About Guardare

Dane Fiori, Founder of Guardare, is a dynamic technology executive and innovative sales leader with a remarkable track record of driving year-over-year growth and scaling hyper-growth SaaS companies. Dane’s vision is to simplify cybersecurity for organizations and make robust security accessible and equitable, no matter the resources available.

Before founding Guardare, Dane served as the Executive Vice President of Enterprise Sales at KnowBe4, where he played a pivotal role in the company’s transformation into a unicorn, leading up to its successful IPO in April 2021 and subsequent acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in February 2023. Under Dane's leadership, KnowBe4 experienced transformative growth, significantly expanding its market presence and growing revenue both organically and through acquisitions. His strategic vision, coupled with deep product insights, proved instrumental in navigating complex sales cycles and building high-performing teams that consistently delivered results beyond board expectations.

Prior to his nine years at KnowBe4, Dane held various sales, marketing, and consulting roles at Print Manager and Axiom International, further honing his skills and contributing to their success.

Lars Letonoff, Co-Founder of Guardare, is an internationally recognized strategic visionary and highly regarded technology executive with decades of leadership and go-to-market strategy experience. Lars has a proven track record of successfully building and scaling hyper-growth, global organizations. His entrepreneurial background and ability to commercialize nascent technologies have enabled him to drive innovation to market throughout his career.

Before joining Guardare, Lars was President and Chief Revenue Officer at KnowBe4, where he executed his strategic vision, built a world-class leadership team, and led the growth from a small cybersecurity startup with less than 100 customers to a market-leading, publicly traded powerhouse with more than 55,000 customers, partners, MSPs, and MSSPs. The overwhelming success of KnowBe4 culminated in the acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in February 2023.

Prior to his 12-year tenure at KnowBe4, Lars held a variety of senior executive positions at Sunbelt Software, Prudent Bay Capital Management, Thunder Capital Management, Avalon Research Group, and Bulldog Capital Management. Lars also serves on the boards of DataDome and Limble CMMS, continuing to contribute his expertise to the broader technology and cybersecurity landscape.

Charles Mitchell, Co-Founder of Guardare, has over 15 years of experience in technology and professional services, specializing in product management, scalable growth planning, and the development of performance feedback infrastructures. Prior to Guardare, Charles co-founded CliniConnects, serving as CTO and overseeing the security, stability, and technical implementation of all products and systems.

Charles’s extensive expertise spans project management, enterprise policies for support and deployment, and leading technology teams in diverse industries, including consulting, software integration, and robotics, with a focus on the medical sector. He has also managed teams of engineers working on modern film and broadcasting technologies, IoT innovation, machine learning, adversarial networks, and data mining.

Additionally, Charles has served on the boards of multiple major companies, including publicly traded organizations, where he has provided strategic guidance across various sectors. His broad expertise and visionary leadership continue to drive product innovation at Guardare.

Mike Santos, Co-Founder of Guardare, is an accomplished go-to-market executive with decades of leadership experience across operational, financial, product, marketing, sales, and customer success functions within global high-tech, hyper-growth SaaS, and data analytics consulting organizations.

Prior to co-founding Guardare, Mike served as Executive Vice President of Global Customer Success at KnowBe4, where he built a customer-obsessed team, strategy, and playbooks that optimized the customer experience, improved net retention, and maximized customer lifetime value across all 55,000+ customers, MSPs, and MSSPs. Under Mike’s leadership, the global renewals business thrived and was pivotal to KnowBe4 achieving unicorn status, IPO in April 2021, and acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in February 2023.

Prior to his five-year tenure at KnowBe4, Mike held executive positions at Bottomline Technologies and Anaplan, where his go-to-market leadership contributed to Anaplan’s unicorn status and subsequent IPO in 2018. Mike also served on the UNC advisory board and held executive positions at CSC, NTT Data, HCL Tech, SAP, and Razorfish, where he built and scaled multiple high-tech and data analytics businesses that exceeded performance expectations and delivered significant shareholder value.

Christian Sheedy, Co-Founder of Guardare, is an innovative and experienced technology executive recognized as a transformative change agent with a proven track record of scaling and optimizing sales and marketing teams within hyper-growth environments. Prior to Guardare, Christian served as the Executive Vice President of SMB and MM at KnowBe4, where he developed a highly effective go-to-market strategy and built a robust sales execution engine. His leadership was instrumental in consistently delivering exceptional results that surpassed board expectations, ultimately leading to a successful IPO in April 2021 and a subsequent acquisition by Vista Equity Partners in February 2023.

Christian’s ability to build and execute scalable sales models, optimize business processes, anticipate market trends, and seamlessly integrate the voice of the customer into product innovation has not only driven companies to new levels of success but has also set new industry standards for excellence in SaaS leadership.

With over eight years of impactful contributions at KnowBe4, Christian’s earlier career includes significant management roles at leading organizations such as Samsung Mobile, Wells Fargo, and T-Mobile, where he honed his skills in business development and operational strategy.

Krish Venkataraman, Board Member and Advisor to Guardare, is an accomplished executive with more than 20 years of leadership experience across finance, operations, and strategic execution. Internationally recognized for his versatility and dynamic approach, Krish has excelled as a Board member, President, CFO, and COO, establishing himself as an expert in financial services, cybersecurity, payments, exchange technology, and big data. His expertise in driving IPOs, preparing companies for public offerings, and executing corporate transformations has set industry benchmarks.

Over the last six years, Krish has orchestrated three significant company sales, underscoring his strategic acumen and ability to deliver results. Currently serving as the President of Dataiku, Krish leads the charge in pioneering “everyday AI” for organizations across industries. In his prior role as President and CFO of KnowBe4, he successfully raised multiple rounds of funding from flagship investors such as KKR, Vista, Tiger Management, Goldman Sachs, and Elephant, and was pivotal in leading the number one technology IPO of 2021 and achieving a top 1% shareholder return among technology companies in 2022.

Before his tenure at KnowBe4, Krish held executive leadership roles at Dealogic, Syncsort Inc., NYSE Euronext, Lehman Brothers, AMEX, and Deloitte. His expertise spans not only traditional finance activities but also encompasses sales, operations, human resources, IT, and legal functions. Krish exemplifies a new breed of executive, combining financial stewardship with operational expertise and strategic foresight to consistently drive organizations to exceed expectations.