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[00:00]
Nicole Lapin
I want to set my daughter up right, right from the start. So when she was born, I sat down and opened three accounts in her name, a 529 plan, a custodial Roth IRA and a custodial brokerage account. Long term, all of that becomes hers to run. But let me tell you about the one investment I made that I hope she never has to cash in on. Life insurance. Because protecting her future isn't just about growing money. It's about covering her no matter what. If you're looking to protect the ones you love, let me tell you about Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and eas easy. 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get same day coverage. There's no medical exam, you just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote@ethos.com help wanted that is e t h o s.com/help wanted application times may vary, Rates may vary Managing the social media for Money News Network is so much more than scrolling on your phone, making sure that each show's account is regularly posting on trend and flagging comments for me to respond to is a full time job. It also requires someone I can truly trust for my team. That person is Daniella. I found her on Upwork. You can find your own Daniella or whoever it is your team needs there too. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across 125 plus categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster and scale support up or down without committing to full time headcount. You can browse profiles, review past work and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly with business. Plus you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork and with AI powered shortlisting you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's up w o r k.com upwork.com as entrepreneurs, it's easy to spend all your time thinking about money. But usually that means the money in your business and not the money in your pocket. So let's hit pause and think about your wallet. Do you love all the cards in there? Have you ever considered that there's something better out there? I want you to love your bank as much as I love mine. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks that love to gatekeep the best rewards and pile on hidden fees. Unless you have a massive balance. Chime offers the most rewarding fee, free banking. All with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of choice like gas or groceries. All while building credit through regular everyday spending. With no credit check, you can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, spot me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. Join the millions who are already banking fee free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com helpwanted that is chime.com helpwanted Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com disclosures for details.
[03:46]
Jason Pfeiffer
This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine.
[03:53]
Nicole Lapin
And I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.
[04:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.
[04:05]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And it starts now.
[04:08]
Jason Pfeiffer
Hey, Nicole, you know what today is?
[04:12]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm a new mom. I don't even know what. What day time. Where are we?
[04:17]
Jason Pfeiffer
I'm not. I'm not looking for an actual day of the week. It is the day where we do another episode of the Smartest People we Know in Business.
[04:24]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Best day ever.
[04:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
Best day ever. Because we like smart people and we like people in business and we like the people we know. And that's why we have this segment called the Smartest People we Know in Business. Because, as you know, our listeners want to build better businesses, better careers. And so we often have this great opportunity to reach into our network to reach into the smartest people we know and drag them into help. Wanted to ask, what are they doing and what makes them so Smart. And today we are doing that with Stevie Case. Stevie Case, the chief revenue officer at Vanta. If you have a business that deals with compliance or you just want your company to be more secure, then you probably have already heard of Vanta. But just in case you haven't, Vanta is a cybersecurity and compliance automation software company. And Stevie can explain that surely better than I can, so she will. But the thing that I find so fascinating about Vanta is just how quickly it has scaled. It is a real rocket ship of a company and we're going to dig into those numbers, how they do it, and Stevie's insights about how you listener can do it too. But first, Stevie, welcome to Help Wanted. You are now officially one of the smartest people we know in business and we're so glad to have you.
[05:31]
Stevie Case
Oh, it's an honor. Thanks for having me.
[05:34]
Jason Pfeiffer
So Stevie, I just said that Vanta is on a real rocket ship. Can you tell us what that means? Throw some numbers at us.
[05:42]
Stevie Case
You got it. So, wild ride. So I am about 3 and a half years in at Vanta and for context, when I started I had about 20 folks on my team. I looked down today and I'm around 600. So three and a half years, quite a rocket ship ride. And of course I only have part of the company that goes to market. We are now more than a thousand folks globally, we serve more than 14,000 customers as well. So the customer growth we have experienced has been wild and really that comes down to the fact that we help companies to be more secure, be more compliant. We consider ourselves an agentic trust platform. So lots of evolution in what we do. But at the end of the day we're helping them to run their businesses more securely and to earn improve trust with their own customers.
[06:33]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And everybody wants to scale, right? What do you think was the secret to growth? If you could distill it.
[06:40]
Stevie Case
I mean the hardest one to replicate. But the most important was that we have a product with incredible product market fit and that has allowed us the luxury to build a rapidly scaling company to serve the need. And at the end of the day, the key to that scale and the reason we have been able to grow so quickly has been just a very thoughtful and methodical series of hires. Hiring great people, empowering them to go run independently at problems and then building around them. You know, we, we started with a business that was really a single thread. There was one problem we solved, one type of customer we sold to and really one team that served that need. And over the last several years we have diversified the types of problems we solve, the types of buyers we sell to, and with that we have empowered really smart people, really smart leaders to go solve each of those problems independently. I think where a lot of early scaling companies get hung up is in this deep need for control. It's really scary to like let go of solving the problem and letting your team run with it and not being involved in every detail. But it is the single most important thing you can do if you're going to try to scale a company.
[08:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And also another pain point early on is probably focusing on too many things. And it sounds like you guys really had a hero product, Shiro product that you laser focused on before expanding.
[08:14]
Stevie Case
That is absolutely true. So we started with this very simple use case and I think part of why it was so successful was that it was very authentic to our founder and her experience. So our CEO founder Christina Cacioppo is a product person, she was a product manager. She had experienced this problem herself that she was trying to build software and sell it in the market and legal came knocking and said, where is your Sock 2? You are not Sock 2 compliant. And she had to go Google, what is SoC2? What does this even mean? And through that she discovered this very antiquated process by which founders and people who build software had to go out and really like prove to a non technical auditor that they were building in a secure way. And it just struck her how bizarre it was to be sitting in Silicon Valley building this hyper advanced software and then talking to some CPA in Florida and trying to prove to them that it was secure and showing them screenshots of, of her AWS config, it just seems so silly to her.
[09:20]
Jason Pfeiffer
Can you just take everything that you just said? And for anyone who's like, wait a second, but I do actually have to Google what you just said because I don't know what's, I don't like it, I don't do not know what you're talking about right now. Can you, can you just explain the basic problem and solution as if you were talking to a 10 year old?
[09:38]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. So there are frameworks out there, compliance frameworks. SOC 2 is one of the most basic of them. And really what it is is a series of guidelines that say this is how you should build software if you want it to be secure. So a very simple example of what SOC2 might require is that you have multi factor authentication, that you don't just have a single login, that you also get an SMS code or another way to log in to make it more secure. There's a list of these things you have to do. And to achieve SOC 2 compliance, you go down that checklist, you prove all those things, then you work with an auditor you like, truly an auditor, a cpa, and you prove to them you have checked everything on that list off. And they watch and they inspect, and then they give you back an audit report that says, yes, this is SOC 2 compliant. And that audit report is often what that software builder needs to go take to an enterprise buyer to say, yep, we're secure, and I can prove it to you because I have this audit report from an auditor.
[10:42]
Jason Pfeiffer
And so in other words, if I started a company and it's a software company of some kind, and it helps, I don't know, let's just make something up. It. I build a company that specifically helps people who make ice cream sell ice cream. And, and part of that is going to be that I'm going to help ice cream sellers process their payments, which means now that my software is going to be handling a lot of very sensitive information. Someone comes along and they buy the ice cream. And now their information, their banking information is like flowing through my software. Well, before the Ben and Jerry's and Haagen Dazs and whoever else is going to be willing to use my software to sell their ice cream, they are going to want to know that this thing is secure, that it is not like susceptible to hacks, that they're not going to have ice cream all over their face when I get hacked. And their customers are like violated. And so the way in which to do that is this highly complicated now. We're like things like Soc 2, by the way, if nobody's heard of Soc 2, then they're probably, they're picturing like two pairs of socks right now. We're like, we're not talking about, but like, it's all a whole crazy mess of stuff. But the point is that the way in which these companies would prove their security was just really complicated and not seamless at all. And so for anybody who needs to get this kind of compliance so that they can go and sell their services and need to prove that they are actually trustworthy, then there was no good way to do that. And that is the problem. That.
[12:12]
Stevie Case
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that solving that problem and proving that trust was taking hundreds of hours. So you had founders who were building a new product, they were excited to bring it to market, and they were getting stuck on this very antiquated, kind of ridiculous process to prove the security of what they were building. And ultimately that blocked them from making money and scaling their business because they were off taking screenshots of different systems and configurations to prove it was secure. So Christina built a product that helped solve that problem. That was a very painful, clear problem that blocked revenue for founders. And because it was authentic to her, she felt that pain and she was able to bring it to other people who had the same pain.
[12:56]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, I was just going to double down on that. It's like it not just authentic to her, but I think people often don't appreciate how when they slam into a problem, what they are really doing is slamming into a insight for an opportunity that other people aren't seeing. It's like you are now at the front lines of a challenge that many other people have. And so you could either look around to see if someone else has solved that for you, or you go solve it yourself.
[13:23]
Stevie Case
That's exactly right. And she had that same struggle and she looked around and was shocked by how old school the solutions were. There weren't any software forward solutions to this problem. And that's. She's a software person and that is what she sought to build. But it was really interesting because in the early days there was a lot of skepticism about how big the market opportunity was for this. I mean the pain was really acute. But a lot of early investors were skeptical that this would be a big market. But I think the thing that she saw that allowed this to be a huge company and a huge market opportunity was it wasn't about the Alphabet soup of the frameworks of SoC2 and ISO and PCI and all these different frameworks. It was fundamentally about building trust. And that is really what she built the company on, was this idea that businesses need to prove they're trustworthy and, and the problem space around that is huge. So we started with a very, very simple use case. One use case for a startup founder buyer. But it is now a much bigger problem space that we're addressing, helping these businesses and these founders and ultimately chief information security officers in every size of company to build and earn trust.
[14:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah. And I'm sure it's only expanded recently in your role as CRO, evolving in this age of AI because it's easier than ever for somebody to start a SaaS company.
[14:51]
Stevie Case
Yes. It's so true. And you know, I think this is why Manta is so uniquely positioned. Because the reality is AI is amazing. I am very bullish. It also Opens up a tremendous new set of risks. You know, you see people just dumping all sorts of information into the big models and not really thinking about where information flows. But back to your analogy of the ice cream shop with the payment data. That's a very real scenario in every business. Every business has sensitive data. And now when every employee can have a chat GPT license and let's say they get curious and they want to dump the payment data into the model and ask questions about business trends, and we see a lot of well intentioned people doing things like this, you end up with a situation where your sensitive data is now much more at risk. Many businesses don't know where it's flowing. It just opens up an entire another angle of risk. And then you need to consider that you've got vendors and other software that you're buying in your business and what are those companies doing? So there's third party risk. So the landscape is far more complex than it was when Vanta started several years ago. And for us that's an opportunity, but it is very real. And we see these security and compliance teams just really struggling to grapple with how complicated the landscape of risk is now.
[16:10]
Jason Pfeiffer
And that probably explains something I wanted to pick up on, which is that you said you started with one problem to solve, one type of customer to sell to, and that you have since expanded into multiple problems to solve and therefore multiple kinds of customers to serve to. And I'd love to hear your insight on when a company should start to expand like that, because I think a big mistake that founders make is they try to do too many things because they see too many opportunities. There is this great quote from. Oh, who is it? Packard? I think whatever his first name was, I think it's Packard, which was some version of. Well, Hewlett was like his partner.
[16:51]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
The other guy.
[16:52]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, yeah, David Packard. I think it might be David Packard. I'll fact check myself on that. Who, who said that businesses don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion because you try to take on too many things. And it's easy to look around at the competitive set and say like, well, they're doing all these things, but the thing is that you have to enter a marketplace in a coherent doing like one singular thing. So that's what you did. And now you're at that point of expanding outward from that first thing that you did. And I'd love to hear you talk about how to recognize when the time is to say, we've done this one thing really well. And now it is time to diversify.
[17:31]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
It was David, by the way.
[17:35]
Stevie Case
Yeah, he. And he is so right about that. And I, I see this so commonly. I, I invest in early stage companies as well. I work with a lot of early stage founders and it. There's no perfect answer, but the very clear mandate here is that you should not be expanding to multiple things before you have product market fit on the one thing. And I think people have varying definitions of what does product market fit mean. To me, it is not a specific revenue milestone. It's not like a million in revenue or 5 million or whatever people you know, have put the line in the sand at. It is much more one of those, you know it when you see it things. For me, product market fit looks like, yes, revenue, certainly you've got to have people that are willing to spend money on your product. It also looks like real inbound interest. It looks like repeatable success where I know what my buyer looks like, I know where I can find more of them, and I know roughly if I go look for them in this place, I can get them to get interested in my product for a known amount of money. So you've got a repeatable success motion, you can get more of it, you know what it costs you. Once you've got that and you can prove repeatable success at scale, then you can start thinking about a second thing. I think that the most common failure mode here is founders who have a little bit of interest and a little bit of revenue and that set of customers starts pulling them in different directions and they're like, oh, well, we could go over here and we could get more money from them. And that is where you dive into digestion and you end up with this like overly complex thing with no clear signal. So ride that one thing until you're super clear, it's repeatable. And then there's a next key here, which is if you're gonna try to do more than one thing, you have to have people dedicated to the second thing. A very common early company failure is that you try to put in whether it's a second product or a different kind of buyer or some other wrinkle and you ask the same people to go tackle will fail. That is one of the lessons.
[19:45]
Jason Pfeiffer
While they're still executing the first thing.
[19:47]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. And then that first thing starts to suffer. And the reality, if you're looking at a go to market team, like I lead your sellers, your people on the ground, they're going to do whatever is easiest and they are going to do Whatever their compensation plan tells them to focus on and trying to have them do more than one thing early, it's going to give you bad signal they're not going to do both things. Well, you're better off to just go build a second team or just give somebody the dedicated focus of making that second thing work.
[20:17]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
We have a lot of entrepreneurs listening. I'd love for you to talk to them directly. I know you work with a lot of early stage founders and invest in them. You know, if somebody is a founder CEO and they're starting to scale, when's the right time to hire a CRO? It seems like a later stage hire, right?
[20:33]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. Yeah. This is a common mistake as well. CRO should come into the mix much later in the picture, as should a VP of sales. You know, you really want to start with somebody who can amplify your success as a founder doing founder led sales. And that's not going to be a VP of sales or a CRO. Those people are there to help you scale an organization, not necessarily to replicate early sales success. So what I like to see founders do in the early days is if you're ready to start a go to market team, you really have to be thoughtful. I mean the, the first thing to consider is don't think you're going to hire a sales team if you haven't figured out sales. And this is what a lot of technical founders do. They're like, I love products, I am technical, I hate sales, I don't want to do it, I'm going to hire a salesperson. And they typically do this before they have really figured out who are we selling to, what is the successful selling motion, what's the right pricing? And then they ask, you know, a relatively junior salesperson to come in and figure out what are really founder level questions. So hiring a salesperson too early, very common mistake. You want to do it once you have that repeatable success. And when you bring somebody in, I always advise founders, don't just hire one salesperson to start, hire two, you hire one. Your failures can be idiosyncratic. You might have like unique circumstances. It's very hard to learn. So bring in two people, have them try to learn the way you are selling as a founder. You want them to talk like you, sound like you, and be able to tell the story as authentically as you, or at least get as close as possible. And if they can repeat your success, then you've got something to build on. Then later you can start to think about do you want a Sales leader or somebody to lead your revenue function.
[22:20]
Jason Pfeiffer
You know what that reminds me of? I was just having a conversation with Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank. Shark from Shark Tank, who his people don't generally know, but made his fortune in cybersecurity. And he told me that in the early days of his company he was, you know, as any founder, he was the sales guy and he was great. He was great at sales. And as the company started to grow, he's like, I am the best sales guy here. And then he realized, oh no, I'm the best sales guy here. Like it was. It's a problem because. Because if you can't scale your own success in the way in which you're selling, then you're stuck. You know, you can only sell as much as you can get out there and do so. I really love that insight about making sure that the people that you are bringing on understand how to sell. Like you though, I would imagine, Stevie, that as you grow, you also want to find people who can sell in different ways, who might be identifying opportunities or tactics that you weren't executing yourself.
[23:25]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. And that happens fairly quickly. When you hire those first one or two salespeople, you need to hire something that looks different than traditional sales. You want to hire somebody that looks more entrepreneurial, looks more like a founder. They're going to need to have that same kind of creativity and curiosity and the hustle. But the reality is there aren't just thousands upon thousands of those type of people. We call them in sales the Renaissance Rep. Like they are a person who is more of an entrepreneur than a salesperson, but they understand how to sell. They're going to show up and understand how to really internalize the founder story, how to build credibility. Those early deal cycles, when you're still in those early phases of moving from founder led sales to having a sales team, you're like early days as a company. You have to build a ton of trust with those buyers. So it's about more than your software being good. They have to trust that you're credible, you're going to be around. And so you need that Renaissance Rep profile to sound like a founder. Once you get past two or three people, if you can get two or three people successfully selling, then you're golden. Then you can start to hire a little bit more of a traditional sales profile, build a little more of a team and have a team that's not selling like founders but does sell like a sales team. And then you can build the rigor around that but if you try to do that too early, it is almost always destined to fail. And then you see founders blaming salespeople, like, why can't they figure it out? It's like, well, you don't actually quite have product market fit yet, and you don't quite have a scalable, repeatable sales motion just yet. And that is not the fault of sales. That's on the founder to figure out.
[25:03]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah. All right. Stevie, you said that someone like you, a CRO, is not someone you start with. It's someone you bring in to accelerate. So let us get to know the kind of person who you bring on. This is lightning round time. We're going to just throw a bunch of random questions at you. Get to know you get to know the kind of person who occupies a role like this. So ready?
[25:26]
Stevie Case
I'm ready to go.
[25:27]
Jason Pfeiffer
Okay, here it is. I don't know that I would know the answer to this. Who's the last person you emailed, literally, before getting on this call?
[25:34]
Stevie Case
Last person I emailed was one of our partners. His name is Fabrice. He's one of our audit partners at Banta.
[25:41]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Ooh, well done. Audit partner. Sounds like a party.
[25:47]
Stevie Case
They are a key part of our ecosystem, I'm sure.
[25:50]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
What's your least favorite overused tech buzzword?
[25:55]
Stevie Case
Oh, synergy.
[25:58]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, so much synergy. It's terrible.
[26:00]
Stevie Case
So much, so much.
[26:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Do you prefer to be URL or irl? In other words, virtual or in person?
[26:07]
Stevie Case
I'm an IRL person. I love irl. I spent the whole week IRL with my team. It was great.
[26:14]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is nice. Nicole and I don't get enough IRL because we're on opposite coasts. It's a bummer when you are on vacation. Stevie, what is your out of office message?
[26:25]
Stevie Case
It's brief.
[26:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
It's very brief.
[26:27]
Stevie Case
There's not a lot of out of office time right now. I will say there's. I am guilty, historically, of putting my cell number in my out of office so people can text me. But I have. I'm very proud to say I've stopped doing that. So I really get offline now. And that's a. That's a newer thing for me.
[26:44]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is. That is good separation. But I guess that is also the downside of being at a rocket ship company is not a lot of non IRL these days.
[26:52]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, I think I've done two out
[26:54]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
of offices, and my last one was my favorite. You can steal it if you'd like. In case of emergency, call 91 1.
[27:01]
Stevie Case
Love it, love it.
[27:04]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Which app on your phone do you use most often?
[27:07]
Stevie Case
Oh, I, I, I want to believe it's not slack, but I actually think it's probably TikTok.
[27:16]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Wow.
[27:16]
Jason Pfeiffer
Very.
[27:17]
Stevie Case
I think of TikTok. Like, I, I once upon a time was guilty of doom scrolling on Twitter. I no longer doom scroll. I now joy scroll. And that is a TikTok thing for me.
[27:27]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Ooh.
[27:28]
Jason Pfeiffer
Okay, this is. But this wasn't in the lightning round. But I now have to ask, like, what is the most delightful, weird, algorithmic thing that TikTok has learned about you? For example, TikTok has learned about me that I love tours of dumpy New York City apartments. Really into them. And then also bugs eating things. Like, there's a great. There's a Great genre of TikTok Videos of people who own, like, chameleons walking around the house, and the chameleon will, like, grab a bug off of the wall. It's fantastic. So, anyway, yeah. What does TikTok know about you? That. That we need to know?
[28:03]
Stevie Case
I mean, that does sound amazing. I would definitely be into the bugs and chameleons. I am also into, like, I love live music, so it knows I love live music, and it feeds me a lot of that. But probably the quirkier things. Like, I love the mowing videos and the power washing videos, if you follow SB Mowing. Such great stuff. Guy goes around and finds yards that are overgrown, and he mow the whole yard for free. Love this guy. It's the best.
[28:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, it's great. Also brilliant marketing. Like, watch that guy, because what he has done is he has taken a otherwise boring thing and turned it into just digestible art, and it explode, I'm sure. Exploded his business.
[28:40]
Stevie Case
It did. It did. He's the best.
[28:42]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I love a grout cleaning video myself. Before and after grouting.
[28:48]
Stevie Case
How far does that go, though? Do you. How do you feel about Nate the hoof guy? Do we. Do we like the hoof cleaning videos?
[28:54]
Jason Pfeiffer
I don't know about this.
[28:55]
Stevie Case
Oh, this is a whole nother genre of, like, oddly satisfying where there's a guy who goes and cleans the hooves of horses and cows and then, like. Yeah, gets them back to good health. Like, it's very. You got to check it out.
[29:09]
Jason Pfeiffer
I would check that out.
[29:10]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Video for everybody.
[29:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
That sounds great.
[29:13]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Morgan, our producer, sent us a note that she said she.
[29:16]
Jason Pfeiffer
She loves that guy.
[29:17]
Stevie Case
Very soothing to listen to.
[29:20]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I mean, I feel like we're all in our own little microcosm channel of. Of the social media world. Okay, Stevie, what's the last marketing campaign that converted you as a customer.
[29:32]
Stevie Case
Oh my gosh, I'm so guilty of this. On like, I am very susceptible to the TikTok campaigns actually. And they always get me. The last one was, we've established I'm obsessed with plants and my Monstera is my proudest possession. So the last one that got me was these like plant stands that like you hook all the little stems of your plant and it makes it stand up straight. So that's the last one that got me. I've bought all kinds of plant accoutrement on talk. It's bad.
[30:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
What's your go to email sign off, for example? Mine is best and I don't otherwise say that in real life. It's a really weird. I don't know, I just started doing it so long ago and now I can't stop. Stevie, what's yours?
[30:11]
Stevie Case
Mine is warmly and I do warmest. Oh, I love that. Warmest is good. There's a. I saw yesterday there was a matrix of, you know, what is chaotic neutral versus chaotic good versus chaotic evil sign offs. I think, I think best was, was more in the. The, the neutral category. Warmly was there in the. In the kind of chaotic good section.
[30:34]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah. Jason, get warmer.
[30:35]
Jason Pfeiffer
I got to get warmer. Yeah. Best is not best. It's true.
[30:38]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
It's like it feels a little passive aggressive to me sometimes. I don't know.
[30:42]
Jason Pfeiffer
Well, I mostly don't do it. I mostly just do the letter J. That's it. Just like nothing, Just the J. Which is also not the best. I don't know. I don't know. I need some help here.
[30:51]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
But best is not the best.
[30:53]
Jason Pfeiffer
No, best is actually the worst. And yet I'm still doing it.
[30:57]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm sure there's some sort of internal tracker to look at Vanta's annual revenue. Stevie, obviously, if somebody is running a public company, we always ask how often do you check the stock? But for you, how often do you check revenue to date?
[31:11]
Stevie Case
I check it frequently. I'm going to say I check that two or three times a week. I. But I also watch every deal come in. So we have a channel in Slack where every deal that hits alerts. And so I keep a running tally and I'm really just going to check the total to see if my mental tally is in line with my understanding of reality.
[31:36]
Jason Pfeiffer
You know, I'd say two to three times a week sounds pretty healthy. I recently met a very successful influencer type who has made a bazillion dollars on courses who I Learned looks at the revenue for the courses like multiple times a day. And this person's emotions are very tied to whether it's doing well or not. And I just thought that is so unhealth. Like you gotta, you gotta distance yourself from that. I, I, I do, I do the opposite. I do. I like look at, I never look at numbers. I just never look at numbers. I, it just gives me too much anxiety. I'd rather just focus on doing the thing.
[32:18]
Stevie Case
I mean, I, it's hard. I run a forecast once a week. So once a week I am looking at how we're pacing towards targets and all of that. So I would say that I try to not focus on the top line number and like the total revenue number. That much I don't know if I
[32:35]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
should come clean, but right before we
[32:38]
Jason Pfeiffer
started, I definitely have to now.
[32:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Whatever you're about to say, I, I did check our stripe because we relaunched a course and so I refreshed it.
[32:47]
Jason Pfeiffer
I was not calling you out on that. I did not know that. That's funny. How's it doing? You feel good?
[32:53]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
There was a new. Yeah, yeah. And my husband was like, should we get you a little audio alert when there's a sale? Like a ching or something like that?
[33:02]
Stevie Case
I love.
[33:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
You would hate that, Jason. But I'm glad, Stevie. Love it like I do.
[33:06]
Jason Pfeiffer
All right, Stevie, last one. What is your favorite video game?
[33:10]
Stevie Case
Oh, gosh. It's changed a lot over time. You know, I obviously started my career here. Quake was my big game. I'm a big PC gamer.
[33:19]
Jason Pfeiffer
Well, wait, wait. That is, that is not obviously to everybody, because I was going to tee you up for that. But so, okay, pre being this fancy CRO, you were a pro video gamer.
[33:31]
Stevie Case
This is true. I was actually the world's first female pro gamer.
[33:35]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is damn.
[33:37]
Stevie Case
Random facts.
[33:38]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah.
[33:38]
Stevie Case
Random background.
[33:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Incredible.
[33:40]
Stevie Case
It was a very unique way to start my career. It was a lot of fun. I worked in games and that was really my entry to software. And it was an incredible way to start. But these days I do not have a lot of time to play. I would say I'm playing the game of revenue quite a lot. And that is kind of it.
[33:59]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
That's my favorite cardio.
[34:01]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah. Did you, when you were, when you were a professional gamer, could you have ever envisioned that this is where your career would have taken you?
[34:10]
Stevie Case
No, absolutely not. I not only knew nothing about technology, I grew up in Kansas, like in the country. I was always super curious. But tech was not on my radar. Sales was not on my radar. Like I wanted to be a lawyer, so none of I was going to be a constitutional lawyer of all things. Like I was very passionate about politics and law and so none of this was on my bingo card. But you know, when you're curious, stuff happens and the world opens up.
[34:41]
Jason Pfeiffer
That's right. Malcolm Gladwell told me self conceptions are powerfully limiting. And I love that line so much. If you have too narrow a definition of who you are, you will turn down all the great opportunities around you for whatever it's worth. Nobody's wondering, But I think Dr. Mario is the greatest video game of all time. And I will hold to that.
[34:59]
Stevie Case
It's a classic. It's a classic, Stevie.
[35:01]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm going to have that sound effect, by the way, come up on my stripe, Dr. Mario.
[35:07]
Stevie Case
Oh yeah, that's perfect.
[35:10]
Jason Pfeiffer
I'll hear that all day. That should just be like text messages. All right, Stevie, this has been so great. Give us like a. Give us like a what? As we think into the future of Vanta, like what is on your mind right now? What is really exciting you?
[35:23]
Stevie Case
You know the stuff that's really exciting me is the way that we are innovating with AI, both in go to market and in the core product. You know, we started out as what we would have called an automated compliance platform. We are now an agentic trust platform. That evolution is super powerful. So you know, at the end of the day it's like AI is fine on its own, but it's the application and the way it helps solve these really gnarly, irritating problems that's so exciting. So I think the way we've been able to just solve a larger problem space and make our customers lives easier, that is super exciting to me. In the world of revenue, we had a whole project over the last six months to remove 10 hours a week of busy work from our team's lives and we accomplished that and it feels like there's still so much more to do. So that idea of allowing humans to do higher value work is really exciting and that's what gets me up in the morning every day.
[36:22]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And I promise all of our listeners are going to hear sock too, which by the way, no K Soc 2 compliance come up all the time now. It will just come up now, you'll be aware.
[36:34]
Stevie Case
Yes, it's, it's out there. You know, we like to call it compliance. That doesn't suck too much. We do have socks, actually. We've made socks. We're big on puns. We've gone all in.
[36:43]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, that's great. Wait.
[36:45]
Stevie Case
Do the socks compliance pun.
[36:47]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, I was. I really was not prepared for that. Do the socks say sock one and sock two?
[36:53]
Stevie Case
Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And those are actually compliance frameworks, too. Sock one and sock two. So you can get your sock socks.
[37:00]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
How do I get some.
[37:01]
Stevie Case
Yeah, I'll. I'll send you some sock socks.
[37:05]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, my God. That. That's great. Are those available to the general consumer? Can you buy?
[37:10]
Stevie Case
They are not only to our partners
[37:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
and customers and podcast hosts.
[37:15]
Stevie Case
That's right.
[37:18]
Jason Pfeiffer
All right, well, Stevie, just the promise of sock one and sock two Socks has really brightened my day. But mostly our days are brightened because we got to talk to you. One of the smartest people we know in business, Stevie Case. Avanta. Thank you so much.
[37:31]
Stevie Case
Thanks for having me.
[37:34]
Jason Pfeiffer
Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason
[37:39]
Nicole Lapin
Pfeiffer, and me, Nicole Lapman.
[37:41]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy.
[37:43]
Nicole Lapin
Do you want some help? Email our helpline@helpwantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to
[37:48]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
have some of your questions answered on the show.
[37:50]
Nicole Lapin
And follow us on Instagram @moneynews and tiktokoneynewsnetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe.
[37:58]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Maybe a little dance.
[37:59]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, I didn't sign up for that.
[38:00]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
All right, well, talk to you soon.

Summary6 min read

Help Wanted: Smartest People We Know in Business – Stevie Case, Vanta

Podcast: Help Wanted
Hosts: Jason Feifer (Entrepreneur Editor-in-Chief), Nicole Lapin (Money Expert), plus additional co-host
Guest: Stevie Case, Chief Revenue Officer at Vanta
Date: December 16, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode continues the “Smartest People We Know in Business” series, featuring Stevie Case, the Chief Revenue Officer at Vanta — a company that has rapidly scaled by providing cybersecurity and compliance automation tools. The conversation focuses on Vanta’s rocket-ship growth, scaling strategies, product-market fit, founder-led sales, moving into new markets, the importance of trust in business, and Stevie’s career journey from pro gamer to SaaS executive.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vanta’s Meteoric Growth & Market Positioning

[05:34]

Rapid Expansion: Vanta grew from a 20-person go-to-market team to 600 (and over 1,000 total employees globally) in fewer than four years.
Customers: Now serving over 14,000 businesses.
Platform Focus: Evolved from basic compliance automation (like SOC 2) to an "agentic trust platform," helping organizations build trust with their customers through security and compliance.

2. Building for Scale: Product-Market Fit & Team Autonomy

[06:39 – 07:45]

Product-Market Fit Is Everything: "We have a product with incredible product market fit...That has allowed us the luxury to build a rapidly scaling company." — Stevie Case [06:39]
Empowering Independent Teams: Early on, Vanta focused on one problem for one kind of customer. Growth happened by empowering smart leaders to solve new problems, each with autonomy.
Avoiding Overcontrol: "A lot of early scaling companies get hung up in this deep need for control...But it is the single most important thing you can do if you're going to try to scale a company." — Stevie Case [07:34]

3. Laser Focus Before Expansion

[08:13 – 12:12]

Single Hero Product: Success stemmed from a sharp focus on a single use case authentic to the founder’s experience — solving SOC 2 compliance pain.
Relatable Origin Story: Founder Christina Cacioppo’s first-hand frustration with compliance inspired Vanta’s product.
Plain English Breakdown: SOC 2 and compliance explained for non-technical listeners.

"There are frameworks out there, compliance frameworks. SOC 2 is one of the most basic of them. And really what it is is a series of guidelines that say: this is how you should build software if you want it to be secure." — Stevie Case [09:37]

4. Solving a Real Pain & Unlocking Opportunity

[12:12 – 14:39]

Authentic Pain Point: Early product addressed a tangible, revenue-blocking pain: "Proving that trust was taking hundreds of hours...founders were stuck on this antiquated process." — Stevie Case [12:12]
Market Skepticism: Investors doubted the size of the market, but Vanta’s insight was that "it wasn't about the alphabet soup of frameworks, it was fundamentally about building trust." — Stevie Case [13:22]
Scaling Beyond the Initial Niche: What began as a tool for startup founders now serves multiple business sizes and needs, addressing the broad challenge of trust and compliance.

5. The New Landscape: AI, Complexity, and Risk

[14:39 – 16:10]

AI’s Double-Edged Sword: While bullish on AI’s power, Stevie emphasizes it creates new risks—e.g., employees exposing data via ChatGPT.

"AI is amazing. I am very bullish. It also opens up a tremendous new set of risks." — Stevie Case [14:51]

Expanding Risk Footprint: Increasing SaaS and third-party integrations compound security and compliance challenges.
Opportunity in Complexity: Vanta aims to simplify this evolving risk environment for clients.

6. Knowing When to Expand: Avoiding Indigestion

[16:10 – 19:45]

Classic Mistake: Expanding too early, before product-market fit, leads to "indigestion" (overextension).

"Businesses don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion because you try to take on too many things." — referencing David Packard, quoted by Jason Feifer [16:51]

Defining Product-Market Fit: "It is much more one of those, you know it when you see it things...repeatable success where I know what my buyer looks like, I know where I can find more of them..." — Stevie Case [17:35]
Dedicated Teams for New Initiatives: Don’t ask the same team to do two things at once. "If you're gonna try to do more than one thing, you have to have people dedicated to the second thing." — Stevie Case [19:41]

7. Founder-Led Sales & When to Hire a CRO

[20:16 – 23:59]

Don’t Rush Leadership Hires: CROs (and VP Sales) come in at scale, not at the beginning.
Technical Founders’ Mistake: "Don't think you're going to hire a sales team if you haven't figured out sales." — Stevie Case [20:33]
Hiring Early Salespeople: Start with two, not one, to ensure success is not a fluke and can be repeated.
Transitioning to Sales Team: Catalyze sales by finding "Renaissance Rep" types first—entrepreneurial, not strictly sales-y—before hiring traditional sales profiles.

"Early deal cycles...you have to build a ton of trust with those buyers...You need that Renaissance Rep profile to sound like a founder." — Stevie Case [23:24]

8. The Lightning Round: Insights & Fun Facts

[25:27 – 34:40]

Most Overused Tech Buzzword? “Synergy.” — Stevie Case [25:55]
URL or IRL? Strong preference for in-person collaboration [26:07]
Most-used App: "I want to believe it's not Slack, but I think it's probably TikTok...I now joy scroll." — Stevie Case [27:07]
Marketing That Worked: TikTok ads for plant stands, appealing to her love of plants [29:32]
Favorite Video Game: Started career as the world's first female pro gamer (famed for Quake), but now plays "the game of revenue" [33:10, 33:30]
Career Path Reflection: Never expected to land in tech or sales, but curiosity opened doors.

"Tech was not on my radar. Sales was not on my radar...But when you're curious, stuff happens and the world opens up." — Stevie Case [34:09]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“The reality is, if you’re looking at a go-to-market team...they're going to do whatever is easiest and whatever their compensation plan tells them to focus on. Trying to have them do more than one thing early, it’s going to give you bad signal.” — Stevie Case [19:47]
"If you have too narrow a definition of who you are, you will turn down all the great opportunities around you." — Malcolm Gladwell, quoted by Jason Feifer [34:40]
On internal company swag: "We like to call it compliance that doesn't suck too much. We do have socks, actually. We've made socks...you can get your sock socks." — Stevie Case [36:33]

Important Segment Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|---------------------------------------------| | 05:34 | Vanta’s growth and numbers | | 06:39 | Secret to scaling: product-market fit | | 09:37 | SOC 2/Compliance explained simply | | 12:12 | Why founder-led pain points matter | | 14:51 | The impact of AI on risk and compliance | | 17:35 | How/When to expand product focus | | 20:33 | When to hire sales leaders/CROs | | 23:24 | What early sales hires should look like | | 25:55 | Most overused tech buzzword | | 27:07 | Most-used app (and joy scrolling) | | 33:10 | Favorite video game and pro gamer origins | | 34:09 | Non-linear career journeys | | 36:33 | “Compliance doesn’t suck” and sock socks |

Closing Insights

What’s Next for Vanta & Stevie:

Excited by AI innovations, both in product and business operations.
Vanta transitioned from "automated compliance" to an "agentic trust platform," unlocking larger (and more valuable) problem spaces.
Committed to freeing humans for higher-value work, e.g., "removing ten hours a week of busy work from our team's lives" via automation [35:23].
The power of curiosity, authenticity, and relentless customer focus in building high-growth, resilient companies.

Summary Takeaways for Entrepreneurs

Start with one clear pain point; nail product-market fit before expanding.
Growth comes from empowering strong teams and trusting them to solve problems independently.
Don’t overhire for sales or leadership too early; founder-led sales are crucial at the start.
Use repeatable signals, not revenue milestones, to judge readiness for expansion.
The risk landscape of business is always changing—lean into tools and teams that build trust.
Embrace curious, non-linear career paths—the best opportunities are unplanned.

End of Summary

Loading summary

Transcript139 lines

[00:00]
Nicole Lapin
I want to set my daughter up right, right from the start. So when she was born, I sat down and opened three accounts in her name, a 529 plan, a custodial Roth IRA and a custodial brokerage account. Long term, all of that becomes hers to run. But let me tell you about the one investment I made that I hope she never has to cash in on. Life insurance. Because protecting her future isn't just about growing money. It's about covering her no matter what. If you're looking to protect the ones you love, let me tell you about Ethos. Ethos makes getting life insurance fast and eas easy. 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds, apply in minutes and get same day coverage. There's no medical exam, you just answer a few simple health questions. You can get up to $3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month and you'll get your lowest rate from their network of trusted carriers. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote@ethos.com help wanted that is e t h o s.com/help wanted application times may vary, Rates may vary Managing the social media for Money News Network is so much more than scrolling on your phone, making sure that each show's account is regularly posting on trend and flagging comments for me to respond to is a full time job. It also requires someone I can truly trust for my team. That person is Daniella. I found her on Upwork. You can find your own Daniella or whoever it is your team needs there too. Upwork helps grow your business by giving you fast access to specialized talent across 125 plus categories so you can fill skill gaps, launch projects faster and scale support up or down without committing to full time headcount. You can browse profiles, review past work and get help scoping the role so you can hire with confidence and get started quickly with business. Plus you can access the top 1% of talent on Upwork and with AI powered shortlisting you'll get matched to the right freelancer in under six hours. No endless searching required. It's free to sign up and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's up w o r k.com upwork.com as entrepreneurs, it's easy to spend all your time thinking about money. But usually that means the money in your business and not the money in your pocket. So let's hit pause and think about your wallet. Do you love all the cards in there? Have you ever considered that there's something better out there? I want you to love your bank as much as I love mine. That's where Chime comes in. Chime is changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks that love to gatekeep the best rewards and pile on hidden fees. Unless you have a massive balance. Chime offers the most rewarding fee, free banking. All with no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, no minimum balance fees. You get 5% cash back on Chime card in a category of choice like gas or groceries. All while building credit through regular everyday spending. With no credit check, you can also grow your money faster with a savings rate that's nine times the national average. And if you're ever in a pinch, spot me lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. Join the millions who are already banking fee free with America's number one choice for banking. Head to chime.com helpwanted that is chime.com helpwanted Sign up now. It only takes a few minutes. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services and Chime card provided by Chime's bank partners. Qualifying direct deposits required terms and limits apply. Go to chime.com disclosures for details.
[03:46]
Jason Pfeiffer
This is Help Wanted, the show that makes your work work for you. I'm Jason Pfeiffer, editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine.
[03:53]
Nicole Lapin
And I'm money expert Nicole Lapin. On Tuesdays, Jason and I answer the helpline and help callers solve their work problems.
[04:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
And on Thursdays, I give you one way to improve your work and build a career or company you love.
[04:05]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And it starts now.
[04:08]
Jason Pfeiffer
Hey, Nicole, you know what today is?
[04:12]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm a new mom. I don't even know what. What day time. Where are we?
[04:17]
Jason Pfeiffer
I'm not. I'm not looking for an actual day of the week. It is the day where we do another episode of the Smartest People we Know in Business.
[04:24]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Best day ever.
[04:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
Best day ever. Because we like smart people and we like people in business and we like the people we know. And that's why we have this segment called the Smartest People we Know in Business. Because, as you know, our listeners want to build better businesses, better careers. And so we often have this great opportunity to reach into our network to reach into the smartest people we know and drag them into help. Wanted to ask, what are they doing and what makes them so Smart. And today we are doing that with Stevie Case. Stevie Case, the chief revenue officer at Vanta. If you have a business that deals with compliance or you just want your company to be more secure, then you probably have already heard of Vanta. But just in case you haven't, Vanta is a cybersecurity and compliance automation software company. And Stevie can explain that surely better than I can, so she will. But the thing that I find so fascinating about Vanta is just how quickly it has scaled. It is a real rocket ship of a company and we're going to dig into those numbers, how they do it, and Stevie's insights about how you listener can do it too. But first, Stevie, welcome to Help Wanted. You are now officially one of the smartest people we know in business and we're so glad to have you.
[05:31]
Stevie Case
Oh, it's an honor. Thanks for having me.
[05:34]
Jason Pfeiffer
So Stevie, I just said that Vanta is on a real rocket ship. Can you tell us what that means? Throw some numbers at us.
[05:42]
Stevie Case
You got it. So, wild ride. So I am about 3 and a half years in at Vanta and for context, when I started I had about 20 folks on my team. I looked down today and I'm around 600. So three and a half years, quite a rocket ship ride. And of course I only have part of the company that goes to market. We are now more than a thousand folks globally, we serve more than 14,000 customers as well. So the customer growth we have experienced has been wild and really that comes down to the fact that we help companies to be more secure, be more compliant. We consider ourselves an agentic trust platform. So lots of evolution in what we do. But at the end of the day we're helping them to run their businesses more securely and to earn improve trust with their own customers.
[06:33]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And everybody wants to scale, right? What do you think was the secret to growth? If you could distill it.
[06:40]
Stevie Case
I mean the hardest one to replicate. But the most important was that we have a product with incredible product market fit and that has allowed us the luxury to build a rapidly scaling company to serve the need. And at the end of the day, the key to that scale and the reason we have been able to grow so quickly has been just a very thoughtful and methodical series of hires. Hiring great people, empowering them to go run independently at problems and then building around them. You know, we, we started with a business that was really a single thread. There was one problem we solved, one type of customer we sold to and really one team that served that need. And over the last several years we have diversified the types of problems we solve, the types of buyers we sell to, and with that we have empowered really smart people, really smart leaders to go solve each of those problems independently. I think where a lot of early scaling companies get hung up is in this deep need for control. It's really scary to like let go of solving the problem and letting your team run with it and not being involved in every detail. But it is the single most important thing you can do if you're going to try to scale a company.
[08:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And also another pain point early on is probably focusing on too many things. And it sounds like you guys really had a hero product, Shiro product that you laser focused on before expanding.
[08:14]
Stevie Case
That is absolutely true. So we started with this very simple use case and I think part of why it was so successful was that it was very authentic to our founder and her experience. So our CEO founder Christina Cacioppo is a product person, she was a product manager. She had experienced this problem herself that she was trying to build software and sell it in the market and legal came knocking and said, where is your Sock 2? You are not Sock 2 compliant. And she had to go Google, what is SoC2? What does this even mean? And through that she discovered this very antiquated process by which founders and people who build software had to go out and really like prove to a non technical auditor that they were building in a secure way. And it just struck her how bizarre it was to be sitting in Silicon Valley building this hyper advanced software and then talking to some CPA in Florida and trying to prove to them that it was secure and showing them screenshots of, of her AWS config, it just seems so silly to her.
[09:20]
Jason Pfeiffer
Can you just take everything that you just said? And for anyone who's like, wait a second, but I do actually have to Google what you just said because I don't know what's, I don't like it, I don't do not know what you're talking about right now. Can you, can you just explain the basic problem and solution as if you were talking to a 10 year old?
[09:38]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. So there are frameworks out there, compliance frameworks. SOC 2 is one of the most basic of them. And really what it is is a series of guidelines that say this is how you should build software if you want it to be secure. So a very simple example of what SOC2 might require is that you have multi factor authentication, that you don't just have a single login, that you also get an SMS code or another way to log in to make it more secure. There's a list of these things you have to do. And to achieve SOC 2 compliance, you go down that checklist, you prove all those things, then you work with an auditor you like, truly an auditor, a cpa, and you prove to them you have checked everything on that list off. And they watch and they inspect, and then they give you back an audit report that says, yes, this is SOC 2 compliant. And that audit report is often what that software builder needs to go take to an enterprise buyer to say, yep, we're secure, and I can prove it to you because I have this audit report from an auditor.
[10:42]
Jason Pfeiffer
And so in other words, if I started a company and it's a software company of some kind, and it helps, I don't know, let's just make something up. It. I build a company that specifically helps people who make ice cream sell ice cream. And, and part of that is going to be that I'm going to help ice cream sellers process their payments, which means now that my software is going to be handling a lot of very sensitive information. Someone comes along and they buy the ice cream. And now their information, their banking information is like flowing through my software. Well, before the Ben and Jerry's and Haagen Dazs and whoever else is going to be willing to use my software to sell their ice cream, they are going to want to know that this thing is secure, that it is not like susceptible to hacks, that they're not going to have ice cream all over their face when I get hacked. And their customers are like violated. And so the way in which to do that is this highly complicated now. We're like things like Soc 2, by the way, if nobody's heard of Soc 2, then they're probably, they're picturing like two pairs of socks right now. We're like, we're not talking about, but like, it's all a whole crazy mess of stuff. But the point is that the way in which these companies would prove their security was just really complicated and not seamless at all. And so for anybody who needs to get this kind of compliance so that they can go and sell their services and need to prove that they are actually trustworthy, then there was no good way to do that. And that is the problem. That.
[12:12]
Stevie Case
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that solving that problem and proving that trust was taking hundreds of hours. So you had founders who were building a new product, they were excited to bring it to market, and they were getting stuck on this very antiquated, kind of ridiculous process to prove the security of what they were building. And ultimately that blocked them from making money and scaling their business because they were off taking screenshots of different systems and configurations to prove it was secure. So Christina built a product that helped solve that problem. That was a very painful, clear problem that blocked revenue for founders. And because it was authentic to her, she felt that pain and she was able to bring it to other people who had the same pain.
[12:56]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, I was just going to double down on that. It's like it not just authentic to her, but I think people often don't appreciate how when they slam into a problem, what they are really doing is slamming into a insight for an opportunity that other people aren't seeing. It's like you are now at the front lines of a challenge that many other people have. And so you could either look around to see if someone else has solved that for you, or you go solve it yourself.
[13:23]
Stevie Case
That's exactly right. And she had that same struggle and she looked around and was shocked by how old school the solutions were. There weren't any software forward solutions to this problem. And that's. She's a software person and that is what she sought to build. But it was really interesting because in the early days there was a lot of skepticism about how big the market opportunity was for this. I mean the pain was really acute. But a lot of early investors were skeptical that this would be a big market. But I think the thing that she saw that allowed this to be a huge company and a huge market opportunity was it wasn't about the Alphabet soup of the frameworks of SoC2 and ISO and PCI and all these different frameworks. It was fundamentally about building trust. And that is really what she built the company on, was this idea that businesses need to prove they're trustworthy and, and the problem space around that is huge. So we started with a very, very simple use case. One use case for a startup founder buyer. But it is now a much bigger problem space that we're addressing, helping these businesses and these founders and ultimately chief information security officers in every size of company to build and earn trust.
[14:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah. And I'm sure it's only expanded recently in your role as CRO, evolving in this age of AI because it's easier than ever for somebody to start a SaaS company.
[14:51]
Stevie Case
Yes. It's so true. And you know, I think this is why Manta is so uniquely positioned. Because the reality is AI is amazing. I am very bullish. It also Opens up a tremendous new set of risks. You know, you see people just dumping all sorts of information into the big models and not really thinking about where information flows. But back to your analogy of the ice cream shop with the payment data. That's a very real scenario in every business. Every business has sensitive data. And now when every employee can have a chat GPT license and let's say they get curious and they want to dump the payment data into the model and ask questions about business trends, and we see a lot of well intentioned people doing things like this, you end up with a situation where your sensitive data is now much more at risk. Many businesses don't know where it's flowing. It just opens up an entire another angle of risk. And then you need to consider that you've got vendors and other software that you're buying in your business and what are those companies doing? So there's third party risk. So the landscape is far more complex than it was when Vanta started several years ago. And for us that's an opportunity, but it is very real. And we see these security and compliance teams just really struggling to grapple with how complicated the landscape of risk is now.
[16:10]
Jason Pfeiffer
And that probably explains something I wanted to pick up on, which is that you said you started with one problem to solve, one type of customer to sell to, and that you have since expanded into multiple problems to solve and therefore multiple kinds of customers to serve to. And I'd love to hear your insight on when a company should start to expand like that, because I think a big mistake that founders make is they try to do too many things because they see too many opportunities. There is this great quote from. Oh, who is it? Packard? I think whatever his first name was, I think it's Packard, which was some version of. Well, Hewlett was like his partner.
[16:51]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
The other guy.
[16:52]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, yeah, David Packard. I think it might be David Packard. I'll fact check myself on that. Who, who said that businesses don't die of starvation, they die of indigestion because you try to take on too many things. And it's easy to look around at the competitive set and say like, well, they're doing all these things, but the thing is that you have to enter a marketplace in a coherent doing like one singular thing. So that's what you did. And now you're at that point of expanding outward from that first thing that you did. And I'd love to hear you talk about how to recognize when the time is to say, we've done this one thing really well. And now it is time to diversify.
[17:31]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
It was David, by the way.
[17:35]
Stevie Case
Yeah, he. And he is so right about that. And I, I see this so commonly. I, I invest in early stage companies as well. I work with a lot of early stage founders and it. There's no perfect answer, but the very clear mandate here is that you should not be expanding to multiple things before you have product market fit on the one thing. And I think people have varying definitions of what does product market fit mean. To me, it is not a specific revenue milestone. It's not like a million in revenue or 5 million or whatever people you know, have put the line in the sand at. It is much more one of those, you know it when you see it things. For me, product market fit looks like, yes, revenue, certainly you've got to have people that are willing to spend money on your product. It also looks like real inbound interest. It looks like repeatable success where I know what my buyer looks like, I know where I can find more of them, and I know roughly if I go look for them in this place, I can get them to get interested in my product for a known amount of money. So you've got a repeatable success motion, you can get more of it, you know what it costs you. Once you've got that and you can prove repeatable success at scale, then you can start thinking about a second thing. I think that the most common failure mode here is founders who have a little bit of interest and a little bit of revenue and that set of customers starts pulling them in different directions and they're like, oh, well, we could go over here and we could get more money from them. And that is where you dive into digestion and you end up with this like overly complex thing with no clear signal. So ride that one thing until you're super clear, it's repeatable. And then there's a next key here, which is if you're gonna try to do more than one thing, you have to have people dedicated to the second thing. A very common early company failure is that you try to put in whether it's a second product or a different kind of buyer or some other wrinkle and you ask the same people to go tackle will fail. That is one of the lessons.
[19:45]
Jason Pfeiffer
While they're still executing the first thing.
[19:47]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. And then that first thing starts to suffer. And the reality, if you're looking at a go to market team, like I lead your sellers, your people on the ground, they're going to do whatever is easiest and they are going to do Whatever their compensation plan tells them to focus on and trying to have them do more than one thing early, it's going to give you bad signal they're not going to do both things. Well, you're better off to just go build a second team or just give somebody the dedicated focus of making that second thing work.
[20:17]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
We have a lot of entrepreneurs listening. I'd love for you to talk to them directly. I know you work with a lot of early stage founders and invest in them. You know, if somebody is a founder CEO and they're starting to scale, when's the right time to hire a CRO? It seems like a later stage hire, right?
[20:33]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. Yeah. This is a common mistake as well. CRO should come into the mix much later in the picture, as should a VP of sales. You know, you really want to start with somebody who can amplify your success as a founder doing founder led sales. And that's not going to be a VP of sales or a CRO. Those people are there to help you scale an organization, not necessarily to replicate early sales success. So what I like to see founders do in the early days is if you're ready to start a go to market team, you really have to be thoughtful. I mean the, the first thing to consider is don't think you're going to hire a sales team if you haven't figured out sales. And this is what a lot of technical founders do. They're like, I love products, I am technical, I hate sales, I don't want to do it, I'm going to hire a salesperson. And they typically do this before they have really figured out who are we selling to, what is the successful selling motion, what's the right pricing? And then they ask, you know, a relatively junior salesperson to come in and figure out what are really founder level questions. So hiring a salesperson too early, very common mistake. You want to do it once you have that repeatable success. And when you bring somebody in, I always advise founders, don't just hire one salesperson to start, hire two, you hire one. Your failures can be idiosyncratic. You might have like unique circumstances. It's very hard to learn. So bring in two people, have them try to learn the way you are selling as a founder. You want them to talk like you, sound like you, and be able to tell the story as authentically as you, or at least get as close as possible. And if they can repeat your success, then you've got something to build on. Then later you can start to think about do you want a Sales leader or somebody to lead your revenue function.
[22:20]
Jason Pfeiffer
You know what that reminds me of? I was just having a conversation with Robert Herjavec from Shark Tank. Shark from Shark Tank, who his people don't generally know, but made his fortune in cybersecurity. And he told me that in the early days of his company he was, you know, as any founder, he was the sales guy and he was great. He was great at sales. And as the company started to grow, he's like, I am the best sales guy here. And then he realized, oh no, I'm the best sales guy here. Like it was. It's a problem because. Because if you can't scale your own success in the way in which you're selling, then you're stuck. You know, you can only sell as much as you can get out there and do so. I really love that insight about making sure that the people that you are bringing on understand how to sell. Like you though, I would imagine, Stevie, that as you grow, you also want to find people who can sell in different ways, who might be identifying opportunities or tactics that you weren't executing yourself.
[23:25]
Stevie Case
Absolutely. And that happens fairly quickly. When you hire those first one or two salespeople, you need to hire something that looks different than traditional sales. You want to hire somebody that looks more entrepreneurial, looks more like a founder. They're going to need to have that same kind of creativity and curiosity and the hustle. But the reality is there aren't just thousands upon thousands of those type of people. We call them in sales the Renaissance Rep. Like they are a person who is more of an entrepreneur than a salesperson, but they understand how to sell. They're going to show up and understand how to really internalize the founder story, how to build credibility. Those early deal cycles, when you're still in those early phases of moving from founder led sales to having a sales team, you're like early days as a company. You have to build a ton of trust with those buyers. So it's about more than your software being good. They have to trust that you're credible, you're going to be around. And so you need that Renaissance Rep profile to sound like a founder. Once you get past two or three people, if you can get two or three people successfully selling, then you're golden. Then you can start to hire a little bit more of a traditional sales profile, build a little more of a team and have a team that's not selling like founders but does sell like a sales team. And then you can build the rigor around that but if you try to do that too early, it is almost always destined to fail. And then you see founders blaming salespeople, like, why can't they figure it out? It's like, well, you don't actually quite have product market fit yet, and you don't quite have a scalable, repeatable sales motion just yet. And that is not the fault of sales. That's on the founder to figure out.
[25:03]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah. All right. Stevie, you said that someone like you, a CRO, is not someone you start with. It's someone you bring in to accelerate. So let us get to know the kind of person who you bring on. This is lightning round time. We're going to just throw a bunch of random questions at you. Get to know you get to know the kind of person who occupies a role like this. So ready?
[25:26]
Stevie Case
I'm ready to go.
[25:27]
Jason Pfeiffer
Okay, here it is. I don't know that I would know the answer to this. Who's the last person you emailed, literally, before getting on this call?
[25:34]
Stevie Case
Last person I emailed was one of our partners. His name is Fabrice. He's one of our audit partners at Banta.
[25:41]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Ooh, well done. Audit partner. Sounds like a party.
[25:47]
Stevie Case
They are a key part of our ecosystem, I'm sure.
[25:50]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
What's your least favorite overused tech buzzword?
[25:55]
Stevie Case
Oh, synergy.
[25:58]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, so much synergy. It's terrible.
[26:00]
Stevie Case
So much, so much.
[26:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Do you prefer to be URL or irl? In other words, virtual or in person?
[26:07]
Stevie Case
I'm an IRL person. I love irl. I spent the whole week IRL with my team. It was great.
[26:14]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is nice. Nicole and I don't get enough IRL because we're on opposite coasts. It's a bummer when you are on vacation. Stevie, what is your out of office message?
[26:25]
Stevie Case
It's brief.
[26:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
It's very brief.
[26:27]
Stevie Case
There's not a lot of out of office time right now. I will say there's. I am guilty, historically, of putting my cell number in my out of office so people can text me. But I have. I'm very proud to say I've stopped doing that. So I really get offline now. And that's a. That's a newer thing for me.
[26:44]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is. That is good separation. But I guess that is also the downside of being at a rocket ship company is not a lot of non IRL these days.
[26:52]
Nicole Lapin
Yeah, I think I've done two out
[26:54]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
of offices, and my last one was my favorite. You can steal it if you'd like. In case of emergency, call 91 1.
[27:01]
Stevie Case
Love it, love it.
[27:04]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Which app on your phone do you use most often?
[27:07]
Stevie Case
Oh, I, I, I want to believe it's not slack, but I actually think it's probably TikTok.
[27:16]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Wow.
[27:16]
Jason Pfeiffer
Very.
[27:17]
Stevie Case
I think of TikTok. Like, I, I once upon a time was guilty of doom scrolling on Twitter. I no longer doom scroll. I now joy scroll. And that is a TikTok thing for me.
[27:27]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Ooh.
[27:28]
Jason Pfeiffer
Okay, this is. But this wasn't in the lightning round. But I now have to ask, like, what is the most delightful, weird, algorithmic thing that TikTok has learned about you? For example, TikTok has learned about me that I love tours of dumpy New York City apartments. Really into them. And then also bugs eating things. Like, there's a great. There's a Great genre of TikTok Videos of people who own, like, chameleons walking around the house, and the chameleon will, like, grab a bug off of the wall. It's fantastic. So, anyway, yeah. What does TikTok know about you? That. That we need to know?
[28:03]
Stevie Case
I mean, that does sound amazing. I would definitely be into the bugs and chameleons. I am also into, like, I love live music, so it knows I love live music, and it feeds me a lot of that. But probably the quirkier things. Like, I love the mowing videos and the power washing videos, if you follow SB Mowing. Such great stuff. Guy goes around and finds yards that are overgrown, and he mow the whole yard for free. Love this guy. It's the best.
[28:26]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, it's great. Also brilliant marketing. Like, watch that guy, because what he has done is he has taken a otherwise boring thing and turned it into just digestible art, and it explode, I'm sure. Exploded his business.
[28:40]
Stevie Case
It did. It did. He's the best.
[28:42]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I love a grout cleaning video myself. Before and after grouting.
[28:48]
Stevie Case
How far does that go, though? Do you. How do you feel about Nate the hoof guy? Do we. Do we like the hoof cleaning videos?
[28:54]
Jason Pfeiffer
I don't know about this.
[28:55]
Stevie Case
Oh, this is a whole nother genre of, like, oddly satisfying where there's a guy who goes and cleans the hooves of horses and cows and then, like. Yeah, gets them back to good health. Like, it's very. You got to check it out.
[29:09]
Jason Pfeiffer
I would check that out.
[29:10]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Video for everybody.
[29:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
That sounds great.
[29:13]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Morgan, our producer, sent us a note that she said she.
[29:16]
Jason Pfeiffer
She loves that guy.
[29:17]
Stevie Case
Very soothing to listen to.
[29:20]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I mean, I feel like we're all in our own little microcosm channel of. Of the social media world. Okay, Stevie, what's the last marketing campaign that converted you as a customer.
[29:32]
Stevie Case
Oh my gosh, I'm so guilty of this. On like, I am very susceptible to the TikTok campaigns actually. And they always get me. The last one was, we've established I'm obsessed with plants and my Monstera is my proudest possession. So the last one that got me was these like plant stands that like you hook all the little stems of your plant and it makes it stand up straight. So that's the last one that got me. I've bought all kinds of plant accoutrement on talk. It's bad.
[30:00]
Jason Pfeiffer
What's your go to email sign off, for example? Mine is best and I don't otherwise say that in real life. It's a really weird. I don't know, I just started doing it so long ago and now I can't stop. Stevie, what's yours?
[30:11]
Stevie Case
Mine is warmly and I do warmest. Oh, I love that. Warmest is good. There's a. I saw yesterday there was a matrix of, you know, what is chaotic neutral versus chaotic good versus chaotic evil sign offs. I think, I think best was, was more in the. The, the neutral category. Warmly was there in the. In the kind of chaotic good section.
[30:34]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah. Jason, get warmer.
[30:35]
Jason Pfeiffer
I got to get warmer. Yeah. Best is not best. It's true.
[30:38]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
It's like it feels a little passive aggressive to me sometimes. I don't know.
[30:42]
Jason Pfeiffer
Well, I mostly don't do it. I mostly just do the letter J. That's it. Just like nothing, Just the J. Which is also not the best. I don't know. I don't know. I need some help here.
[30:51]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
But best is not the best.
[30:53]
Jason Pfeiffer
No, best is actually the worst. And yet I'm still doing it.
[30:57]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm sure there's some sort of internal tracker to look at Vanta's annual revenue. Stevie, obviously, if somebody is running a public company, we always ask how often do you check the stock? But for you, how often do you check revenue to date?
[31:11]
Stevie Case
I check it frequently. I'm going to say I check that two or three times a week. I. But I also watch every deal come in. So we have a channel in Slack where every deal that hits alerts. And so I keep a running tally and I'm really just going to check the total to see if my mental tally is in line with my understanding of reality.
[31:36]
Jason Pfeiffer
You know, I'd say two to three times a week sounds pretty healthy. I recently met a very successful influencer type who has made a bazillion dollars on courses who I Learned looks at the revenue for the courses like multiple times a day. And this person's emotions are very tied to whether it's doing well or not. And I just thought that is so unhealth. Like you gotta, you gotta distance yourself from that. I, I, I do, I do the opposite. I do. I like look at, I never look at numbers. I just never look at numbers. I, it just gives me too much anxiety. I'd rather just focus on doing the thing.
[32:18]
Stevie Case
I mean, I, it's hard. I run a forecast once a week. So once a week I am looking at how we're pacing towards targets and all of that. So I would say that I try to not focus on the top line number and like the total revenue number. That much I don't know if I
[32:35]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
should come clean, but right before we
[32:38]
Jason Pfeiffer
started, I definitely have to now.
[32:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Whatever you're about to say, I, I did check our stripe because we relaunched a course and so I refreshed it.
[32:47]
Jason Pfeiffer
I was not calling you out on that. I did not know that. That's funny. How's it doing? You feel good?
[32:53]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
There was a new. Yeah, yeah. And my husband was like, should we get you a little audio alert when there's a sale? Like a ching or something like that?
[33:02]
Stevie Case
I love.
[33:02]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
You would hate that, Jason. But I'm glad, Stevie. Love it like I do.
[33:06]
Jason Pfeiffer
All right, Stevie, last one. What is your favorite video game?
[33:10]
Stevie Case
Oh, gosh. It's changed a lot over time. You know, I obviously started my career here. Quake was my big game. I'm a big PC gamer.
[33:19]
Jason Pfeiffer
Well, wait, wait. That is, that is not obviously to everybody, because I was going to tee you up for that. But so, okay, pre being this fancy CRO, you were a pro video gamer.
[33:31]
Stevie Case
This is true. I was actually the world's first female pro gamer.
[33:35]
Jason Pfeiffer
That is damn.
[33:37]
Stevie Case
Random facts.
[33:38]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Yeah.
[33:38]
Stevie Case
Random background.
[33:39]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Incredible.
[33:40]
Stevie Case
It was a very unique way to start my career. It was a lot of fun. I worked in games and that was really my entry to software. And it was an incredible way to start. But these days I do not have a lot of time to play. I would say I'm playing the game of revenue quite a lot. And that is kind of it.
[33:59]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
That's my favorite cardio.
[34:01]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah. Did you, when you were, when you were a professional gamer, could you have ever envisioned that this is where your career would have taken you?
[34:10]
Stevie Case
No, absolutely not. I not only knew nothing about technology, I grew up in Kansas, like in the country. I was always super curious. But tech was not on my radar. Sales was not on my radar. Like I wanted to be a lawyer, so none of I was going to be a constitutional lawyer of all things. Like I was very passionate about politics and law and so none of this was on my bingo card. But you know, when you're curious, stuff happens and the world opens up.
[34:41]
Jason Pfeiffer
That's right. Malcolm Gladwell told me self conceptions are powerfully limiting. And I love that line so much. If you have too narrow a definition of who you are, you will turn down all the great opportunities around you for whatever it's worth. Nobody's wondering, But I think Dr. Mario is the greatest video game of all time. And I will hold to that.
[34:59]
Stevie Case
It's a classic. It's a classic, Stevie.
[35:01]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
I'm going to have that sound effect, by the way, come up on my stripe, Dr. Mario.
[35:07]
Stevie Case
Oh yeah, that's perfect.
[35:10]
Jason Pfeiffer
I'll hear that all day. That should just be like text messages. All right, Stevie, this has been so great. Give us like a. Give us like a what? As we think into the future of Vanta, like what is on your mind right now? What is really exciting you?
[35:23]
Stevie Case
You know the stuff that's really exciting me is the way that we are innovating with AI, both in go to market and in the core product. You know, we started out as what we would have called an automated compliance platform. We are now an agentic trust platform. That evolution is super powerful. So you know, at the end of the day it's like AI is fine on its own, but it's the application and the way it helps solve these really gnarly, irritating problems that's so exciting. So I think the way we've been able to just solve a larger problem space and make our customers lives easier, that is super exciting to me. In the world of revenue, we had a whole project over the last six months to remove 10 hours a week of busy work from our team's lives and we accomplished that and it feels like there's still so much more to do. So that idea of allowing humans to do higher value work is really exciting and that's what gets me up in the morning every day.
[36:22]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
And I promise all of our listeners are going to hear sock too, which by the way, no K Soc 2 compliance come up all the time now. It will just come up now, you'll be aware.
[36:34]
Stevie Case
Yes, it's, it's out there. You know, we like to call it compliance. That doesn't suck too much. We do have socks, actually. We've made socks. We're big on puns. We've gone all in.
[36:43]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, that's great. Wait.
[36:45]
Stevie Case
Do the socks compliance pun.
[36:47]
Jason Pfeiffer
Yeah, I was. I really was not prepared for that. Do the socks say sock one and sock two?
[36:53]
Stevie Case
Yes, they do. Yes, they do. And those are actually compliance frameworks, too. Sock one and sock two. So you can get your sock socks.
[37:00]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
How do I get some.
[37:01]
Stevie Case
Yeah, I'll. I'll send you some sock socks.
[37:05]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, my God. That. That's great. Are those available to the general consumer? Can you buy?
[37:10]
Stevie Case
They are not only to our partners
[37:12]
Jason Pfeiffer
and customers and podcast hosts.
[37:15]
Stevie Case
That's right.
[37:18]
Jason Pfeiffer
All right, well, Stevie, just the promise of sock one and sock two Socks has really brightened my day. But mostly our days are brightened because we got to talk to you. One of the smartest people we know in business, Stevie Case. Avanta. Thank you so much.
[37:31]
Stevie Case
Thanks for having me.
[37:34]
Jason Pfeiffer
Help Wanted is a production of Money News Network. Help Wanted is hosted by me, Jason
[37:39]
Nicole Lapin
Pfeiffer, and me, Nicole Lapman.
[37:41]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Our executive producer is Morgan Lavoy.
[37:43]
Nicole Lapin
Do you want some help? Email our helpline@helpwantedoneynewsnetwork.com for the chance to
[37:48]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
have some of your questions answered on the show.
[37:50]
Nicole Lapin
And follow us on Instagram @moneynews and tiktokoneynewsnetwork for exclusive content and to see our beautiful faces. Maybe.
[37:58]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
Maybe a little dance.
[37:59]
Jason Pfeiffer
Oh, I didn't sign up for that.
[38:00]
Co-host (possibly Morgan Lavoy or another female co-host)
All right, well, talk to you soon.

Smartest People We Know In Business: Stevie Case, Vanta

Smartest People We Know In Business: Stevie Case, Vanta

Help Wanted: Smartest People We Know in Business – Stevie Case, Vanta

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vanta’s Meteoric Growth & Market Positioning

2. Building for Scale: Product-Market Fit & Team Autonomy

3. Laser Focus Before Expansion

4. Solving a Real Pain & Unlocking Opportunity

5. The New Landscape: AI, Complexity, and Risk

6. Knowing When to Expand: Avoiding Indigestion

7. Founder-Led Sales & When to Hire a CRO

8. The Lightning Round: Insights & Fun Facts

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Important Segment Timestamps

Closing Insights

Summary Takeaways for Entrepreneurs

Help Wanted: Smartest People We Know in Business – Stevie Case, Vanta

Episode Overview

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vanta’s Meteoric Growth & Market Positioning

2. Building for Scale: Product-Market Fit & Team Autonomy

3. Laser Focus Before Expansion

4. Solving a Real Pain & Unlocking Opportunity

5. The New Landscape: AI, Complexity, and Risk

6. Knowing When to Expand: Avoiding Indigestion

7. Founder-Led Sales & When to Hire a CRO

8. The Lightning Round: Insights & Fun Facts

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Important Segment Timestamps

Closing Insights

Summary Takeaways for Entrepreneurs