- Osano, a company building the first platform for data privacy transparency, announced it raised $5.4 million
Osano — a company building the first platform for data privacy transparency — announced it has raised $5.4 million in a Series A round of funding. This round of funding was co-led by LiveOak Venture Partners and Next Coast Ventures thus enabling Osano to further invest in R&D, marketing and new hires to meet the growing demand for its data privacy platform and tools. Including this round of funding, Osano has raised a total of $8.4 million since the company was founded.
What does Osano do? Osano is a turnkey data privacy platform that automates the process of data governance by automatically monitoring every single vendor sharing your business data across all websites. And compliance is built into its workflow to meet the complex requirements of government regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
There are over 750,000 companies using Osano on 3.5 million websites and serving 2.5 billion cookie consent pop-ups per month. And with over 3,000 new accounts signed up in the eight weeks since Osano launched its commercial offering, the company is experiencing unusually rapid growth, making it an immediate leader in a data-privacy category starved for solutions.
“We are proud to continue into the next round with our original investors,” said Osano Co-Founder and CEO Arlo Gilbert. “Heading into 2020, we are moving quickly to add talent to our growing team and to deepen Osano’s position as a leading data privacy platform. There is a definitive need to bring transparency to the process of how companies deal with privacy, and we are very excited about taking on this challenge to empower both individuals and organizations.”
As a B-corporation, Osano is measured both by financial growth and the number of people whose lives benefit from improved data transparency. As part of the platform and suite of tools, a team of attorneys hand-reviews the data privacy practices of each third-party website vendor thus ensuring care and accuracy for every single site. And to date, the attorneys have spent a total of 12,000 hours reviewing more than 10,000 companies.
“Osano’s unique combination of flyaway product-market fit, human-centered design, social mission, and innovative technology fits across a number of our investment mantras,” added Next Coast Ventures co-founder and managing director Michael Smerklo. “Osano has an uncanny ability to identify trends before the rest of the world and attract the best talent to work on a solution.”
Osano believes that increasing transparency is for the good of the entire Internet. And the web is built on trust, so websites, software vendors and service providers should be held accountable for how they gather, use, share and handle users’ personal data. But current privacy policies and practices mean that rights and responsibilities are known and understood only by service providers.
“From fake social media accounts to endless data theft, the Internet has become full of privacy and compliance hazards,” explained Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner at LiveOak Venture Partners. “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, and we’re proud to help companies meet their obligations without fear or pain.”
