We have talked to our customers a lot about token based pricing and I think what we've generally heard people are real smart but actually and so if you try to charge them based on tokens they are very quick to say oh you've just marked up a claude token forex are you
forex as good as claude I don't know let me go try it out you actually put yourselves in a competitive position against the models and so what we've seen on token pricing is like if If you're trying to mark up at all, users are very smart and you will lose on that comparison. >> So, Christina, I've been so excited to
>> So, Christina, I've been so excited to do this with you.
I think it's been five years since we last did it.
So, a lot a lot has happened a lifetime ago.
>> Uh you've been very successful in the intervening 5 years.
So, so I'm excited to catch up.
Can you give us like the one minute history of Vanta?
I know we've done this before, but just to level set for people when you started it, why, what it did then, how it's evolved, what it does now.
Just like a quick quick overview.
>> Started Vanta about 8 years ago, which was about 8,000. Yeah, exactly.
You're like in 17 centuries ago with the premise of can we help companies build and earn trust?
and earn trust? and build trust is like start security programs and compliance programs or mature them and then go go get credit for their customers through audits like a sock 2 or ISO 270 and HIPPA etc questionnaires trust centers but basically this idea of can we build
a security company by helping companies implement security because it's what their customer is asking for and so we're initially known for sock 2 we had a billboard we do have a billboard on the 101 that We're mostly known for making billboards, I joke, but it started like very compliance, very audit centric. The idea was always, hey,
The idea was always, hey, that's just like one way to get a company started on this.
And so since then, we've gone into different areas of security.
We've gone into different ways of like earning trust with your customers.
And so today we're about 16,000 customers global with about five products. >> How did you win?
Like this this was a new category when you started and then I remember I had to go through it.
remember I had to go through it. my old business get sock 2 compliant and certified in order to win certain accounts or whatever and so it became an important thing kind of in the software era there were many companies I I could probably name a handful that were trying to do what you're trying to do >> you've emerged as sort of the only major
winner what would you attribute it to over the last since we last talked like how did you win >> execution I think you have to both like software the blessing and the curse and this is you know more true now even than it was 5 years ago like you're really only as good as the last thing you shipped And so you can be first and you can start it and doesn't really matter. I
I mean that's more true now because it's like someone can vibe code your thing in a weekend.
And so you've just got to like constantly be shipping new products, new features that make the experience better for customers and like running on that differentiation.
And so there's some feature level.
I think the other thing we really invested in when it got competitive that was very good was integrations pulling in data from other tools.
And so now you can connect Vanta to one of 400 tools.
We c we pull a ton of data out of those tools and that's what powers the automation, the agent, the AI, all of that.
We call it our trust graph.
It's really just like a security data lake and that is bigger broader than any other provider including some of the security providers because we touch areas they don't and I think that in retrospect that data foundation has let us build new things faster software and agent.
It was that piece and then I think on the go to market side it was like just push good billboards >> like shockingly good compliance that doesn't suck too much.
Um which got really popular on our/ac accounting which none of us knew was a bucket list item in our lives but um when r/ac accounting likes your things you're like okay something something worked and then the lived experience is just like you can feel like you are going as fast as you can and you should in fact lean in further and like push harder.
>> What was the scariest moment?
I mean, you know, the last 12 months, South Apocalypse, you're like, "Okay, great.
You know, great job building a system of record. You're now screwed.
>> You're now worthless." >> Yeah, exactly.
You're worth like good job playing the game.
Here's some steak knives.
Parts of that are true and parts of it are not true.
But again, in the vein of like, you're only as good as the last thing you shipped. You're like, great.
So, you know, what are you what is the agent?
You have all this data in a system of record. Fine.
What what the heck are you doing with it?
>> Say more about what that's felt like.
Roughly Vanta is a business that is growing very fast by historical standards with very high margins. Yes.
>> Which four years ago is considered like the best business model ever.
>> Y >> um nothing changed about that.
I think you're probably growing faster and the margins are margins still really high.
Y >> and yet the market has decided that the multiple for a business like yours is a third of what it used to be or quarter of what it used to be. >> So what is that? Yeah.
What what has it been like to live through that as one of those entrepreneurs?
>> I think cognitive dissonance like you've got to hold two things in your head, right?
One is the like look I think at the fullness of time a 80% growth business with 80% margins will like >> be good >> be well not yeah be good and actually be better than like over the same time period run it out long enough a you know 160% growth business with 30% margins.
You're like one of these will like return more cash right in the fullness of time.
of time. But today the latter is valued at you know 3x 4x the multiple of the former 10x the multiple of the former right and so there's a part where you're like hey guys everyone's being irrational here and then there's a and
like this is a good business and you have to keep do you know keep doing things that make business sense and doing the things that customers want which may or may not be you know token pricing models that put you more in the latter category than the former profile. And then there's like a very clear like
And then there's like a very clear like game on the field piece where you're like a D like well if you need to be financed again you're looking at investors today many of whom are kind of AI maximalists and are like talk to firms that are like yeah we'll invest in the labs and we'll basically invest in tractors in Iowa and like nothing in
between you know robo like robo tractors in Iowa at a lab and like everything else and you're like huh interesting point of view and then from a like talent perspective right like people you know you hire ambitious ious people who want to do things and if it feels like they're not in the right boat, they're going to change boats, right? Like the
Like the talent war part is very real, too.
>> And so, you just kind of got to live with like, okay, in the fullness of time, I think this will all kind of sort itself out.
And you have to live for the fullness of time.
>> So, there's this there's this kind of funny fear that now like bending spoons is like the grim the grim reaper in the hallway, you know, meme or whatever.
Uh, no one wants to be a Ben spoon.
Love bending spoons, by the way.
bending spoons, by the way. I think it's an interesting question of how do you like the siren song right now is like sell tokens yep >> via agents for security and compliance I'm sure or something like this >> lots of thoughts on this >> I'm just so interested by by companies like yours that were sort of winners of
this last era that now have to make a sort of set of decisions right >> look at the tenure rate like the cost of capital is going up because you can put lots of money at really high return in AI stuff for the time being >> and so someone looking at your business is like well I want you know higher returns or the same returns and I get that through agents or something. Talk
Talk me through what it's been like to make the decisions.
What are you thinking today?
Do you think of yourself as an AI business? What's that look like?
>> So, we do and not just like oh and I like also think of myself as like the best human in the world like not there's probably some of that but like when we go benchmark where we are from a agent in our product perspective against you know quote unquote AI applications we have yet to find someone who is further along.
further along. Now you could be like we're doing a bad job looking is like you know the obvious critique there but just we are like constantly going to the set of names you imagine when you think AI applications and generally finding they're not yet where we are where an
agent is doing most of the work the agent the other one of the things it's chat based but there's like longrunning agents our agent is like autogenerating UI on the fly because sometimes you want chat right and sometimes you want UI but we just have an agent that
building UI user can do something comes back in the flow keeps it going like very much optimized around the like keep the user going in the flow loops >> just so I make sure I understand meaning you are like a watchdog that's always on watching the security >> you're definitely that but in some ways
you're you could do that in the past with just like monitoring and alerting this is more like the Vanta product experience is now oriented around an agent that is bringing you as a user things and often saying, "Hey, I went and did this for you. Are you good with Are you good with it? Then I will go do it." Okay, great.
The next thing I think I should go do. >> What's an example?
Just like ground that an example.
>> Someone just left your company and you didn't take, you didn't get them out all of their accounts.
I just like wrote a custom agent for you that will go do that.
Do you want me to go turn this on? Great.
Do you also want me to go, you know, remove accounts, access from these three people? Great.
You want that running always?
>> So, it's not just like, here's a red alert that someone didn't meet the monitoring step. It's like too many.
Would you like me to go do this?
And then kind of it's it's we're taking a lot from the AI labs in their UI, but it's like you want me to do this once, do you want me to do this always? Great.
>> And so the idea is like the agent will just be doing more of this work with the user's permission, but it's like if they tell us to go do it, we're just going to go.
Anyway, in the course of that, we end up using a lot of tokens.
We have talked to our customers a lot about token based pricing.
token based pricing. And I think what we've generally heard is like people are real smart but actually and so if you try to charge them based on tokens they are very quick to say oh you've just marked up a claude token forex are you forex as good as claude I don't
know let me go try it out and so and then you're like you actually put yourselves in a competitive position against the models I think probably no application really wants to do like we can talk about harnesses but like you don't want to get fair. And so what
And so what we've seen on token pricing is like if you're trying to mark up at all, users are very smart and you will lose on that comparison.
>> You can like not mark up and this gets to the margin question, right?
Um but anyone who is marking up cloud tokens forex and trying to like pass that off to their users, I think it's like that is not a model.
>> We're eating the token cost right now.
>> You're just taking lower margin.
>> You're just taking lower margin. we're taking lower margin and honestly just like really concentrate on usage because like that experience that I just talked through where the agent is going off and doing things we just like fundamentally believe that is a much better user experience and we've got call it
25% of our like all of our customers in that sort of flow right now and we're like look if we can get that to 75% one I think we like much better retention like net retention there you know it's just like a much customer experience and then if we need to go sort out pricing later, we we should go sort out pricing later. But like this is a usage phase
But like this is a usage phase and like a deployment phase of this technology and just go nail that and you can figure out commercialization after.
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You said marking up a cla token, but what about marking up like a Kimmy token or like something that's much cheaper?
like how what what's it been like deciding what to use, what's good enough versus cost if you're not passing through the >> Yeah, this was something we started concentrating on at the beginning of the year.
It was basically like evals. Yeah.
>> For all the and like task specific or agent specific evals from a product perspective.
We call it all the Vanta agent and it's one thing of course behind the scene it's like hundreds of agents that all have specific tasks and use tools and have computers and you know that whole setup that I think everyone's converging on.
But in the beginning of the year really invested in using our our subject matter experts the folks who like ran security and compliance programs at other companies to write the eval frameworks and then eval their evals and using tooling for that anyway.
that anyway. And so when we think about model swapping it is right again right now it's like mostly quality it's not cost I also think some of it this is because we don't use as many tokens as coding I think we're also all starting to like coding is and coding agents lots of token use maybe legal and like
document drafting next and then when you get to more of the decision action world which is where we are get relative to coding we just don't use that many tokens >> anyway and so that kind of lets like optimize for quality versus being as concerned about cost as some of the other companies. >> When you talk to other founders both of
>> When you talk to other founders both of your era and of this new era, what are they doing here?
Are they also eating the cost and just charging a software fee?
What do you think the the end state's going to be?
>> I think everyone wants to get to outcome pricing and if you actually go talk to a pricing person, they will tell you it's actually output pricing because it's not but whatever.
Like everyone wants to get to that.
And like in another life I was a microeconomics professor like I love this conceptually like I love the like we will we get paid for outcomes and the alignment of incentives love it.
alignment of incentives love it. The hard part is just like what are the outcomes and I think you know support ticket closed makes a lot of sense actually to that maybe differentiate outcome and output as I understand it in support the ticket closed is an output
the outcome is actually like my Sonos now works right but even like the ticket closed that is relatively unobjectionable I think a lot of companies included are trying to figure out what's that like neat unit of work that we can all agree on and you can say
it's oh it's a document drafted it's an alert closed it's an account offboarded and you can kind of do that but then there's just so much cognitive overhead because you're like I just named three things I could name another 47 and then our user has to be like oh well if I do
this with the agent I paid this but if I do it you know and you're just like no one no one wants that I think everyone I talk to wants to get to outcome output pricing but it's really not clear how you get there I think token charging tokens themselves really puts you up against cloud. So
So then people try to obscure that by charging credits and having some like credit token exchange rate thing which I think again users are smart and they're like I see what you're doing and I see you've obscured it. Fine.
Are you similarly far along in if you compared yourself to the just as you did just now to companies and how you're building product and the business using these tools?
Like how would you grade yourself on like what are you doing that's interesting there?
>> I think okay so we in the vein of like 8-year-old company and 8-year-old code base it is so much easier to throw the coding agents at a small codebase than a large one and that's like a token input thing and they're getting better and better.
But one thing we've spent a lot of time also investing in in the last year and I know notion has spent a bunch bunch of time in and they were like nine months ahead of us on is modularizing parts of the codebase so that the agent can just understand smaller parts of it and understand it fully and then be really effective.
Whereas if you chuck it at again eight your codebase site unseen it just like doesn't have the context window to understand everything and will do silly things and so you then you need a high context engineer to babysit it which is helpful but like sort of invalidates some of the point.
Um companies have always had this problem.
They've just talked about it as like oh when we onboard a new engineer it takes them a while to figure out the code base.
It's just agents have made it like well great now we want to onboard 9,000 new engineers tomorrow.
Um, and so it's just like heightened that problem.
So I I give ourselves a lower grade on that just cuz we've had we are like in the process of using agents and people to make the codebase easier to understand too.
>> Like you had to grade yourself one through 10 about like wow this changes everything.
Building this company from this point forward is going to be totally different. Is a 10. >> Oh yeah. Like nine. Yeah. >> You are like a nine. >> Eight nine.
I mean I think the like principles are still the same. Like everything is hard. People matter.
you know like all the tropes are still the tropes but the way you do stuff it should be quite different.
Do you feel like there's a separation happening?
Again, if I took your cohort of the successful, you know, eight year ago era companies, >> like do you feel there there's a bifurcation where some have gotten the memo and are are doing really well and some are just like going to bending spoons >> kind of. Yeah. Yeah.
I think there are just structural parts of some markets and I think Bending Spoon's very good at you know identifying these where you can put any entrepreneur in the world on in that structure.
This is kind of like the like does market or founder win Andre Horowitz thing and you're like market wins.
I think that is still true and I think this AI technology shift has made what some markets that used to look really good look really bad and the best person in the world can run in that will still run into a brick wall.
And I think there is a like founder motivation piece where it's like you got to be in it and like push in this era and if you don't want to do that totally fine but like the rest of the company will not you know self-organized to do so.
>> So given that you've been at the edge like what's the you know adopting AI 101 if you're back to being a professor what have been the most important things that have been hard to do but have proven fruitful?
fruitful? just getting people to use it which I think there's like a and then okay so which sounds obvious but it's like definitely use it yourself build for your company personally does not matter just like understand where the models are where they're good where
they're bad what harness means like you just like and like kind of do that at least every two weeks because it just changes so quickly and I do think you have to have a like visceral understanding of what works and what doesn't so that when somebody comes and they say we're going um
fire all of our SDRs because I built one agent and you can kind of be like did you know you know like where where is that true and where that false anyway so there's like a be in the mock and then I think it's like yeah you want to get as many other people in that as possible broadly generalized it's very black and
white but it's like yeah and some people just go do that and some people don't if you'd asked me a year ago you'd been like oh well there's like some you know intrinsic motivation and you know kind of the people who aren't separate problems go deal with them. I think I'm slightly more empathetic now
I think I'm slightly more empathetic now in that we have seen I can give a specific example but like very strong people kind of not go dive in and you have to like nudge them more but like try to figure out what's blocking them and something can be blocking them and you can get people into the like into the muck even if they don't dive in initially.
So if you're a small company starting out on Manta, great.
We've got this like set of controls for you. You just you adopt them.
You maybe mess with them on the edges, but you're like off to the races.
If you're a larger company, you clearly run a security and compliance program.
And you come to Vanta because you want that visualized.
You want the automation and you want the monitoring.
You want the real-time dashboards.
You don't want the like jur thing. Fine.
Well, the hard part hard part is you've got to get all that existing stuff, the controls, the risks, the data, the policies, the procedure, all that stuff in Vanta.
Classically, the way you would do that SAS company is you're like, "Oh, we're going to make an onboarding wizard.
It has four steps and a progress bar and we will like give you confetti, you know, like you're going to do that whole thing."
We were setting out to build better better onboarding this year.
And the first couple product reviews, the team kept bringing onboarding wizards.
Kept being like, "Stop with the onboarding."
Like, "No, you know, go use an LLM. Stop."
But they kept bringing onboarding wizards.
And this was like a motivated team, talented people.
They cared and kept bringing onboarding wizards. And we finally got them.
Anyway, the experience now they shipped and is working is it's basically clawed. It's like big canvas.
Drag all your messy files in, drag in all your screenshots.
we will like make sense of it, ask you questions and then you are set up and off to the races and it works really well.
So like why were these smart motivated people bringing on boarding wizards?
So you go out like finally and the thing was they were like well we don't know if we can get the like drag your files thing to work it might not work and we know the onboarding wizard will work because we've built those before and like we basically don't think we're allowed to fail on this project.
and you come and you're like, "Oh, that's the thing. Great.
Well, like we're just gonna like bet that the on the LLM flow is going to work and we will make it work and we will hill climb all we need to, but like burn the boat and just make this thing work."
And then they were like, "Oh, okay, great."
You know, do you want a next product review tomorrow?
But it was this like funny thing where you're like, "I would not have guessed that that was their blocker."
blocker." and you like solve that and they were like going >> you mentioned the talent war thing before there's this big trend you know the low low margin high growth thing where like from an investor's perspective the the funny example you gave of a lab or a tractor like everyone wants something that can be that thing
and so like tell me about how you're going to be a hundred billion dollar business or a trillion dollar business somehow now every business needs to be that big >> um what's that like to face down where you may not be building a business that should be a hundred billion dollar business there's like a hundred of those in the world like there's not that many. >> Yeah. And it's not to say Vanta won't >> Yeah.
And it's not to say Vanta won't be, but I do think the it's funny.
It's like a uh I think for me it's like oh should I adjust the pitch and be like well inevitably you know the baseline here is Fanta's 50 billion.
The real question you should be considering, you know, is like, if you join, can you take us on a journey to like 250 billion?
And you're like, should I just start saying that?
You know, like again, like pro like the answer is like probably not, but the answer is not definitely not. Totally.
Cuz you're like, well, that is like that is the pitch that people who work at Vanta are getting from other companies, you know, and then and then you're just kind of like, okay, well, do you and I try not to like counter by, you know, being like, well, they suck.
But it's just this like the market now is saying that so much and so if you don't you do seem unambitious. >> So what do you do?
>> There's like a Vanta principle value but principle of like do what it says on the tin which is kind of like do what you say you're going to do.
And look you can put ambitious things on a tin.
It's not that but like don't overpromise and underdel.
And so kind of what we do is like give some of that like here's what we do as a company, good, bad, and different, but just like here's the context.
Now like let me talk to you about the business metrics and we'll generally just show as candidate to like show everybody everything. It's fine. They're good.
Like we don't really want them to leak, but if they leak, it's not the worst.
And then walk them through that and what we're doing and how that grows over time and like try to root it in all of the facts and all of the data.
And so in some ways it's like counter the vibes with like data and trustworthy vibes versus yolo vibes I guess.
>> And and so what is it like in those talent wars?
Like if if the most talented people are being told you know this thing's going to go to a trillion by basically every other company that's trying to hire them.
Well, the better one is uh well, we're six billion today, but like Sequoia is going to do a $10 billion check in a month and then like somebody's going to write it up to 25 next year, but we can get you in at six today.
>> Yeah, >> that's a good one.
>> Yeah, >> that one's tough.
>> So, you're faced with that like what do you do?
Do maybe like not want those people like maybe it's a filter that >> sometimes I like no magic playbook here.
I think if you go to the person and be like what are you optimizing for, right?
are you optimizing for, right? And like why are you kind of like why did you entertain this but not in a pokey way just in a like what's annoying you at Vanta right and actually one of these in specific very strong leader still at Vanta but like it was basically this
person felt like they couldn't make decisions that would put Vanta on a similar trajectory and that would be their preference but they're like oh but this new place is promising me like full decision-making authority on this trajectory and you're like totally fair feedback. back. What do you need to feel back.
What do you need to feel like you can make these decisions?
Like just go make these decisions. Go.
Like there's a money part and a FOMO part for sure.
We've definitely gone up on comp.
And you know, comp bands are like people are going to hate that I but like comp bands are kind of a joke now.
You're like the comp band is whatever data you have is wrong.
It is like what is being offered to these people in >> how much more do you pay the top person at Vanta than you did like as a multiple versus like >> oh I think we should have way more comp dispersion than we do.
>> So how but but even so that's interesting but if I go 5 years back and that person made X dollars what multiple of X does the person make now?
>> Total comp >> it's probably like a factor of 10. >> Wow.
>> And it should I think it actually should be higher.
be higher. My general comp philosophy is like you never pay the top people >> enough >> enough and you should keep you should always try to be like very clear you should always try and you will never hit it and there's a bunch of people you pay much more than their contribution >> say say a bit more about what those top people are doing that's so valuable typically
>> just like high agency get done like it's in some ways it's that sounds so milk toast and I don't know like that's worth millions of dollars but like yes actually it is like a high context person who understands the company and the customers and the domain making generally reasonable decisions and sometimes bad ones and then iterating on their bad ones and just moving is so valuable. >> Do you think it'll be 10x again in five
>> Do you think it'll be 10x again in five more years or is that starting to get too crazy?
too crazy? Is the rate at which the most valuable people are getting more valuable staying the same accelerating >> accelerating the counterforce is like when are we going to or at what point will investors get more concerned about
ill dilution and stockbased comp and right which I kind of like weren't throughout the 2010s late 2010s we had a more of a like stockbased comp conversation as an industry in like 2022 23 now we're definitely not talking about it but like that's the counter side. I think as if um without that push
I think as if um without that push on like dilution, I think people just get paid more and more. That's probably should.
>> How much do you care about your valuation and multiple and pardon the use of the word, but like the engineering of those things?
>> I've historically not cared and sometimes even done things to like demonstrate my not caring.
uh which were good and bad.
I care about ARR and AR growth and like I do pay I pay a ton of attention to those and those are the metrics.
I think I've now I mean a lot of been through enough valuation environments like 2010s, 2021, 2022 seen the like multiple roller coaster where I just don't put a bunch of stock in that or I used to not.
I think the thing I care a bunch about that then will get me to caring about these multiples is like the sentiment of people who work at Vanta and they feel like they're at a company that is growing and growing and then both in general growing and then growing relative to other their other opportunities in the market.
There's a part of the market that is raising money every six months at like you know 5x the prior valuation and like that's a real talent competitor. Yeah.
And what about like things like tenders?
Have you done those historically?
>> We have not done them historically, but they're I think that is the game on the field.
If you're doing a tender every time and you got to do them.
>> Does this feel unhealthy? >> Totally.
But that in some like my opinions about it sort of don't matter like actually can have all the feelings I want in whatever direction about tenders.
They are normalized and people expect them and they expect it as part of their comp.
And if you are not giving it to them, you got to give them a bunch of other stuff to make it up.
>> How does all this affect your exit ambitions like to go public or to you know be sold or realize some endgame for Vanta? Not at all. >> Not really.
Which is again a very like founder privilege statement, but basically it's like the the endgame is like how long can we keep this going for?
And look like 99% of the big independent, you know, software companies in the United States are are public.
And so like yes, IPO in that sense.
I don't have it as a bucket list item myself.
It's more of like means to an end.
Again, I think lots of people join companies and want the bucket list item.
So, you know, founder privilege caveat here again.
But goal is big independent standalone company >> on all this stuff.
Tools for building, ways of building, kind all these kinds of things I'm asking about.
What do you think is overhyped and underhyped?
Underhyped is knowing the company and the customers relative to knowing the skill set.
It is still really hard to train to hire, train, onboard, make effective people who join a company.
Company marines make this better and easier and like put information at fingertips, but there is still totally something to be said about someone who's like been in a company, knows how to navigate the company, knows the customers, all of that.
I'm at a phase right now where like we value that skill set and compensate that skill set more than like the vertical skill set of like you're good at sales, you're good at customer success and would take a worse salesperson on sales skill who knows the Vanta pieces more.
There's something in that and I think especially as a lot of the labs and like fasting AI companies are like building out go to market teams, I think they're actually very much evaluating like you're a good salesperson.
I think that's slightly off.
And then I think as we think about building agents for all of this, the company context piece, the customer context piece is probably being relatively undervalued to like, oh, you're just good at you are good salesperson.
The less valuable skill slightly today than it was four years ago. >> What about overhyped?
Anything that you feel like is getting >> token based pricing low margins for the sake of having low margins?
sake of having low margins? um custom training models for the marketing value >> to be able to say we post trained a model on our stuff why explain why that's >> uh I think if you go talk to the the inference providers and sometimes give them depending on the provider give them true CRM they will say like look the reason to post train a model is cost and you might then some businesses have that need but there is not a quality reason to do
it there's like kind of a marketing reason to do it right now in this environment and I think there's a lot of post training for marketing reasons for investors and for customers mostly for investors actually >> if one of those people were pitching the the the other side of this of like the value of post training what what is the pitch to you like some one of these companies comes to you and is like we'll do XYZ for you what are they saying and
what do they say the benefits are >> you are putting a stake in the ground of being a real AI company that customer investors like customers will notice I think that's the primary one I do think there's a secondary one in some use cases of like a form factor thing and I
Especially with large enterprises where it's like you want to deploy this piece of software wallto-wall that you know requires integrations and 17 people to sign off and like oof that's a whole thing like why don't you just give them
a like model specific to them for this use case there's like form I think it's a semi-reasonable >> so so if I was one of these people and I came into Vanta what what do they what does post training literally mean like
what would it mean in your context like what are you doing what are the steps that you would go through with Yeah, >> we would need a bunch of data from that specific customer and then go write a bunch of eval data. >> The process would be they're trying to
>> The process would be they're trying to achieve something, they've got some data, you tune a model to achieve the thing to increase the eval. >> Yeah.
Basically, >> and then sell them that. >> Exactly. >> On an ongoing basis. >> Yep.
>> Yep. And and your point is that that's overrated because it doesn't actually improve their >> it can I think I'm a skeptical in a couple of like do does everyone really want to be handed a model or there's so much around that from a user experience perspective from a deployment perspective form factor like it feels a
little like you know in the social media or like our mobile apps when we like we hadn't figured out pulled a refresh yet right it's like kind of that it's like there's something here I don't think anyone actually wants to be handed a model the same way it's like hitting a refresh button I don't know that sounds silly but like That's what we did in 2011. There's some version of that here.
There's some version of that here.
It's like we haven't figured out how this actually works and handing models I think is not the right reasonable iteration but like not the right solution.
>> Is there anything else like in the popular discourse that you think is crazy? FDES.
>> I kind of think FDES are crazy or like I think FDEES or actually I think it's a great talent arbitrage the same way like chief of staff is what FDE often is is professional services.
But I think if you call it a professional services role, that's a very different talent profile than FDE in the current discourse.
And I think you're not going to get the, you know, Harvard CS grad who's like high agency and wants to go do things and learn how to build a business to go sign up to be like pro- serve person number four or number 12 at a company.
I think there's a real job there, but I think this like FDE wrapping around it is probably not going to stay.
I also think it's like right the company that we all think does this well is Palanteer, which I think they probably do.
They have eight figure contracts.
There are some companies that have eight figure contracts.
I think we're using all FTEEs in a place where we're, you know, there's like five and six figure contracts and those economics probably are upside down.
No, we're in again era of like 30% growth margin better and so that sort of works, but like that doesn't feel sustainable.
>> When you're at like a a dinner in San Francisco with other founders, what are you talking about?
Like are you talking about models and which ones to use?
What are the actual topics of conversation between founders right now?
>> There's definitely like talent war pieces.
There was a time, this is more nine months ago, but it was like the, you know, joy to go around the table and complain about cursor and like their their taking of everyone.
Um, like the cursor of the moment is like there's definitely that piece.
There is a bit I mean I'll take FTDs of like do you actually do this? Is it working?
Like what do you like where are you on this?
I mean right now you know personal agents uh which ones do you have what are actually useful?
when you think about the open-source stuff, >> Chinese models, this that and the other, what have you learned talking to people around the world that are grappling with these same questions?
>> Yeah, I was with our customers in France a couple weeks ago, which was lovely.
One of the things I was very surprised is is a lot of the French software companies in Paris are using Chinese models predominantly.
And I initially thought it was sort of a nationalism, maybe anti-American, you know, just something there.
and stupidly sort of suggested that and someone very quickly corrected me and said like absolutely not.
We basically all switched to Chinese models when Trump uh closed Fable off to non-Americans and we just kind of realized there's a huge business continuity risk.
We can't trust that if we build a business on one of these American models it'll always be available.
So we stopped doing that.
If you dream the most about where the business could go over the next several years, like force you to answer the hundred bill, you know, the $250 billion question or something.
>> What's the version of Vanta that could look like that?
>> We think of Vanta as a security company.
Started with compliance, but like I think the the best version of compliance is proving the security you have.
You've got to have good security.
And we think we can and are moving into a bunch of security domains.
It's sort of a platform pitch of like look, we've already got the data, we've already got the intelligence via the agent, we can start stacking products on top of that and more security focused products.
As we understand the security of all these companies, the pressure on them to go prove they're legitimate and industrial grade is just going to go up.
That's one of the founding thesis of anti eight years ago, but it's it like feels even more true now.
Whether they're working with enterprises, governments, regulators, lawmakers, you just have to like prove your software is industrial grade in lots of ways and that will happen more and more in more and more ways in the future.
And Vanta is the thing that connects both sides of that call it marketplace.
>> So what's the direction of security?
Like this this is of course an incredibly interesting topic like early internet everything broke everything got hacked this will probably be that times 10 or times 100.
>> Um does security mean you compete with crowdstrike and places like that?
Like what does security mean and what's its trajectory in this crazy era?
>> These models just are like so much more persistent than people actually.
And so they will just like try nine quadrillion things the way a person would sort of give up after I don't know 9,000 right and then in the course of that they find things and chain things together and so I think there is a little bit like a lot of the discourse is around zero days and there's definitely some of that these models are finding that we didn't find before or didn't publicly find before.
before or didn't publicly find before. I think actually though what's more so happening is these models are able to chain like 17 benignish or benign on their own things together and then like really find something and like if you watch the the open AI talk at RSA about hugging face it's basically that it's
just like persistence and putting together things that on their own people would have been like that's low severity I'll fix it in 90 days right anyway that anyway but that update which I is tough and we have to fight with machines because it takes what was like, oh that's important but low severity and again 90 days and like I'm going to fix this other stuff first. Like it just
Like it just turns the prioritization on its head and saying it makes everything critical isn't helpful because you're like well what do you do then? Right?
But I think what that ends up looking like is you've just got to fix stuff as fast as you find it.
And some of the prioritization does need to go out the window.
But if you're fixing, you know, again, if you're fixing things at machine speed, you sort of don't have to prioritize.
So that's where I think we're going to get to.
But I think it'll it'll be rocky as we get there.
>> So as I visualize that, >> what that feels like to me is a constant penetration test. >> Yes.
>> Where an agent is trying to break in like a white hack white hacker agent all the time and then every time it finds something, it's like got a buddy agent that's a patcher >> goes fix it. Yeah.
>> Is that like the ultimate product vision then? for some parts of Vanta. Yes. Yes.
I think we can do that in very compelling ways for the bulk of our customers.
I think CrowdStrike will do it better for an enterprise, right?
I think this is where choosing where you play and like what market segment is most important there.
>> Is there a firm that's doing something now that you start to encroach on like of the traditional security? >> A different market.
I mean, take a like okay your um ongoing like penetration tester and you know remediator fixer, right?
We think we can do that for the cloud providers like an AWS and Azure like misconfigurations there classically like right whis does that whis will do it for its customers.
Whee's customer base starts at a multi,000 person company and their price point count starts at a multi,000 person company and so we're more thinking about the platform as where are we already embedded with customers?
where are they unlikely to go pay $150,000 for a whiz, but very well could pay 40 or 50 for something suited to them.
And so kind of thinking through where are we already strong and where are the the competitors focused probably elsewhere but probably on a more market segment.
>> How has your personal motivation changed?
Like you set out to build this thing.
thing. I remember talking to you the first time about this uh very charming way you built the original product like building an Excel first and it seems very old school you know looking back looking back on it and there's always like the dog that caught the car thing where like all right you built like this
huge software business amazing how has your own motivation evolved or changed through all this >> like why keep going >> it's interesting and challenging and it changes all the time I mean I think there's like I really like my job sometimes I feel like I'm good at it often I feel like I'm bad about at that's fine. Like that's in some ways
Like that's in some ways not the point.
Um, but it's changes and it's different and when I feel like I've gotten good at it, usually something happens where then I feel, you know, it it just changes and then I feel bad at it again.
And I really like that dynamic.
I think in the beginning I had a lot more of a feeling of people think I can't do this and I think I can and I'm going to show them.
And I still have that, you know, even to the like you don't think band is gonna be 250 billion, like let me show you.
I still have it, but I think you can probably tell there's like less of a dark edge to it.
Still a little dark edge, but like there's less of it. It's like, oh, cool. We got here now.
We're just going to see how far we can run in a way that feels a little bit more like fun and joyful. I did it. It's not always joyful.
I don't mean that, but just like that feels it feels more, oh, cool.
Let's see how far we can go with this.
And I think we can go pretty damn far.
Whereas I think in the beginning it was more like you don't think I can get off the starting line. Let me show you.
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>> How surprised would the 8-year-old version of you be at some specific skill that you've developed in the way?
>> I'm probably surprised.
>> What's like the most surprising one that you're now good at that you old you would have said, "No way."
>> I like go to market more than I ever would have guessed. Um >> because why?
>> Well, I think it's like you get to talk to like personable like friendly people all the time.
>> I mean, I was like a terrible public speaker and public public speaker being um and actually I would get the most nervous in front of my own team because I cared the most about what they thought about me and like and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm representing you.
I want to do this so well."
Exposure therapy was helpful on that one.
You like you just do it and you do get better at it.
do it and you do get better at it. But I think the like thought of like being at kickoff or at all company get together in front of a thousand people on a stage and I think it would have been like a like I'm going to be bad at that and I think the people around me would have been like yeah yeah she'll be bad
at that like maybe she should you know how much coaching can she get and you know I think it's like anything else it's like yeah if you work hard at developing a skill you tend to get better you have to put in the work but like >> in that one particular I'm very interested in that one seems always high
leverage what matters to like you're giving you've given however many hundreds of these things like what makes one good >> like the trope of like no one remembers what you say but they remember how you felt it's so annoying but it is so true for me at least like I do have to believe in the content and if I just get up and it is like content I feel like it
is content less I will also I will feel that way and it will be obvious to everyone you know so like you kind of have to figure out your version of it which for me I try to put real content in and then also hold in my head like no one's going to remember any of these facts So that's not heart matters more than mind. >> So much more. Yeah. >> So much more. Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah.
>> And the key to good heart is just like is what?
>> Believing in it yourself.
Like I don't know, authenticity one-on-one on a stage.
Like people are pretty good at reading one another.
And when someone when you feel like the person you're talking to is like going through the motions or doesn't really feel like it or is or is like misleading you, maybe also misleading themselves, you know, like people can tell.
they can't entirely articulate what's happening, but it's like something seems off.
Um, versus someone who is like authentically into it, you know, even if you even if they're into something kooky, that just comes off.
>> What are the big trade-offs that you struggle with right now?
Like, you can't do everything.
You got to make decisions.
The stakes are higher than ever.
It's easier to build than ever.
>> Seems like a cool time to be doing what you're doing, but there must be big trade-offs that you struggle with.
What What are those for >> Yeah.
I mean one conversation or ha have had and have is we have tried over the last year to build in such an agentforward way.
Can talk through some of like what that's look like. >> What does agent mean?
>> Like why is that not just AI? Like why does that mean? >> I don't know.
You get 2x revenue multiple if you say agent.
It's like 3x if you say harness could say harness more prompt file like minus 3x you know.
So is it the but agent just means AI, right?
>> You live in San Francisco. Sorry.
>> I'm Everyone's saying agent so much.
I don't even know what that means. It just means AI, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yes. >> So keep going. >> Yes.
We've tried to build such a great harness.
you're trying to build such a great hardness for our customers, but actually and not build a bunch of SAS UI, you know, it's like, oh, you want reporting, we will have our agent go make charts for you on demand based on all of our data.
We're not going to like put Tableau inside of Vanta, which is probably what we would have done in 2022, 2021 if we had been building it then.
And we believe in this in like a short-term customer outcome sense, but also in a like medium to long term, like this is what software will look like.
And no one is going to be putting Tableau inside their products.
More joking than serious.
Although some people actually put Tableau inside their products.
>> So there's an aspect of like the this diffusion thing is just scary because maybe the tractor takes 10 years, tractor company takes 10 years and in the meantime you were right but early and therefore wrong. >> Right.
And therefore wrong, you know, and you're kind of betting on the time horizon there.
horizon there. And um the other version of this actually big enterprises were working with a a US enterprise trying to close and they basically were like hey maybe we want your AI features maybe we won't but can you turn them off for now why the answer is like cuz I because
it's a way easier to get a nonAI tool through procurement and we want your >> turn it on after we're in >> right and like we don't really have an off switch on you know you're like oh didn't we go build that but you're like gross like we don't want to build that. Hopefully, we don't have to use it. We'd
Hopefully, we don't have to use it.
We'd so much rather take that time and effort and build something, you know, actually useful.
Anyway, we're not we're not going to build this off switch.
But it's just one of those where you're like those trade-offs.
>> If you were an investor, which you used to be, >> yeah, >> where would you be focused right now?
>> O, do not envy the job at all right now.
>> Why Why don't you envy it?
>> Why Why don't you envy it? as much as I can like critique and make fun of on the company side the like oh I think people are mis thinking about some of these businesses in a like very short term way I think the FOMO
and what are your returns and like I saw this tweet if you haven't like invested in a lab or an inference provider in the last four years you should just shut down your firm because like what are you doing um it feels like more acute uh on the investor side than the company side. And so it's like however hard I think my
And so it's like however hard I think my life is, my life's not hard to be clear, but like whatever these trade-offs are that we're facing, it feels like more echochambery, more judged on incremental returns and paper returns on the VC side than the company side. >> So what would you do?
Where would you where would you hunt?
>> Yeah, the labs and the inference providers apparently. No.
Um those feel a little Well, we can debate whether it played out, but like high entry prices It feels like the discourse and kind of the certainty around the open source provide open source model providers and then like the tooling and the companies around them feel sort of disconnected.
It's kind of like oh we've all decided the open source model prov like will be very real and then the ecosystem around them is so much less built out than the big labs and that just feels off to me.
You probably have better >> what do you mean by ecosystem around them?
>> If you think that a like a lab or is it long lake is that what it's called?
like these like we're basically just going to go deploy this technology and put AI in these businesses.
>> Can you build one of those around the open source providers?
If you think like it see like of course yes and I'm I'm like sure on some level along like it's doing that but like can you really grab one of those models the way OpenAI is grabbing its own stuff and just kind of replicate that playbook.
Basically a bunch of the like lab playbooks seems like they should apply to the open source models >> and it's just less mature. Yeah.
>> And so there's more to do there. Exactly. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Why Why isn't people Yeah.
What am I missing on that?
>> I just I think it's just like a pace thing. >> Yeah.
>> I think it's anything where these things can go.
>> It's kind of like ironically private equity or something what private equity promised to do which was to shape businesses up. >> Yep.
>> Now they can much more easily.
>> Y >> and so uh probably everything will get way more efficient if it can >> and the return will come from higher margin, you know, more efficient operations, whatever. >> Yep.
But that's that's like an efficiency thing, not a generative thing. >> Yep.
And so I guess what I'm more curious about as you watch your peers and people around you is where are the green shoots on the generative side?
>> I mean, bunch of people starting security cyber companies both because the environment and like I see proportionally more of those than other things.
A bunch of people attacking rev like go to market technology which I think is like makes ton of sense.
I think actually some of the you know old SAS rev providers they should be building all this stuff but it doesn't seem like they are and actually they're running more like PE ben spoon sort of playbooks which is again a choice like a maybe a reasonable choice.
Robotics is probably underplayed.
I mean like somewhat hot and hypy uh like that's not a novel area but it's still definitely underweighted compared to all the software stuff.
the models are also getting like real damn good there to state the obvious.
So probably spend time there.
>> What what else do you feel like you know because of your unique path that others don't yet fully appreciate?
Over the past couple of years, Vanta has spent more time with governments at federal, state, local levels inside the US, outside the US.
And there is an appetite for modernization, big stated priority of the current US administration, but again exists outside of the US too.
And I think the AI piece has created more FOMO in like government officials where you know they may have always known they did not have modern processes or modern software but it feels more of an imperative now than it used to.
So I think there's something there.
Maybe here's a here's a broader answer.
All of the conversation around AI and the technology has changed the priority and upped the priority of a lot of modernization.
Sometimes it's within governments, sometimes it's within enterprises.
We see this with actually a lot of the cyber stuff in the CISOs we talk to.
their jobs are changing because of AI and they're saying, "Oh, given AI and like the risks from the agents, I would like to overhaul my enterprise risk program and I would like budget for that."
And I think if they kind of said, "I want budget for my enterprise risk program three years ago."
People would be like, "We'll talk about AOP maybe."
And I think because it's attached to AI, they are much more likely to get that budget today.
So there is more of a buying motion.
What would be your big pitch to come work at Vanta right now? >> Oh, it's a fun stage.
You get 16,000 customers using a product, using agents.
When you ship things, they are in use by real people getting like real feedback instantly.
It has product market fit.
You're just like going and experimenting >> um with like fast iteration loops, >> but early enough that you could still >> But like you can move. Yeah. Yeah. We let you move. Yes. >> Yeah.
Because it's such an amazing Silicon Valley microcosm.
Can you tell like the most detailed version of the Billboard war story that you've ever told?
>> I was always very much a billboard skeptic cuz it seemed like they didn't actually or like who knows if they work.
The tracking is terrible, but like founder like founder ego was why someone would do a billboard.
It's like cuz I feel cool cuz my company has a billboard.
So I was always very anti- billboard.
midsummer 2021 SAS conference which felt like a big deal at the time like thank god we've almost beyond that we decided or our marketing team decided to try out of home I was like super skeptical but it was like fine whatever I
try it you know and we were going to put something on the billboard and Sarah who was our PMM at the time came up with compliance that doesn't suck too much and pitched to our head of marketing who didn't like it cuz thought we were like
negging our users and was basically like no don't think harder and much nicer but like think harder and Sarah kind of believed in it and so she went to me which she usually does not like go she is not a like go around her boss person
but like really believed in compliance that doesn't suck too much and so took it to me and I read it and I like immediately left actually immediately texted Andrew Reed, our investor, as like, "What do you think? You have good
You have good um internet meme taste. He loved it."
And so you're like, "Okay, let's try it. Let's run it."
So like, "What's the worst that's going to happen?"
People will think we're obnoxious and then probably forget in six months.
Actually seems like relative.
Anyway, so we stand the billboard up somewhere like near Berlin Game. It goes over so well. We tweet it. The tweet goes viral.
tweet goes viral. the tweet then is still over the next couple months but like ends up on our slash accounting as a funnel right you're like oh this is a gem and I think it it really worked because like and it's our it's our brand at our best and our marketing at the best our our attribute is with a wink
but it's like you know we take our work seriously but we don't always take ourselves seriously and so I think there was something to that that resonated and then I think there was something to like it was a little obscure but it wasn't so obsc but it was like sufficiently obscure where if you got it, you felt like you got a secret anyway. And so
And so like compliance that doesn't suck too much just worked. Okay. 22 market crashes.
Turns out there's a lot of billboard inventory available on 101.
So we get this great spot, right, where like 101 and 280 sort of intersect and on this anyway great spot for like not that much, especially in retrospect.
And we're like we joke and we're like, "Oh yeah, we've like locked it up for years like what?"
And so we were known for this billboard in this spot.
I think even on podcast I said the contract was locked up for years.
It was not locked up for years, but that billboard got famous.
And so we people would contact us and Sarah all the time and be like, "How do you do billboards?
How do you do your billboards?"
And we're like, "Oh, we work with this agency. We work with this guy."
And so we referred this guy all of this business.
So we just be like, "It's him. It's him. It's him."
All like millions of dollars of business. Great. Okay.
Turns out in the background we did not have a multi-year contract, which I should have shown.
Certainly if I was going to say that on a podcast, not really do what it says on the tin.
And the contract was basically like, you've put the billboard up. That's it.
Like this this was like not a contract at all.
Multiple years go by, Sarah's at like seeing one of her friends for dinner, works at a startup, and her friend was like, "Oh, it's so sad you guys like gave up that billboard spot. like why'd you do that?
And Sarah was like, "Pardon?"
And they were like, "Oh, yeah.
We just signed for your spot." And Sarah's like, "What? Will we go back?"
Or like, "Contract contract."
Contract written in crayon. There is no contract.
Basically, it's a placement order.
Called the guy and he's like, "Yeah, you know, it's a placement order. They they paid more."
So, we like swapped it out underneath us.
I go to founder of said company and be like, "Hello, can I like how much can I pay you?"
And I am like an extremely inelastic buyer here.
Like what can I pay you for this spot?
And he's like, "Nothing."
And I'm like, "How about I double?"
I think he was paying like a million and a half.
And you're like, "How about I give you three just to get this spot?"
And he's like, "We're actually cash flow positive."
So like literally there is no like I'm in an elastic seller. And so we lost the spot.
Things that made me think where I was like, "Oh no, Vanta's screwed."
Honestly, losing that billboard, I was like, we did probably just lose a billion of market cap. Bad omen. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Both bad omen and like there is some market cap, you know, like vibesy market cap decrease that just happened here. Yes.
>> Is there anything I've missed a bet?
Has your curiosity, your attention that you think is really important right now?
>> You see it in the data center conversations to some extent in the personal agent stuff.
It's like we just don't trust software companies, tech companies the way we used to.
And that is like getting worse year over year.
And it's kind of hard to imagine that inflecting back up and getting to the like useful optimism of 15 years ago.
And so I think in that companies showing that they are trustworthy and industrial grade and secure through lots of metrics and actual definitions is like more important than ever and will just get more and more important.
And again to a host of customers, regulators, lawmakers, auditors, etc.
Vanta at 250 billion is like in the center of all of those transactions helping companies meet those high bars or wherever those bars are set and then conveying that like helping them go convey that and accelerate their business.
>> Another way of saying that like AI has ushered in this extremely high excitement but low trust.
>> Yeah, that's a good >> era. >> Yes.
>> Yes. And Vant's job is preserve the excitement but >> increase yeah increase the trust and like on legitimately so not just on vibes on like yeah yeah >> what will satisfy the market to trust again >> I think in a B2B context like businesses
I do think there's a bit of like there's the vibes piece but there's a very real data piece and it's like and I would like to see specific things or specific improvement curves or may have make promises with maybe contracts behind Right. I think that one's a much more
I think that one's a much more quoteunquote logical rational the way like enterprise markets often are.
I think on the consumer side it is vibes and I don't that one seems very hard to turn. I do not envy. >> Do you trust them? Muse instinct etc. >> big companies. No. >> Why not?
>> It's not that there's anything particularly interesting in my, you know, email or, you know, chats or whatever.
like it's not my life's not that interesting, but I would rather you know just Google or like or just Apple or just insert company here have that information.
>> What's security like 5 years from now?
Like if you just wrap it up with like, okay, here's here's we're going.
We want to be the person at the center of this.
Describe that state for us.
security from 5 years from now is faster, even more intense, more offensive hopefully in that like yes, we'll have more attacks, but I think you need more like white hat pushing back on all of that.
And just to get a speed that we haven't had and I think you've got to get humans to get to that speed, you've got to get a lot of some amount of the human decision-m out or humans are like architecting systems and writing rules but not making every single decision.
It's like falling from that >> writing evals.
Maybe that's all we're doing in the future.
We're all writing evals all day long.
>> If you had to define what the next five years of Vanta will be in one word, what word do you pick? >> Expansive.
I think we have this incredible base of customers of data and now we get to go build things on top of that.
And it like 8 years to get here, we could go just build stuff on top of it for the next five or eight.
>> It's so cool that we did this 5 years ago. So, here we are again.
Thanks so much for your time.
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