Lessons from Y Combinator: Leadership and Accountability

What does it take to go from thinking "I’m not the type to start a company" to building a $2.5B startup that serves over 10,000 businesses? Christina Cacioppo, founder & CEO of Vanta, shares her raw and remarkable journey in this episode of Secret Leaders

In this candid interview, we dive into Christina’s path from Stanford to Silicon Valley royalty—funding startups like Twitter and Etsy, then jumping into the deep end to teach herself to code. Learn how she went from solo builder to unicorn founder, the scrappy early days of Vanta, why she waited until $10M ARR to raise funds, and the lessons she picked up alongside the founders of OpenSea and Substack at Y Combinator.

Topics We Cover:

• Leaving a dream VC job to learn to code 
• Building failed side projects and what they taught her
• Working at Dropbox during hypergrowth
• The real story behind launching Vanta
• Why “doing things that don’t scale” worked
• AI at Vanta and what’s next
• Overcoming imposter syndrome as a young female founder

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