Founders aren’t excited about compliance.
Ask a startup team about SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and you’ll usually get a shrug or a sigh. To many, it’s manual busywork. Only a box to check once a big customer asks for it. A project you throw money at to get a badge, then move on.
But, that thinking is now outdated.
In reality, compliance, when approached the right way, is not a cost center. It can be a growth trigger.
It signals maturity to buyers, lowers friction for sales, and builds trust at scale. For startups eyeing enterprise customers or global markets, getting your compliance house in order is no longer optional. It’s proving to be the moat that helps you climb upmarket and stay there.
This isn’t a pitch for more process. After working with 5000+ companies on their compliance journeys, we noticed a pattern: The ones that treated compliance as a GTM move didn’t just pass audits, they unlocked bigger customers, stronger partnerships, and faster sales cycles.
Let’s break it down.
If you talk to any founder who’s sold to a large customer, they’ll tell you: “the larger deals don’t close without passing security due diligence.”
For early-stage companies, especially in SaaS, there’s a critical moment when you're ready to sell upmarket but your prospect’s security team is not ready to trust you yet. Compliance frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 bridge that gap. It pretty much says, we’ve done the work, we take security seriously, you’re not taking a risk by working with us.
That’s where compliance stops being a background task and becomes a front-line enabler.
When we spoke to the CISO of Sitoo, a world-leading Unified Commerce Platform, he highlighted how their strategic focus on compliance translated into tangible business benefits. Post-ISO audit, Sitoo gained entry into critical sales meetings, showcasing its commitment to security and compliance
Compliance isn’t an outlier. It's proof that your business is ready for serious buyers.
A common disconnect is that compliance lives with security or legal teams but the impact can also be felt by sales. Nothing triggers more uncertainty in a deal than a security review you’re not prepared for.
That’s where SOC 2, ISO 27001, and similar frameworks pull their weight by not just helping you pass reviews, but in preemptively removing potential road blocks.
What we’re seeing is compliance enables companies with tangible proof points: clear policies, audited controls, security docs, and the all-powerful badge. Instead of scrambling for answers mid-deal, reps can confidently say: “We’re SOC 2 Type II certified. Here's our trust center.”
According to insights from Secureframe, 72% of businesses have completed a compliance audit specifically to win new business, and 29% have lost deals due to missing certifications.
Early founders have to keep in mind that compliance is expensive when it’s reactive but becomes a revenue driver when it’s proactive.
It’s easy to assume that compliance is something that matters only to customers. But investors are paying close attention too.
When VCs evaluate a startup, especially one aiming to sell into regulated or enterprise markets, they’re not just looking at product-market fit or growth rate, they’re also assessing risk. This assessment includes operational maturity, security posture, and how well you’re set up to scale.
During diligence, lack of basic compliance can raise red flags, especially in sectors like fintech, healthtech, or AI, where data handling is front and center. It introduces doubts about whether the company can scale responsibly, or if it will hit friction when trying to go upmarket.
On the flip side, it’s seen investors push portfolio companies to prioritize compliance early, not just to de-risk the business, but to unlock higher contract values and better exit optionality.
For founders looking to raise serious money, compliance isn’t just operational hygiene. It’s part of the pitch.
Enterprise buyers care about how you operate. If you’re handling sensitive data, deploying to their infrastructure, or integrating into critical workflows, they want to know you're not a liability.
That’s where frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR etc. stop being “nice to have” and start becoming mandatory. In fact, for many US and EU-based enterprises, these aren’t preferences but procurement requirements. No certification, no deal.
According to PwC’s Trust in Data Report, a key benefit of strong data security is increased revenue: “By virtually every metric, organizations with more mature information governance practices are better positioned to achieve revenue growth and gain stakeholder trust.
Also, cross-border expansion brings in regional compliance expectations: GDPR in Europe, data residency rules in places like Australia and India, privacy frameworks in California and beyond. Starting with well-recognized global standards lays the groundwork for this expansion. It shows buyers and partners that you’ve done the work to be a trusted vendor, regardless of region.
In essence, if you're serious about climbing upstream or going global, compliance isn’t a barrier. It's the gate pass.
One of the biggest reasons compliance feels like a drag is because it’s often siloed. Security and compliance teams build controls. Sales teams chase deals. The two rarely talk until a deal hits a snag over a questionnaire or missing documentation. That disconnect leads to frustration, delays, and finger-pointing.
The fix isn’t by having multiple meetings. It’s alignment with the right tools and a shared playbook.
Modern GRC platforms (like Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Secureframe etc.) make it easier to centralize compliance: controls, audit evidence, policies, security documentation. But tooling alone won’t fix the handoff problem. You need structure.
Smart teams set up recurring syncs cross-functionally. They co-own security collateral: FAQs, decks, security pages, auto-filled questionnaires. By looping in compliance early for RFPs or redlines instead of rushing them at the last minute, you avoid unwanted friction and delays.
Even small process changes make a difference:
And this translates directly to unlocking revenue.
Buyers judge books by their covers. And startups by their footers. Those little badges (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR-ready) are credibility signals. They tell visitors, prospects, and partners: We’ve done the work. You can trust us.
That matters more than ever in crowded markets. When your buyer is evaluating three vendors that all claim to be “secure,” the one with third-party attestations will stand out. Especially in B2B, where most deals involve risk and scrutiny, those logos do a lot of quiet but important work.
The best time to start on compliance isn’t when a big customer asks for it. It’s much before, when you still have the flexibility to do it right, without slowing down deals or scrambling under pressure.
Compliance, when treated as a strategic investment, does more than check a box. It shortens sales cycles, builds trust at scale and signals to investors and customers that you're not just building fast, you’re building responsibly.
It’s easy to push it down the roadmap, especially when there are features to ship and deals to close. But the startups that prioritize compliance early are the ones that move faster later. They don’t stall in procurement. They don’t lose sleep over audits. They don’t get flagged during diligence.
The shift is simple: stop thinking of compliance as overhead. Think of it as infrastructure. Like product quality or customer support, it’s something that pays off every day quietly, but meaningfully.
Because in the end, security doesn’t slow you down.