Our journey to becoming compliant with SOC 2, a widely adopted security standard in the SaaS industry, began during Y Combinator's final stages in April 2023. We had just over 50 paying customers and only three people on our team, Bu, Zeno, and myself, and were not initially thinking about compliance but recognized its importance for long-term security investment. We chose SOC 2 because it is a well-rounded standard that covers practical security measures and organization controls, and we used a compliance tool to help collect evidence automatically, with Vanta being the chosen platform due to its real-time monitoring and robust automation capabilities. After completing a readiness check and observation window, we passed our first Type II audit with zero exceptions in November 2023, demonstrating the importance of proactive compliance and continuous improvement to maintain security standards over time.