Christina Cacioppo

Think you need funding to start? She hit $10M ARR before raising a dime.

Christina Cacioppo didn’t have a security background.

Or a CS degree.

But in 2017, she left Dropbox with one goal: fix the broken mess that was security compliance.

At the time, companies were still emailing screenshots to auditors and calling it “secure.”

Christina saw the gap and built Vanta to close it.

She didn’t rush to ship products.

She interviewed dozens and dozens of startups.

Then, every morning at 5:45 a.m., she manually wrote “daily activity” emails (pretending they were automated) to see if customers found them useful.

She didn’t write a single line of code until customers asked, “Where do I pay?”

By 2021, Vanta hit $10M ARR. Just through bootstrapping.

No exec team. No sales reps.

Just her, a few engineers, and a checklist that turned into a product.

Today, Vanta automates compliance for 8,000+ companies, from Quora to ZoomInfo.

It helps them get certified for SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and more... without the spreadsheet chaos.

It just hit $100M ARR and raised $150M from Sequoia, Goldman Sachs, and J.P. Morgan at a $2.45B valuation.

Christina still owns a big piece: $385M worth.

She’s proof you don’t need buzzwords, branding, or bluster.

You just need customers and software that makes their lives easier.