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It was fascinating to chat to Richa Kaul, Founder & CEO of Complyance, about her journey to raising $20M from Google Ventures, during our first "Pathfounders Live" recorded podcast with followed by an enthusiastic live audience Q&A.
Perhaps the most interesting points she made were about her unusual fundraising strategy, what not to share with VCs, and how, in the AI-era, software is shifting from tools into outcomes.
Richa Kaul did not set out to become a founder. Instead, her company came out of a personal obsession with data privacy, triggered by the Equifax breach and the human consequences of consumer data leaking into the world.
“One of my very close friends had their identity stolen because of that breach,” Kaul said on the Pathfounders podcast. “It made me kind of think about, why is it that this can happen?”
She felt consumers themselves could only do so much, and that it was the companies holding their data that needed fixing.
“The most efficient way to protect consumers is actually to help protect the companies who hold the world’s data,” she said. “And that is literally how Complyance was born.”
Complyance is an AI-native governance, risk and compliance platform that uses AI agents to help enterprises monitor risk, compliance controls and third-party vendors continuously, rather than relying on periodic audits and manual checks.
The company recently raised a $20 million Series A led by GV. But Kaul’s route to the round was unusual.
“We’ve been very lucky to have a preemptive seed round and a preemptive Series A round,” she said. “The investors came to us and we didn’t have to pitch. So I haven’t made a pitch deck in a long time.”
Kaul said her core fundraising rule is to understand the incentives of the investor across the table.
At early stage, she said, investors are looking for information no one else has. “You can control the supply of information out into the investor market,” she said.
That led to Kaul not broadly sharing company data and not taking every VC meeting. The result was scarcity, which actually helped her.
“No one really knew any of the specifics about us out there,” she said. “They just kind of knew that we were not talking to anyone.”
That changed the power dynamic during her fundraise. Instead of turning up desperate to be judged, Kaul says founders should assess the investor too.
“Don’t go in with the data room prepped and ready for them,” she said. “They owe you as much as you owe them.”
She acknowledges this is not a playbook every founder can run.
“I feel very privileged saying all of this,” she said. “But it’s my personal advice and it’s worked for me now for two funding rounds.”
In the AI era, Kaul’s advice is to return to first principles.
“You’ve got to know your customer and you’ve got to understand the problem that they’re facing,” she said. “If AI is solving part of the problem, understand the version of the problem that they’re going to still face.”
For Complyance, that problem is risk. AI has not made compliance go away. It has pushed it into the boardroom.
“What’s happening now is that you have full visibility as a default,” she said. “You’re not spending your time sampling or searching for risk. You’re spending your time addressing risk.”
The first 15 minutes of the show is below on the Pathfounders channel, with the full version available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Thanks to our partners for supporting this event, Halkin Offices and Nebius.
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