Christina Cacioppo - Building the New Standard in Security – [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 38]

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Founder's Field Guide. Founder's Field Guide is a series of conversations with founders, CEOs and operators building great businesses. I believe we are all builders in our own way and this series is dedicated to stories and lessons from builders of all types. Founder's Field Guide is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all of our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes and resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:41)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management.
This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:06)
My guest today is Christina Cacioppo, founder of Vanta, a security and compliance software business founded in 2017
In our conversation, Christina brings to life the idea of finding a problem that exists and fixing it. We dive into the experiences that led her to launch Vanta, the strategy she took to build, price and distribute the product. And we touch on her lessons running a growing organization. I always admire the drive that founders have when they set off to build something. Christina fits that mold. And you'll hear how she embarked on a self-taught journey early in her career. I hope you enjoy this great conversation with Christina Cacioppo.
So, Christina, I think the most interesting place to begin our conversation is the background on your own interest in business writ large. How did you first decide that this was something you could be passionate about? And then I want to hear the formative experiences that led you to ultimately starting Vanta.

**Christina Cacioppo** (3:00)
So it wasn't at all a foregone conclusion. Both of my parents were professors, academics, who predominantly researchers loved their research, had big labs, they're social scientists.
And so until I was probably 12 years old, I didn't really realize adults did different things with their lives. And then I kind of thought I would be a professor until I was about 21, 22 Well, a few things happened around then.
One was during undergrad getting to travel a bit and just seeing the impact of technology, specifically spent one early summer in Rwanda. It's still cliche now, but just seeing mobile phones and how they spread and the impact they had and like the beginnings of mobile banking and realizing, oh, if I can walk through an ATM at Tressiter at Stanford, that's cool. But mobile banking when you're living in the second year of city in Rwanda is just a totally different game changer. So some of it was that and some of it was also just seeing the buildup on the internet and all of that and sort of realizing that building on the internet is just our generation of railroads. And so if you want kind of the most like interesting, quickly changing, challenging thing you can find, go build on the internet.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:08)
What was the first entree for you into this sphere professionally? What were you doing early on in your career? You did a lot of writing. It was really interesting when we first met, me and my partner went back and read a lot of your early stuff just to get a sense for like your trajectory. Talk us through the early days of exploring this field of business.