No, you just have to like Stockholm syndrome yourself into being like, well, I used to be someone who likes to build products, but now I love building teams. And whether or not I identified as that person as two years ago doesn't matter. Now that's me, and I believe it, you know. And then like when it changes, you're like, now I'm this person, I love HR policy, you know, because that's what the company needs right now.
All right, I'm here with Christina from Vanta, and very excited for this conversation. Thanks for doing this with me.
Thanks so much for having me.
Okay, so what I want to start with is we are in a moment with AI where I would say markets are probably as promising but also as competitive as they've ever been. There's a lot of ideas that seem very greenfield, and the result of that is there's tons of startups going at them. And so I think a very, very common founder experience today is you build a thing that makes a lot of sense, and you look around you, and there's 13 other companies also building something that makes a lot of sense. You've operated in a really competitive market for a really long time, and so I thought something founders could learn from you about would be operating in a competitive market. So I want to start there. I guess the first place I wanted to go with it is the mentality I think that you've learned over the years that it takes to succeed. So can you talk a little bit about what's the mindset that you've gotten yourself to over the years?
Yeah, for sure. And a bit of like a very short version of the history, which is Vanta started in 2018. We were the first person who did what we did. We had about two years where our competitors were accountants and consultants, and when we were selling to founders and engineers, that was wonderful. Would you like software? Would you like an accountant? Right. And then tried to kind of keep it quiet about how well we were doing. Word got out, and then in 2020, when everyone was at home bored, lots of people started building competitors.
You did try to keep it quiet for a while there, right?
Yes. And some of it actually was like, we know this is really good, and we know people will knock it off, so how far can we run?
And your mindset was basically just like, let's get as much traction as possible before people think that this is a good idea.
Yes. Because people thought it was a terrible idea. No startups got SOC 2s. No one knew what it was, no one could spell it. It was just like, why are you, like seemingly nice people, working on compliance? Like, what's, like, do you need some help? Like...
And how did you know it was good? How did you have the confidence to know it was good enough that you should keep it a secret?
Because when you talk to people, when you talk to founders who had this problem, they were like, I will pay you any amount of money, and I will crawl through any amount of muck for this.
Wow. It's like, I really want this thing, and I can't get it, and if you can get me there, I am all here for whatever you put me through.
Were you getting customers with like a janky product?
During YC, a company that bought Vanta called it the brutalist white website.
Yeah. You know, that was, that was the brutalist white website sucked in a million ways, except it got people to their outcome.
I guess you also had a very good why now, right? Like there, like a thing really happened, kind of, or like yes, or did that just seem that way? It just seemed that way, like the why now existed in 2016, in 2014.
I think like, why was it 18? And I think it was because generally if you said compliance to an engineer, they ran screaming from the room.
So what was the first year it could have happened?
So it was a reasonable thing, but it was like a startup could have done it for a few years.
And so that's actually, I used to love the why now question, especially with USV. You're like, oh, it's so intellectual and like...
Well, I didn't know that there was that gap in time between...
You're like, yeah, yeah. I only have five... Vanta was the first one, which I guess you were the first one taking the... first one, but like someone could have... Yeah. There were a couple really manual solutions, but I think it was like lawyers looked at the problem, compliance people looked at the problem, and they solved it in just a different way than an engineer. Yeah.
But like we weren't particularly, you know, it was like anyone could have figured that part out. They just didn't.
Okay. So you stayed secretive as long as you could, but then at some point you didn't. You weren't secretive.
Yeah. Well, and the word kind of got out, and so then we got this like host of knockoffs, and you know, I think we went through like, oh well, they're just knocking off, for like, oh, they took screenshots of Vanta and sent them to a dev shop in Mexico and got the product back, and then said Vanta took two years to build this and we built it in two months, and like they suck and we're awesome.
Is that how they said it too?
Yes. Yes. Very surfer bro. You know, we like went through the phase of like, well, that won't work, or that's not fair. Like, and I think the thing it, you know, you learn is like all is fair in love and capitalism, and it doesn't, you know, no one cares, and like customers, like customers are trying to solve the problem, and like they don't care if you're first. They care if you're the best thing today.
They don't care if you know you were secret shopped and someone took screenshots and like ripped everything off. There's no referees in capitalism.
Yeah. Um, and you kind of want there to be one, but like there's not.
And I think you got to stop searching for one.
Did you have a thing switch for you? Like were you at one point looking for a referee and then you decided?
Yes. And then you're like, there, like, what am I, you know, like even like if I had a magic wand, what would I con... like what would the referee... and you're like, I don't know, you know, right? Um, I think you see, you see investors fund these like, investors don't care, and you're like kind of take it personally, and then you're like, you know, it's like not, it's capitalism, like it's not personal.
And so I think the switch was eventually it's like, cool, we started this thing, but again, no one cares. I'm also kind of trying to deemphasize it. I mean, it's important internally, but it's also not, or not in a like rest on your laurels way. Yeah.
Like I think a lot of why I do and a lot of us like software is because it's so fast moving.
Blessing and curse. And you were like only as good as the last thing you shipped. Yeah.
And so it's like, okay, cool. What have you shipped for me lately? And like that's how customers think, and that is great and terrible, but like also reality, and so you just got to go with that.
Yeah. What else from a mindset, you know, perspective did you end up building over time besides like all is fair in love and capitalism, which I think is like very, uh, that is like hard, hard-earned wisdom, but what else came to you over time?
Shipping velocity. Uh, because I think also, you know, then at Vanta, and even in the Vanta of like a pre-competitive era, we like tried to get stuff right the first time, and so we'd write these long specs and do all this work, and then like take a long time to ship something, and then it was wrong, and not through anyone's fault. It's just usually the first thing you put in front of a customer is in fact wrong. But we would like have spent six months on that, right? And then we get this kind of negative feedback, and then we're just like very demoralized, and then customers like, what have you shipped for me lately? Like nothing.
Right. And so trying to get to like the frame, and I feel this way in my career too, it's like I very rarely if ever ship the right thing the first time, but I can usually ship the right thing by like the fourth time.
Yeah. And so did a team. It's like how do you minimize the time between, you know, the zero and the fourth.
How quickly can we get to V4?
Exactly. And like V4 should be right, and I'll hold you to that, but V1, like V1 does not have to be right.
And like trying to switch that mindset because I think we had a lot of people who are, you know, like good students and did well in school and want to get it right on the test and get it right the first time and feel that, and you're like, no, no, no. Like that's the mental model of school, but actually not of real life. And trying to like flip that too.
Competition is one of the like more, um, psychologically vexing parts of a startup. Yeah. Do you try to minimize how much you think about it or how much your team thinks about it? Like what's the, what have you tried to cultivate for yourself, your exec team, your broader team about competition?
I think there is, and this works kind of sometimes well and sometimes not. But I think for me, what I, when I'm at my best, what I try to do is like if a competitor is, do, if the competitor is just copying, like fine, but also there's a little bit of like how can we use that to our advantage, and we have in some ways where like we're going to call this new field this, and like everyone's going to call it, and like have we created a category now, right? Like there's, there's parts you can kind of weaponize for yourself. The other part is if they do something different, why? And I think it's trying to start from the like assume they're smart, not like assume they're idiots, and like what do they know that I don't? And try to figure that out. And again, maybe you conclude they know nothing, you don't, and they're idiots, but like I think it is always a useful thought exercise even if you've dismissed them the last 10 times. Something like this.
Have you had it go the other way where you've ended up cloning something from a competitor because like, yeah, they figured something out good?
Yeah, actually, um, there was a bunch of, one of our early competitors was really good at talking to our customers and finding out the parts of the product they didn't like and fix them. It was particularly brutal, honestly, because it was like, oh yeah, they just listen to our customers better than we did.
And so that where you're like, okay, like that needs, that needs to stop right now.
Yeah. Have you learned anything about how to do like the go-to-market side in a competitive market? Whether it's like the way you, you know, position at the top of the funnel. I mean, like you had, I think you've been running the like compliance that doesn't talk too much billboards for a long time. Those still like the best billboard I've ever seen.
It's after 2021, was it debut?
It's crazy. You keep it going.
Yeah. That billboard's locked up for 10 more years. Like kind of actually.
But like what have you learned in sort of like the way that you structure your go-to-market when you're, I mean most markets are really competitive, but like what have you learned?
Yeah. I think one bit is like, man, AE confidence is so real, and not as rational as like a, a person, like an engineer or PM would imagine. And that works on the way up and it works on the way down. When the team is starting to lose confidence, like you got to go fast, and you can't just go in with logic, and I think we messed that up for a while. Um, and it works on the way up too, and but then it kind of becomes this like, how do you build confidence amongst your salespeople? Getting... how do you build it? What we did, and this is all credit to our COO Stevie, was one of the, one of our issues with early competitors was they were actually so good at like secret shopping Vanta and like maybe exfiltrating, you know, like they just like knew everything, and we knew very little, and I think we were also like very Midwestern like nice, like oh but we're nice and isn't it, you know, and like not, not good at competitive intel. And so the way we solved that was we put one or two people on every competitive deal, and they just like listened to all the calls, or like they were in all the calls, they talked to all customers. They talked to like lost customers in both directions, and they just got smart about what was going on, and they figured out the talking points and the weak points and all of that, and then they got confident in winning, and it was one or two people, and then we started adding them to everybody else's calls, and then like an AE would be like, oh I want that person to come join.
Exactly. And like when I add them I win more, so like definitely want them in, and then that like sort of osmosed out.
That's brilliant. There's also honestly probably something there is we tried to do all this enablement with like enablement people and PMs, and me and PM, none of it works. Like I mean it works and everyone tries really hard, but like salespeople learn from salespeople, and everyone else is, you know, not as good, doesn't matter like who you are or what you're trying to do.
Um, I want to go over to fundraising. I guess you started fundraising at your seed in, when was it, 2018? Is that right?
April 18. You then, I think if I recall, had like a lot of investors who wanted to talk to you over a period of time between then and your A. Yes. Can you just talk about like some of the stuff you did? I know we've talked about this before, but like what can you talk about in that period, how you made most use of that time?
Yeah. So I think, so for the seed, what we did was only took money from seed funds. The thinking was, or like don't take money from anyone who will write an A, because we did the like post-YC, you know, raise your seed round in six days, yeah, crazy thing, and didn't want to choose a board member in like, that just felt silly. Board members are like harder to get rid of, and you know, execs, co-founders, right, like be, be thoughtful about that decision. And then I did a, I can't remember who told me to do this, raised the seed round, then went around to all the A firms and were like, hi, just introducing Vanta, we just raised, no opportunity for you here, just want to say hi, and like put the first, like put the first dot on the map.
Like right after the round.
Like within weeks kind of thing.
It was like schedule all of them, but to schedule them after it's done. Yeah.
Um, and so just like, just... someone gave you advice to do that.
Yeah. And it's like putting, putting myself on the map, you know, nothing for you now, but like here you go.
I love that. It also creates a very low-stakes conversation where nobody is thinking like that they can ask you about certain, like you just can control that conversation so easily. I bet.
Yes. Yeah.
So, did that, was like, I honestly there was this moment of like we just like raised $3 million to do all this stuff, and we have, you know, two people sitting on a couch, like we got, we got to get, we got to get hopping. So there's something just that, and then at some point six months later you're like, okay, this is work, like this is different. Vanta feels different than literally everything else I've worked on in my career. It is a true like pulling, like the market is pulling something out. Mhm. There's a million things wrong, a million things going on, but like there's something here. And then did not really talk to VCs. I think what started happening was there was like some amount of word of mouth among San Francisco founders about like, hey, if you want this SOC 2, there's this Vanta thing. We had this call response of like SOC 2, Vanta, going. It would start to come up with these companies, VCs. They would start to talk to us, and look, it was like half I was playing a game and half was actually really busy. But I generally reply and be like, look, I am just too busy fielding customer calls.
Because I kind of like, I don't have time to meet with you, but it sounds like you know, you know this founder at this company, you can go talk to them.
And like look, an existing customer.
And look, the thing, you know, I'm trying to do is grow the business. And so if you have referrals for me, I mean, of course, I'll take them, but like then go talk to them. Talk to them about the sales process. If they buy, if they don't buy, talk to them about the process. Like that is better diligence and information than I could ever give.
Yeah. If you want to see if Vanta is good, go try to send us a customer, see if they close, and then see if they're happy.
Yeah. And it's like that is better than anything I... amazingly. So that worked very well, you know, and I do think there was like a, a game, but I couldn't call it a game because I'd be like, oh no, sorry, I'm, I'm just too overwhelmed by like, you know, customers and dollars.
And there's an implied dynamic in there of if you want to get time with me, send me a lot of customers. Yeah. And it, and you have to kind of be careful to not sound like a total jerk. Yeah. Because I think you can very easily go to jerk territory, or like especially if your thing isn't working, you know, it's like they send you a bunch of stuff and like... Well, part of why that thing works is because that's an incredibly confident dynamic for you to be running.
Which helps. And I think, you know, I think one of my pieces of advice for founders is investors are not people you should seek approval from. They want to back people who are confident in what they're doing. Yeah. Not people who are seeking their approval.
And it's really hard. There's a real dynamic where founders want investors' approval, particularly early, because I think like at least in my experience it was like before I had real customer traction, you're like, well at least investors, you know, think that this is worth backing. So that gives me something to hold on to.
Yes. And whereas I think, and I think I just like, well, got lucky in lots of ways, but got lucky because early in my career I worked for really good early-stage investors, and I kind of saw these pitches and be like, oh no, this is not compelling. You want to back the person who like believes in where they're going, and that might change a million places, but can put one foot in front of the other and not look up and be like, is this right? Am I on the right trail? And so then I think it's like, okay, as a founder, how do you get that? And some people can just sort of manifest their confidence, which is great, and I'm very jealous of, and I've always been a like, need to figure it out and do it to get confident. Yeah. But like it sort of doesn't matter. It's like as long as you are, you are confident in the way you get confident doing that, and that makes the founder like much more compelling to investors. But you know, they should also just be like much more compelling to customers and like building said business.
So what ended up happening at your Series A or the round when you picked a board member basically?
Yeah. So it was that one. So there was this whole, you know, had this whole framework on how we choose a board member, and like did reference calls for people, and I had this spreadsheet, and I remember I did some of them over the holidays because I was like customers weren't emailing, like I just had time or time, and had this whole thing, and then literally ended up choosing an investor and board member who wasn't on the spreadsheet and like fell off the framework.
I was not going to talk to Sequoia.
Because I mean they're great, all the things. Um, but just actually in those like early days of like, hi, you know, I don't have anything to, you know, I might have something to talk about to you later, but I'm like showing up today. And they were like very politely entirely uninterested, and just like, nice girl, bad idea, maybe she'll work at whatever company, you know, they were like, they didn't quite say that, but it was like totally, totally.
Were they sending you customers or they weren't even, they were not playing along with that game?
They were just like wondering when that company's going to die.
No, very politely though.
And so I was like, cool, like I don't have to talk to you, you know, like cool, great, agree to disagree, I'm fine, you don't, whatever. And then it was a close friend of both of us who was like, you're a big idiot, just, you know, call Sequoia, what are you doing? And so had another mutual friend introduce me to Andrew Reed, and he's great. I ended up going with him, and no regrets, but also no framework, or like framework left by the wayside.
Yeah. On this podcast I've talked to a bunch of VCs about in what ways they think VCs might be helpful, but I'd like to hear from you in what ways you think VCs might be helpful, to the extent that you think that they are.
Sometimes, some of them. I think VCs, I mean at their best, like all of us, like smart, motivated people who are good at their jobs, their jobs are investing, their jobs are not operating. This like, that is a, like it sounds dumb and trite, but I think there's something deeply there, like they are probably not good at running companies. Or if they are and are now doing like, no, they've now chosen to do something else and like don't want to run your company.
You say this better than I can.
Yeah. And they probably couldn't run your specific company anyway, right?
And so when you're looking to them for like, or like things they're probably not good at is, you know, how do you like hire your first salesperson? How do you compensate them when like... Yeah.
Chili Piper starts routing leads under a couch cushion. What do you do? Like that is not VC stuff. Yeah.
Almost universally, or if it is, I guess, a not like super, super early stage or some special thing, like something's probably off.
Right, well they're probably capable of giving you an answer to that. It's actually, I would think it's more like you probably shouldn't need to, you probably should have other vehicles to get that support.
Right, I think recruiting support, especially in the early days.
Yeah, when you say recruiting support, do you mean sending you candidates or do you mean closing candidates?
I more mean closing candidates. There's some sending of candidates, but I do think that is a like...
Do you find the sending of candidates helpful or do you think the closing of... more so? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
