Digital privacy is complicated.
And it's about to get much more complicated as California's new data privacy law goes into effect Jan. 1, leaving many tech startups in need of legal and technical advice on how to comply and avoid potentially balance sheet-busting fines.
“There's a lot of fear right now," said Arlo Gilbert, co-founder and CEO of Austin-based privacy software startup Osano.
His company has been working for months on ways to get out in front of those privacy and regulatory challenges. Osano's platform analyzes thousands of privacy policies from heavily-trafficked websites and ties into federal court databases to review privacy policies and monitor for new lawsuits that could indicate an incoming wave of litigation. It's a gritty, but important, topic.
“Compliance is boring. There’s no other way of talking about it," Osano co-founder Arlo Gilbert told me during an interview in November.
That's true -- but it's also a promising line of business that investors are excited about. Austin-based venture capital firms LiveOak Venture Partners and Next Coast Ventures are leading a $5.4 million Series A investment round in Osano, the company announced Thursday. That brought its total funding to $8.4 million.
Since its initial launch, Osano has evolved considerably with new offerings, insights and research. Its data privacy platform now automates the process of data governance, monitoring every single vendor accessing business data across all of a company's websites. It combs policies and looks for requirements of government regulations, such as GDPR and California's CCPA.
And Gilbert said interest has been strong.
“It is all organic," he said, noting in November Osano was seeing 40 new customers per day signing up for its commercial product. "It’s an insane level of interest. Companies are… I wouldn’t say desperate, but thy are confused. These laws are confusing and complicated and they don’t know where to go for solutions.”
Osano's reach, largely directed at mid-sized businesses, has boomed in recent months. It says its open source pop-up cookie consent tool is used by 750,000 companies on 3.5 million websites, serving 2.5 billion cookie consent boxes each month.
“From fake social media accounts to endless data theft, the Internet has become full of privacy and compliance hazards,” Venu Shamapant, founding partner at LiveOak Venture Partners said in a statement. “As laws like CCPA become commonplace, companies are scrambling to keep up with their vast networks of vendors. Osano is the right solution at the right time ..."
