17. Vanta

Founder: Christina Cacioppo (CEO)
Launched: 2016
Headquarters: San Francisco
Funding: $203 million
Valuation: $1.6 billion
Key technologies: Software-defined security
Industry: Enterprise technology
Previous appearances on Disruptor 50 List: 0

Vanta simplifies and centralizes security program management for over 5,000 companies, including Autodesk, Gusto, Modern Treasury and Quora, by providing full visibility into an organization's cyber vulnerabilities. 

Before starting Vanta, Christina Cacioppo was a product manager at Dropbox where she learned what goes into securing data. Vanta gives smaller companies the ability to compete with large companies when it comes to security standards. Its trust management platform gives companies a holistic view of risk, adding contextual data and the ability to remediate and track issues.

While a slowdown in enterprise spending and fears of a recession have spurred big cuts in the tech industry, forecasts from IT consulting firms and Wall Street analysts do anticipate cybersecurity as being more insulated, though not immune. Cybersecurity CEOs have conceded that the "blank check" world for IT budgets has changed.

But Vanta, which has offices in Dublin, New York, San Francisco and Sydney, doubled its customer base in 2022. Gartner estimates that security and risk management spending will rise by about 11.3% to $188.3 billion in 2023. 

It also helps that the company prides itself on running a lean operation, and that founder Cacioppo is famously frugal. Earlier this year, she invited Kevin Kelly of venture capital firm Sequoia Capital's partner fund Sequoia Heritage, to talk about how its portfolio companies make it through downturns. 

Last year, Vanta raised $150 million in funding from leading investors Sequoia, Craft Ventures and Y Combinator, in addition to security industry pioneer CrowdStrike, in what is its biggest round to date. It also made its first acquisition earlier this year, buying Trustpage for an undisclosed amount to help scale its platform.