Kristy Edwards and Michelle Finneran Dennedy, the co-founders of software maker PrivacyCode are entering their Seed Round fundraising with clear eyes and know the challenges they face.
They have already raised a $2.5 million pre-seed round that has gotten their company to this point and are now kicking off a full Seed Round, said Edwards, who is company president and technical co-founder. She is also the Portland-based executive for this distributed startup.
Dennedy is CEO and is based in the Bay Area. About one-third of the company’s team is here and one of its early backers is Portland Seed Fund. The company is generating revenue and working with enterprise customers in beta testing.
PrivacyCode is the culmination of the careers of both Edwards and Dennedy, who have both worked in tech for decades in privacy and security at enterprise companies and startups.
The product is a software-as-a-service platform that helps companies analyze privacy complexities by breaking down tasks needed to fulfill related requirements. This work has traditionally been done by privacy teams writing checklists and doing one-off meetings with product and HR teams, said Edwards.
“We use AI and natural language processing and our expertise in security and privacy to translate the complexities (of privacy laws, regulations and policies) into simple tasks assigned to different teams and then we track it all,” said Edwards.
It’s a tool she'd sought in her privacy security and product leadership roles at places like Oracle, Workday and Lookout.
PrivacyCode started in 2021. Edwards had moved to Portland in 2018 to seek a different quality of life than the Bay Area.
“I love being here to build this startup. I feel like I have been pretty quickly integrated into the startup community,” she said, adding that she has plugged in with Oregon Venture Fund and the PSF network.
As the team kicks off fundraising, Edwards said they know it won’t be easy. First, venture capital is slowing way down after years of frenzy. Second, as a technical startup founded by women the numbers aren’t in their favor. Last year, all-women founding teams raised just 1.9% of all venture capital invested, Edwards said citing TechCrunch reporting.
Locally, the stats aren’t any better.
“We are operators. We know startups and have run (operations) at big global companies,” said Edwards. “People are excited about who we are and the time is now. This needs to exist. It’s tough to raise and tougher for women. But it’s a good time to build.”
One aspect that will likely grab investor attention is the startup’s use of AI and its own pending patents around use of generative AI. The duo is increasingly exploring the category as the AI hype builds and investor appetite grows.
The company has built AI models on global laws and regulations around privacy. They can tie it together with natural language processing and large language models and machine learning to offer outputs tailored to privacy prompts, said Edwards. The company has libraries available for users, the most popular being an Ethical AI in Privacy and Security library.
The bottom line is that the founders think the time is right for PrivacyCode as companies seek ways to see the return on investment on privacy.
“We have seen it all. I’ve been in cyber security since the late 90s and privacy and security since the early 2000s. We’ve seen booms and busts and housing crises and global pandemics,” Edwards said. “Spending will always be in security and privacy and both are growing on a macro (scale).”
