Trust Engineering: Building Security Leadership at Early-Stage Startups

During BSidesSF 2025, I got the privilege of delivering a talk titled "Trust Engineering: Building Security Leadership at Early-Stage Startups" to help practitioners better understand what it truly means to be the first security hire at a growing B2B SaaS startup.

This post is an AI-distilled summary of that talk, pulling out the key bits of practical advice for those taking on (or considering) this unique and high-impact role.

Watch the full talk below, or if you're short on time, keep scrolling for the key takeaways and implementation guide (but you’ll miss the funny parts and the memes 👀 ).

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways

• Why Startups Hire Security Leaders

• How Security at Startups Is Different

• Traits That Set You Up for Success

• The Reality of Expectations

• What is Trust Engineering?

• The 5-Step Trust Engineering Framework

  • 1. Align With Sales and Marketing

  • 2. Make Security Work Visible

  • 3. Use Compliance as a Security Tool

  • 4. Make Clear Decisions

  • 5. Build a Scalable Roadmap

• Closing Thought

Key Takeaways

• Trust Engineering is a mental model for positioning yourself as a business leader first, and a security leader second.

• Startups don’t hire security leaders for security; they hire because of external pressures (customer demands, compliance, sales competition).

• Success hinges on translation, diplomacy, and influence far more than technical tooling.

• Security is not a department, it’s a cross-functional glue that earns its place when it helps close deals and reduce friction.

• Leverage compliance frameworks to justify resourcing, not fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

Why Startups Hire Security Leaders

Spoiler: it's not out of some burning desire to "be secure."

Startups hire security leaders when:

• Customer demands require it (third-party risk reviews).

• Sales deals stall without security assurances.

• Regulated markets demand certifications (e.g., SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI).

• Founders need to check a box to close a funding round.

These are external triggers, not internal vision. Understand this context from day one.

How Security at Startups Is Different

Security in early-stage startups:

• Lacks mature infrastructure.

• Comes with no team, little budget, and lots of chaos.

• Requires scrappiness and persuasion.

You're often alone, with only a laptop, a shared Slack channel, and a lot of ambiguity. Your job is to make sensible progress quickly, without being a bottleneck.

Traits That Set You Up for Success

Founders tend to look for:

• Startup experience: You understand urgency and improvisation.

• Past leadership roles: You've made executive decisions.

• Zero-to-one experience: You've built something from scratch.

• Comfort with constraints: You know how to operate without resources.

Your ability to create clarity and direction in a messy environment is more valuable than any certification.

The Reality of Expectations

What you think:

What they think:

Your job is to reconcile that gap. You were hired to secure the business, not just the software.

What is Trust Engineering?

Trust Engineering is a mental model for:

• Building credibility with execs and engineers.

• Making security visible, non-blocking, and revenue-aligned.

• Embedding security into the company’s growth story.

It’s how you build influence before authority.

The 5-Step Trust Engineering Framework

1. Align With Sales and Marketing

• Address customer security questions proactively.

• Clean up overpromised features (e.g., "we do zero trust").

• Turn security into a sales asset.

2. Make Security Work Visible

• Centralize docs and FAQ responses.

• Share answers to security questionnaires.

• Maintain clarity on what security is and who owns what.

3. Use Compliance as a Security Tool

• Treat compliance frameworks as multipliers, not burdens.

• Justify work through SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, etc.

• Avoid FUD; use real frameworks to sell your needs.

4. Make Clear Decisions

• Set expectations explicitly (e.g., response times, process ownership).

• Define what matters and what doesn’t.

• Clarity > consensus in small teams.

5. Build a Scalable Roadmap

• Balance risk, compliance, and engineering needs.

• Embed compliance deadlines and controls into planning.

• Show that you’re not just reacting; you have a plan.

Closing Thought

If you can master trust engineering, you’ll not only build security at your startup, but you’ll also become part of the company’s core value engine.