\\ 14 Scale Security Can the startup support the scale of the customer’s user Startups told us this is #1 on everyone’s list. It was base or infrastructure? Increasingly, we see customers mentioned in every interview we did with a CXO. The need want to validate that scale rather than taking it on faith. is often driven by regulation such as GDPR, or internal “Scalability” is defined not just as technical (e.g. can requirements for sophisticated access control, and the your software process transactions quickly, or handle key thing here is to have a clear approach to customer thousands of concurrent users) — but in deployability- data. Where does it reside, who owns it, who manages it, in-practice. This includes ease of use, rollout plan, and what protections does it have? What vendor risk does reporting, integrations into existing technology, the startup itself have? Startups should get the “security administration workflows, SLA’s. Customers are also checklist” early from large potential customers, and evaluating who is going to help them deploy — for address it proactively. example, the existence and quality of the startup’s sales engineering or implementation team, if needed. We see startups repeatedly miss on security and “ resiliency — they have the functionality and agility we want These small companies spend so much time selling us on but they don’t understand the rigor around security we need. “ amazing technology and what it can do. They should be And it’s not a choice we have, it’s regulatory.”—CIO, Large telling us how easy it is to get it into our legacy environment Public Payments Company and not belittle us for having legacy. Our newest system A lot of [large customers] will also go through extensive due is twelve years old. It’s not just in banking: that mismatch “ diligence — being able to go through that with ease will set between startups and larger companies is the biggest you apart. It’ll show that you’re ready.”—Robert Kim, barrier.” —Thomas Nielsen, Chief Digital Officer of Co-founder of Ritual Deutsche Bank Startups Serving The Enterprise