ThetaLake
RegTech Startup Theta Lake Uses Unified Communications to Unleash Innovation, Everywhere
We’re hiring a lot of gifted employees, and it’s difficult to retain that level of talent if your people feel like they’re out there on their own. Even though we’re separated by geography, RingCentral is helping us to build a close-knit and highly effective team—all working toward a common purpose.
Anthony Cresci
VP of Business Development and Operations, Theta Lake
Startups can become so focused on their product that they neglect to ask, “What if this works? Do we have the tools to operate effectively if we grow?” Theta Lake—a RingCentral customer and solution partner—had the foresight to think through these issues early, and their team is benefiting from the decisions they made.
Theta Lake is a pioneer in the growing RegTech field, providing AI-based tools to help enterprise businesses in regulated industries keep their digital communications compliant with data-protection and retention regulations. Within just a couple of years of its founding, Theta Lake was already becoming a favorite compliance and security app among regulated industries such as healthcare, legal, financial services, and even agencies of local and state governments.
From an integration partner to a customer
Theta Lake’s first encounter with RingCentral was as an integration partner. Based on demand from customers, the company leveraged RingCentral’s API platform to integrate its compliance app into the RingCentral Meetings video conferencing platform. “The more time we spent working with RingCentral’s unified communications solution as an integration partner, the clearer it became how valuable it could be internally,” says Anthony Cresci, the company’s VP of Business Development and Operations.
At this point in its history, Theta Lake was still in startup mode, operating lean, focusing on product development. As the company grew—more customers, more staff, and more integration partners, including more integrations with RingCentral—the team realized it was time to prepare operationally for the next phase of growth. They also realized that streamlining and standardizing the company’s communications environment would be key to smooth and successful expansion.
Anthony explains: “As we began growing and onboarding more people, we realized the value of bringing all of these different types of communication—SMS, chat, video, audio—onto a single platform where everything worked seamlessly with everything else.”
The more time we spent working with RingCentral’s unified communications solution as an integration partner, the clearer it became how valuable it could be internally.
Anthony Cresci
VP of Business Development and Operations, Theta Lake
INDUSTRY
High Tech
HQ
Santa Barbara, CA, with international offices in London and Berlin
YEAR FOUNDED
2017
EMPLOYEES
16
Merging disparate systems into one
Anthony recalls that in their early days, the team used whatever communication tools they could get their hands on. That meant an app for chat, another for video conferencing, and everyone’s cell phones for calls.
Ironically, the idea to create a more consistent and unified communication and collaboration experience for their employees and teams occurred to Theta Lake as they were integrating their RegTech apps into RingCentral’s platform for their customers.
Building an integrated compliance suite into RingCentral
Although the company’s initial integrations centered around RingCentral Meetings, demand from Theta Lake’s customers led the company to broaden its focus—and they begin working to develop a unified suite of compliance tools to support for all digital communications.
Anthony explains: “RingCentral customers kept coming to us asking if we could apply our AI-based compliance functionality to their SMS text messages, online faxes, voicemails, team chat messages, file sharing—basically all of their digital communications. And every time we asked them for these APIs, RingCentral had them all.”
As Anthony also points out, embedding their tools into RingCentral is helping everyone—not only Theta Lake and RingCentral but also the customers of both companies who can now access compliance services they might not have otherwise learned about. “A lot of these regulated businesses don’t even know RegTech tools exist and that they’re integrated into the RingEX suite. The App Gallery is introducing these companies to solutions that can help keep their communications on the right side of regulations.”
Communicate like an enterprise—because you won’t be a startup forever
Anthony Cresci has an important tip for other startups: Look for a vendor that can scale with your company as you grow. “Imagine your company succeeds at least as much as you hope, or even more. Now ask yourself how quickly your team will be able to adjust, and how disruptive it will be if you have to make sweeping changes to your operations.”
“Find the right communications partner now, even if they offer more than you need while you’re in startup mode. If all goes according to plan, you’ll soon be a growing and thriving company, and at that point you’ll want your business communications environment to support your success—not hinder it.”