Every SaaS founder hits the same wall. A enterprise prospect asks for your SOC 2 report. You don't have one. The deal stalls. Six months later you're paying twice—once for a rushed audit, once for the controls you didn't bake in early.
There's a calmer way.
Don't start at seed. Just set the table.
At pre-Series A, SOC 2 itself isn't worth the spend (~$20K–$40K for Type 1, plus tooling). But three habits cost you almost nothing and save you everything later:
- MFA on every SaaS account, mandatory. Use Google Workspace or Okta as your identity layer.
- Single AWS organization, with separate accounts for prod, staging, and dev. SSO via IAM Identity Center, not long-lived keys.
- Code in GitHub with branch protection on main. Every prod change goes through a PR. Logs preserved.
None of this is 'compliance.' All of it is what the audit will check anyway. Build the habit, not the binder.
At Series A, decide: Type 1 or Type 2
Type 1 is a point-in-time snapshot. Type 2 covers a window of 3–12 months of evidence. Enterprises want Type 2. The shortcut: get Type 1 to unblock pipeline now, start the Type 2 observation period the same day.
Pick the tool, but pick deliberately
Vanta, Drata, Secureframe—they all do the same job: pull evidence automatically from your stack, hand you a policy template, route it to an auditor. Don't agonize over the choice. Do verify two things:
- Native integrations with your actual stack (AWS, GitHub, Google Workspace, your IDP).
- Auditor partners you can talk to before you sign. Auditor quality varies wildly.
Controls that always come up
- 01Background checks on hires. Use a service. Don't skip contractors.
- 02Annual security awareness training. KnowBe4 or similar. Track completions.
- 03Quarterly access reviews. Boring spreadsheet, big audit weight.
- 04Vulnerability scanning on production. Snyk, Dependabot, or AWS Inspector—pick one and act on it.
- 05Incident response policy that's been read by humans. Run a tabletop exercise once.
Budget honestly
Type 1 + tooling + auditor + the time of one engineer: $40K–$60K. Plan for it like you'd plan for a hire. Done right, it pays back in the first enterprise deal it unblocks.
Done late, in a panic, with rushed controls? It pays back too—just half as much, and twice as painfully.