We can't also deny them, but we're getting tired. We're too small to hire someone for this and as a founder, my time can surely be used better somewhere else.
How do small startups handle this without getting SOC2?
It's competitive out there. Using an advantage to your company's benefit as a founder is your job - not work that is beneath you. Fill it out and bring some money in.
This assumes that you're far enough along in the sales process that there's a high likelihood of close (you've already negotiated price and timeline), and the deal value should generally be five figures or above. This means it's worth your time.
Slightly risky hack: you can buy yourself some additional time by answering some questions with "Documentation will provided separately", and often times clients don't follow up to ask for it.
Pick some sort of standard, for example CAIQ and have an always-up-to-date version of it. You’d be surprised how many customers would accept it if you tell them “hey - we use a standard - is this acceptable?”
After that - figure out what certifications will be advantageous. Then automate, automate, automate with something like Hyperproof/Vanta. You will still need a compliance person or more likely a team at that point, so those certs have to unlock some serious money. Otherwise - just stay on top of VSA’s until running a compliance program makes sense.
Just don’t fall for the baseless “SOC2 equals enterprise customers” spiel. Analyse your pipeline and regulatory environment and make a call based on that. So many startups spend millions running a compliance program that brings in thousands.
Build up a database of the questions and your answers so that you already have most of the answers close at hand.
Unfortunately it's a cost of doing business and as someone else pointed out. If you've reached the stage where IT is sending you questionnaires you are probably very close to closing the deal.
The size of the deal should make filling these things in just an inconvenience.
My biased answer is to use one of the SaaS products that automate this (I work for one).
If you don’t want to use a 3rd party, they do become easier over time. They’re still a mental drain to do manually, but you’ll find patterns in the questions that you’ll learn to answer pretty easily.
OMG, $400/month lowest plan.
Unfortunately, so is the production of the RFP in the first place. So we will end up with machines talking to machines.
Copy/paste my library of security questions and answers into GPT-4, copy paste the customer question, answers were as accurate as a human doing it!
b) save your answers, make a common security practices document that you provide and ask the clients to get back to you with any gaps or questions
The reason for having security documentation isnt so that it can answer the questions the client has. No one will actually read it. The thing is, people have an unlimited appetite for wasting your time if it's free for them to do so. By pointing them at documentation and having them get back to you with questions, you're now making it their problem instead of yours. Some clients will say no, fill out the questionnaire. You can politely bow out with those clients. Others will glance at your docs and decided it's not worth it to them to figure out if you actually answer all their questions, so they'll just check the "security review complete" box in their buying process.