That's a difficult question to answer. It shouldn't be, but it is. The reality is, SOC2 is a sales-enablement tool. You should:

* Run a SOC2/compliance program that is entirely disjoint from your security practice.

* Defer SOC2 until the work required to sell into customers demanding it (phone calls, questionnaires) exceeds the cost of obtaining SOC2.

* Prepare for SOC2 by making simple best-practices engineering decisions, in particular single-signon for virtually everything and protected branches for all your repositories.

* Do not allow SOC2 to force any engineering decisions that you would not have intuitively made yourself (this is a big risk with the evidence-gathering platforms like Drata, Delve, and Vanta).

* Assume your SOC2 Type I report will suffice as a first attestation (ie: buy you 1 year of time) with all your customers, and understand that you cannot fail to obtain a Type I; your Type I is guaranteed.

Over 5-6 years of discussing SOC2 with other security practitioners pretty intensively, the overwhelming weight of the evidence is that ~practically nobody actually reads SOC2 reports; they just check the box for each vendor and move on. Plan accordingly.

Since you know a lot about SOC: is SOC2 Type I (point in time) enough to close enterprise sales? Is it worth getting for a new startup (seems super simple)?