SaaS startups are working on acquiring enterprise clients earlier than they used to, and this is changing their road map.

“What I’ve seen is more and more companies are launching with table stakes enterprise features […] whereas those used to be added in at closer to $5-10 million in annual recurring revenue,” tweeted David Peterson, a partner at Angular Ventures.

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These must-have enterprise features may look like acronym soup at first, from SSO to SOC 2 and ISO 27001. But they actually come down to a fundamental need: trust. And just because the vendor is a startup doesn’t mean that standards can be lowered.

“Enterprise customers expect startups to go through the same sales procurement processes and meet the same security, privacy, and compliance requirements as other vendors,” VC firm Work-Bench noted in a playbook co-authored with New York-based startup Laika.