Tech debt in a startup context usually means rushed code and skipped refactoring. But there’s a parallel category of IT infrastructure debt that catches founders off guard during due diligence: operational and security decisions made fast during early growth that cost significantly more to remediate than they would have to implement correctly the first time.
Series A investors and their technical advisors increasingly look at IT posture as part of diligence — particularly for B2B SaaS companies, companies handling sensitive data, or businesses pursuing enterprise customers. Here’s what they find, and what it costs to fix.
The five most common IT liabilities found in Series A diligence
1. No formal access management ($8,000–$15,000 to remediate)
Shared admin credentials, former employees with active accounts, contractors with persistent access to production systems. The cleanup requires an audit, a remediation sprint, and new policy enforcement. Companies that implement an IdP with SSO from the start spend $22/user/month and avoid this entirely.
2. No endpoint management ($5,000–$12,000 to remediate)
Unmanaged devices, inconsistent encryption, no remote wipe capability. Retroactive MDM enrollment across 30 existing devices with varied configurations requires dedicated implementation time and often triggers device replacement for machines that can’t meet policy requirements.
3. Missing or incomplete data backup ($3,000–$8,000 to remediate)
No verified backup of SaaS platforms, no tested recovery process, no documented RTO/RPO. Investors want to see that you know what would happen to your business in a data loss event and that you have a tested plan for recovery.
4. No incident response plan ($4,000–$10,000 to remediate)
A documented, tested incident response plan is increasingly a checkbox item in B2B enterprise sales, cyber insurance applications, and investor diligence. Creating one retroactively — with proper tabletop exercises and stakeholder sign-off — takes meaningful time and often requires outside expertise.
5. Vendor and SaaS sprawl ($6,000–$15,000 to remediate)
Dozens of SaaS subscriptions with no central inventory, no ownership assignment, and no offboarding process. Some companies discover active subscriptions for tools used by employees who left two years ago. The audit and consolidation process is time-consuming and often surfaces security exposure.
Total remediation cost: $26,000–$60,000
This is the range for a 25–50 person company that deferred infrastructure decisions through seed stage. Compare it to the cost of implementing these controls proactively during early growth: $2,000–$5,000 in setup costs and $150–$300/month in tooling.
Beyond the remediation cost, there’s a deal risk component: diligence findings become negotiation leverage. Infrastructure gaps that can’t be remediated quickly can result in escrow holdbacks, adjusted valuations, or deal delays.
If you’re 12–18 months from a raise, now is the right time to assess your IT posture. ARC offers a pre-raise IT readiness assessment specifically designed for growth-stage companies.
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