Today, Unusual Ventures is excited to announce we have partnered with Relyance AI to empower entire organizations to manage privacy, compliance, and data protection seamlessly. As founding investors who have had the privilege of working closely with Relyance’s Co-Founders from inception, we are thrilled to see the company come out of stealth today and announce both its Seed and Series A.  

Data breaches and privacy incidents are an existential risk to an organization’s brand, customer, and user trust. Despite data protection being so paramount to customers, most businesses struggle to answer basic questions about their data practices, such as, “Where is our customer’s personal data going? What exactly are we doing with the data? Are we protecting data the way we’ve promised customers?” Compounding this problem, archaic compliance workflows in the form of surveys and meetings prohibit companies from answering these questions at today’s speed of business. To solve this problem, the first Privacy and Data Governance Ops solution, Relyance AI, offers transparency and visibility all the way down to the source code in real-time. Relyance AI gives an organization the ability to quickly and accurately answer essential privacy questions and ensure compliance and governance by mapping requirements directly to the ultimate source of truth: the codebase. For the first time, PrivacyOps will be able to operate at the speed of DevOps.

Relyance AI’s Co-Founders, Abhi Sharma and Leila Golchehreh, are everything Unusual looks for in founders we partner with. Abhi, a product visionary, was Unusual’s first Technologist in Residence and part of the founding team at Foghorn Systems. Leila, a privacy thought leader, entrepreneur, and former Data Protection Officer at Adaptive Insights, has tremendous product and domain experience. Relyance AI was pre-product when we first invested. Abhi and Leila worked closely with all aspects of our Founder Services team at Unusual, which helped them finesse their messaging, refine Relyance's ideal customer profile, set up their sales infrastructure and recruitment machinery, and launch publicly. Feeling a particularly strong connection to the Unusual team and our approach to early-stage company building, Leila and Abhi decided to add my Partner, Jyoti Bansal, to their board to continue to help them on their path of creating a world-class company.

Since our initial lead investment of their Seed round, Relyance AI has seen tremendous growth in customer adoption. Customers like Dialpad, Pateron, Samsara, ThriveTRM, True, and dozens more trust Relyance AI to help them quickly and accurately answer privacy questions to ensure compliance. We have no doubt with Leila  and Abhi’s tenacious focus and determination, more big milestones are yet to come.

We believe the Relyance AI team has the experience, product, and vision to reshape Privacy and Data Governance Ops. The Unusual team is excited about the road ahead for Relyance AI and are honored to partner with the team on their journey.

Congratulations to Leila, Abhi, and the entire Relyance AI team! 

Onward! 

Read more about Reliance AI’s Seed and Series A from TechCrunch

Learn more about how to set the right goals, approach the right investors, and craft a winning pitch in order to raise your seed or Series A round