Vanta lessons (security and compliance platform)
It all started when the founder Christina Cacioppo worked at https://www.dropbox.com/paper/ as PM with a startup mentality to build the new product.
She found herself on the need to be SOC2 compliant, and find out that was a year struggle for her and other founders
Build things don't scale, they started with a simple excel sheet to give info away to get soc2 and validate if people would understand and pay for it
Charge one year up front, did you build something people really want
Spend 50%+ of your time recruiting
Not over-engineering your org chart, like unicorn job description vs the real role,> hire an early team motivated and specialized in a field
Hire with standard SaaS roles to attract more candidates and find the right fit.Understand which problems money can and can’t solve and when raising money (competitive and market dynamics, hiring really fast, your marketing machine is printing money)
Today Vanta is a leading security and compliance platform backed by Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator.
If you are looking for inspiration and another proof of doing first things that don't scale, here is a re-cap of Vanta, watch the video at 1,5x in case