Compliance from commit one. Not from the audit letter.
The window between “we'll fix it later” and the $2M remediation sprint is shorter than founders think. Series A due diligence, FDA 510(k), FCA authorisation, SOC 2 Type II — compliance gaps kill deals and delay launches. The founders who survive are the ones who built it right the first time.
The Standard Path
Month 1
Build fast. Compliance is a later problem.
Month 6
Architecture locked in. PHI flowing unlogged.
Month 14
Audit letter. Due diligence opens. FDA review begins.
Month 18
$2–4M remediation sprint. Deal on hold. Launch delayed.
Why It Fails
The standard path is a trap.
Build fast, add compliance later. It sounds like a reasonable trade-off until you understand what “later” actually costs. Architecture decisions made in month 1 determine your compliance bill in month 18. PHI data flows, access controls, and encryption boundaries cannot be retrofitted onto a live production system without rebuilding it. That rebuild costs 2–4× the original build and takes longer than the original build did.
01 The Audit Letter Problem
The OCR investigation or SOC 2 auditor letter arrives 14 months after launch — after the architecture is set, after the data is live, after the cost of change has compounded. Architecture decisions made in month 1 determine your compliance bill in month 18.
02 The Series A Kill Shot
1 in 3 Series A deals is delayed or killed by compliance gaps discovered in due diligence. The data room opens, the buyer's technical team runs a security questionnaire, and the gaps that were always there become the reason the valuation drops 30%.
03 The FDA / FCA Wall
FDA 510(k) and FCA authorisation both require software documentation written to a standard that was not designed after the fact. Pre-submission meetings get cancelled when the technical file doesn't exist. These are not gaps you can close in a weekend.
What We Build
Three tracks. One principle.
Every track is fixed price, fixed scope, and ends with a production system — not a report. Choose the track that matches your stage.
01 Compliance Foundation
Pre-Series A
8–12 weeks · Fixed price
HIPAA baseline, SOC 2 Type I readiness, and GDPR data model built into your architecture before a single audit letter lands. We design the data flows, access controls, and encryption boundaries from the first sprint.
- HIPAA Security Rule technical safeguards mapped to code
- PHI data flow diagrams + BAA templates
- GDPR-compliant data model and retention policies
- SOC 2 Type I readiness assessment and gap closure
- Incident response plan and runbooks
Deliverable: Compliance-certified architecture. Audit-ready documentation. SOC 2 Type I report.
02 Scale Track
Series A / Series B
Ongoing · Fixed scope per phase
Full SOC 2 Type II, FCA or FDA pre-submission readiness, and enterprise security posture. Built for founders who are about to enter due diligence and need the gaps closed before the data room opens.
- SOC 2 Type II — 6-month observation period support
- FCA authorisation technical file preparation
- FDA 510(k) pre-submission software documentation
- Enterprise security posture and penetration testing
- Vendor risk management and third-party BAA programme
Deliverable: Enterprise-ready. Due-diligence-ready. Audit-ready.
03 Regulated Product Build
Regulated-Industry Founders
Fixed price · Fixed scope
For founders who want to build the product and the compliance simultaneously. EHR integrations, clinical decision support, fintech APIs — built compliance-native from the first commit, not retrofitted after the audit letter.
- EHR integrations (Epic, Cerner, HL7 FHIR) — HIPAA-native
- Clinical decision support — FDA SaMD pathway from day one
- Fintech APIs — FCA or SEC-compliant by architecture
- ALICE compliance gate in your CI/CD from week one
- Full IP transfer on delivery — no vendor lock-in
Deliverable: Production system with compliance baked in. Not bolted on.
Due Diligence
Compliance gaps that kill Series A deals.
The data room opens. The buyer's technical team runs the security questionnaire. The gaps that were always there become the reason the valuation drops — or the deal dies. These are the eight most common killers.
- No SOC 2 report
- PHI stored without audit logs
- No encryption at rest/transit documentation
- No incident response plan
- Vendor contracts with no BAAs
- GDPR data maps missing
- No penetration test evidence
- Access controls not documented
Not a Consultancy
We build the systems. Not the report.
The standard startup compliance path: hire a consultancy for an $80,000 assessment that delivers a 200-page report — and leaves.
That report sits in a Google Drive. The gaps it identifies are still open six months later because nobody built the systems to close them. The consultancy is long gone — onto the next engagement.
We are not a compliance consultancy. We are an engineering firm that builds compliance-native systems. Our deliverable is working code, production infrastructure, and audit documentation that was generated by the engineers who built the thing — not written by a junior analyst who never touched the codebase.