July 2026 4 min read

The hidden cost of waiting on SOC 2

A deal was three weeks from closing. Then procurement asked for a SOC 2 report.

The founder didn't have one. The deal didn't die — but it stalled for a quarter while the team scrambled to start a process that should've begun months earlier. This isn't rare. It's becoming the default experience for B2B companies selling into enterprise accounts.

85%+

Key Stat

of enterprise buyers now require SOC 2 before signing.

A few things are driving it. Enterprise buyers have raised the bar — SOC 2 (or equivalent) is now a gating requirement for most procurement teams, not a nice-to-have. Founders consistently underestimate the timeline: SOC 2 Type II requires an observation period, typically 3–6 months of auditors verifying controls actually worked, not just existed on paper. That window can't be compressed after the fact.

APAC companies face an extra lag here too. Much of the tooling and specialist capacity in this space has been built around US and UK timelines, so companies in Australia and Singapore often discover the requirement later in their sales cycle than their US counterparts.

The companies that handle this well don't treat SOC 2 as a certificate to grab right before a deal closes. They treat it as infrastructure, built during a normal maturity curve, before it's urgently needed. The cost of waiting isn't paperwork — it's deals that take longer to close, or don't close at all, because the paperwork wasn't ready when it mattered.

If you're a Series A/B company starting to sell into enterprise accounts, the right time to think about this is before a specific deal makes it unavoidable.

Written by Paulo Da Silva, Founder, StackBridge Systems