Shortcuts Sell - by James Berthoty - Latio Pulse
Last week was huge for cybersecurity funding, but it reveals the reality of building successful cybersecurity companies - shortcuts sell more than security. Vanta Raises $150 million at $2.45 billion valuation Chainguard Raises $140 million at 1.12 billion valuation Wiz backs out of $23 billion deal Part of my background is slinging “SOC 2 automation” software. Like most cyber startups, we forked some open source software, slapped some features around it, and were able to build the outcome of “automated compliance.” As part of this, I was on over 100 sales calls with startups looking for the software they were going to use to achieve SOC 2. The key lesson I learned is that security is a differentiator, not a product. Below I’ll talk about why, and two important outliers from this. First, some prolegomena summarizing what these companies are: The heart of early Vanta was an OSQuery agent applied to SOC 2 compliance, together with connectors for other data. They work with auditors to run
Shortcuts Sell And other realities from last week's fundraising James Berthoty Jul 30, 2024 7 1 Share Last week was huge for cybersecurity funding, but it reveals the reality of building successful cybersecurity companies - shortcuts sell more than security. Vanta Raises $150 million at $2.45 billion valuation Chainguard Raises $140 million at 1.12 billion valuation Wiz backs out of $23 billion deal Part of my background is slinging “SOC 2 automation” software. Like most cyber startups, we forked some open source software, slapped some features around it, and were able to build the outcome of
Explore this link on the map →related reading
- Sub-Venture Scale Security Problemstldrsec.com
- Project Glasswing: Securing critical software for the AI era \ Anthropicanthropic.com
- Top 20 Cybersecurity Companies & Startups to Watch in 2025explodingtopics.com
- How Wiz Became the Fastest Software Company to Hit $500M & Its Path to $1Bsoftwareanalyst.substack.com
- In 2024, finding cybersecurity startup ideas worth pursuing is harder than many people thinkventureinsecurity.net
- Vanta's Path to Product-Market Fit — Solve the Customer’s Problem, Then Write Codereview.firstround.com
- Defining A Software Supply Chain Security Platform & Exploring New Techniques, Part 2softwareanalyst.substack.com
- Public Cybersecurity Market Review & Commentary for H1 2024softwareanalyst.substack.com
- How Wiz Became the Fastest Software Company to Hit $500M & Its Path to $1Bsoftwareanalyst.substack.com
- Report: Unlocking The Cybersecurity Landscape | A Contrary Research Deep Dive | Contrary Researchresearch.contrary.com
- Report: Unlocking The Cybersecurity Landscape | A Contrary Research Deep Dive | Contrary Researchresearch.contrary.com
- Index Ventures’ Shardul Shah On ‘The VC Spring’ And Stunning Wiz Growthcrn.com