Depending on the industry, once legal and compliance get involved, you can face a number of obstacles. Regulatory compliance like HIPAA, SOC2 is a common one (

Depending on the industry, once legal and compliance get involved, you can face a number of obstacles. Regulatory compliance like HIPAA, SOC2 is a common one (most small startups I've seen can bullshit their way around this for a bit); many early stage startups won't have this in place since it requires a not-insignificant investment in time and money. Some industries like life sciences will request external/3rd party audits of your system and system validation documentation (documented formal testing, check out "GAMP5 V-Model" if you're curious). Life sciences also wants to see your validated QA system, your employee training records, your internal SOPs, etc. IT teams may want 3rd party security audits, attestations of data residency (EU companies especially), your policies around privacy and process level security (again, dependent on industry and teams). Some will stonewall you by demanding specific integrations (e.g. SAML-based SSO, SCIM, etc.) that are just too early in many cases. Sometimes the purchasing team will ask about your funding because they want to know how much runway you have and whether you'll be around 6 months from now.