Christina Cacioppo’s software startup just raised new funds at a $2.5 billion valuation
Summary
Christina Cacioppo built her software startup Vanta around Midwestern values like thriftiness and not having a big ego–buying its coffee from Costco in bulk and not splurging on fancy office furniture. Reed described Cacioppo as an open-minded leader who does “incredible depths of research” to come to her own point of view and make “aggressive decisions.” Vanta, a member of Forbes’ Cloud 100 list of the best private cloud computing companies had more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue in the year ending this January and now has over 8,000 customers including Quora, Modern Health and Paris-based AI firm Mistral AI. Before Cacioppo and cofounder Erik Goldman, who is no longer involved with the company, started Vanta in 2018, security and compliance happened largely via spreadsheets and screenshots collected in folders that were shown to accountants and auditors. Vanta also aims to use the extra cash to maintain a top position among its growing competitors—including startups Secureframe, Thoropass and Drata—and attempt to displace legacy players like OneTrust and AuditBoard. New features include a chatbot, Vanta AI, to help with customer questions and security questionnaires that auto-populate answers based on documents uploaded to the trust center, launched in May.