – Ryan Shea
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Founded in 2013, OneName is in its early stages. About 30,000 users have created profiles so far. The login system is not yet available but is under development.
First in his class at Secaucus High
Shea was class valedictorian at Secaucus High School in 2008. He participated in the Math and Science Academy, since renamed STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) Academy. “It was the first year they were doing it,” he recalled. “That was really critical because it allowed us to take a lot of AP classes.”
But it wasn’t all academics that set him on his path. “Another big win was the cross country team and the track and field team at Secaucus High School,” he added. “I ran three seasons a year and that was really important for me to have a balance between homework and being able to clear my head, and athletics helped me bring that balance. Once you are able to get really good at a sport you learn how that can be applied to other things in life.”
Shea credits the Secaucus school system with providing training and preparation for his future career. “There were opportunities available and I seized up on them and they were really important parts of my upbringing and childhood,” he said.
Y Combinator
Studying chemical engineering at Princeton, where he was president of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club in 2012, Shea minored in computer science. “I actually enjoyed programming the most,” he said.
At Princeton he met fellow student Muneeb Ali, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science and distributed systems. Upon graduation the two decided to form a company together and mulled over potential projects, including a more efficient email client system and various healthcare applications for tracking and transmitting patient data.
“But we kept coming back to this idea of decentralizing the internet and bringing control back to the hands of users,” he said, “and preventing companies like Facebook and Google from controlling identity and having such a strong hold on data on the web.”
Thus OneName was launched in 2013. This past summer, Shea and Ali participated in the Y Combinator program in California’s Silicon Valley. An accelerated program designed to facilitate development and funding for startups, the four-month program for 80 hungry companies included high profile speakers like Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg and PayPal cofounders Max Levchin and Peter Thiel.
The program concluded with “demo day,” at which the startups had two minutes to pitch their ideas to 500 investor companies and then spend the afternoon networking and trying to raise capital.
Between the Y Combinator results and the funding they had previously secured, OneName raised $1.5 million in development funding.
“For now we’re working on hiring people and putting this capital to good use to get us to the next level,” said Shea.
Users can visit OneName.com to create profiles. The login application is coming soon, according to Shea.
Art Schwartz may be reached at arts@hudsonreporter.com.