Why traditional compliance tools fail founders and how an open-source approach fixes the industry's pricing, flexibility, and lock-in problems.
In our past experience, my cofounder & I faced a harsh reality with compliance
tools:
- Basic functionality hidden behind a $10k paywall
- Rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions that are not tailored to your business
- No guidance, leaving you guessing what you actually need to do
That’s why we are building Probo.
When building a new product, you’re juggling dozens of priorities. Then
suddenly, a customer asks for a SOC 2 report.
- You will take a 30 minutes sales call to get a price indexed on how desperate
you are
- You pay to access a 80 tasks board and 20 templates that are the same for a
F500 or a small company
- You invest time to complete this generic board list, and realize you have to
pay for an external auditor ontop of your tool
- As you grow and add new framework, the bill get insanely high for the exact
same templates and tasks.
Ultimately, you end up implementing measures you don’t need, maintaining
processes you barely understand, all while paying premium prices for basic
functionality. After speaking with over 100 founders, one thing is clear:
everyone feels extorted and locked into these platforms.
Time for a change: open-source compliance
Here is our vision of how compliance should work:
-
Core frameworks and templates should be free: We’re making those tasks and
templates freely available to everyone. The fundamentals of compliance
shouldn’t be locked behind paywalls.
-
Complete data ownership: Your compliance data belongs to you. You should
not be locked in a supplier that will end up charging you $100k+ as you grow
just because you can’t easily leave.
-
Build your own integrations instead of taking endless screenshots: If an
integration is missing, feel free to build it and add it to the product. It
will save you time in the long run and benefit the whole community.
-
Pay only for actual value-added services, with transparent pricing: You
should be able to test the product before you buy. Our price will always be
fair, transparent and predictable.
If you’re aligned with our vision and would like to contribute, please reach
out!
