2021-2026
Cacioppo says the total compensation for a top Vanta person is roughly ten times what it was five years earlier.
“Total comp, it's probably like a factor of ten. I think it actually should be higher.”
Topic
Vanta
22 facts from 3 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2021-2022
Cacioppo says Vanta has Tableau-style reporting generated by its agent on demand, a choice it would not have made in 2021 or 2022.
“We're not gonna put Tableau inside of Vanta, which is probably what we would've done in 2022, 2021, if we would've been building it then.”
2021
Sarah, Vanta's product marketing manager, came up with the slogan 'Compliance that doesn't suck too much' for the company's billboard.
“Sarah, who was our PMM at the time, came up with compliance that doesn't suck too much, pitched it to her head of marketing, who didn't like it,”
2021
Cacioppo says Vanta's marketing team first tried an out-of-home billboard around a mid-summer 2021 conference.
“Mid summer 2021 Sasser Conference, which felt like a big deal at the time, like, thank God, we've all moved beyond that.”
2022
Most of the capital in a nearly $10 million Vanta investment vehicle in 2022 came from Acquired's audience community.
“most of that capital came from the acquired audience community like the LP capital that backed that SPV came in very large part from the acquired audience”
2022
Ben Gilbert's Kindergarten Ventures fund did a $10 million special purpose vehicle investment in Vanta's Series B round.
“Kindergarten Ventures, the early stage angel list fund that I run with my friend, Nat, we did a $10 million SPV in Vanta Series B.”
2022
Cacioppo says that after the 2022 market crash Vanta obtained a prime billboard spot where US-101 and I-280 intersect.
“As for 22, market crashes, turns out there's a lot of billboard inventory available on 101.”
2024-2026
Cacioppo says Vanta has increasingly worked with federal, state and local governments in the US and abroad.
“Over the past couple of years, Vanta has spent more time with government, federal, state, local levels, inside the US. outside the US.”
2026
Christina Cacioppo says Vanta has about 16,000 customers worldwide and about five products.
“Today, we're about 16 zero customers global, with about five products.”
2026
Cacioppo says Vanta connects to about 400 other tools and uses the data to power its automation and agent.
“So now you can connect Vanta to one of 400 tools. We pull a ton of data out of those tools and that's what powers the automation, the agent, the AI, all of that.”
2026
Cacioppo describes the past year's SaaS selloff as the scariest period for Vanta, since system-of-record software was seen as vulnerable to AI.
“The last twelve months, SaaS pocalypse, you're like, Okay, great job building a system of record, you're now screwed.”
2026
Cacioppo says Vanta is absorbing AI model costs and accepting lower margins to push customers toward its agent experience.
“we're taking lower margin and really concentrating on usage. That experience that I just talked through, where the agent is going off and doing things.”
2026
Vanta used former security and compliance practitioners to write evaluation frameworks for its AI agents.
“really invested in using our subject matter experts. So the folks who, like, ran security and compliance programs at other companies, to write the eval frameworks”
2026
Vanta replaced a traditional onboarding wizard with a flow where customers drag in files and screenshots for an AI model to interpret.
“It's basically Claude big canvas. Drag all your messy files in, drag in all your screenshots.”
Undated
Vanta calls its integrated security data the trust graph, which Cacioppo describes as a security data lake broader than any competitor's.
“We call it our trust graph. It's really just like a security data lake, and that is bigger, broader than any other provider”
Undated
Cacioppo gives an example of Vanta's agent offering to write a custom agent that removes account access for departed employees.
“Someone just left your company and you didn't get them out of their accounts. I just wrote a custom agent for you that will go do that.”
Undated
Cacioppo says Vanta's choice of which AI models to swap in is driven mainly by quality instead of cost.
“When we think about model swapping, it is mostly quality, it's not cost.”
Undated
Cacioppo says Notion is about nine months ahead of Vanta in splitting its code base into modules that AI coding agents can understand.
“And they are like nine months ahead of us on is modularizing parts of the code base.”
Undated
Cacioppo says Vanta has not historically held tender offers for employee shares but now feels it must.
“We have not done them historically, but the game on the field is you're doing a tender every time and you gotta do them”
Undated
Cacioppo says the security firm Wiz targets customers that are multi-thousand-person companies, leaving smaller firms for Vanta.
“Wiz's customer base starts at a multi thousand person company, and their pricing count starts at a multi thousand person company.”
Undated
Cacioppo says a US enterprise asked Vanta to disable its AI features because non-AI tools are easier to get through procurement.
“Hey, maybe we want your AI features, maybe we don't, but can you turn them off for now?”
Undated
Cacioppo says the billboard owner refused her offer to double the roughly $1.5 million he was getting, so Vanta lost its famous spot.
“And he's like, we're actually cash flow positive, so like, literally, I'm an inelastic seller.”
Episodes