About
Why we started
Dana ran security and compliance operations at a Series C infrastructure company and took it through two SOC 2 Type II audits. Both times, the surprise was not that the company was insecure. The surprise was how much of the work was translation: reading criteria written for auditors, working out what the company already did, and writing it down in a shape a reviewer would accept.
Marcus had spent years building systems that read documents and had to be right about what a document actually said, including a legal review product where being confidently wrong was the only unacceptable outcome. When the two of them compared notes, the problem was the same problem.
Compliance platforms had solved evidence collection and left the reading and writing alone, because until recently nothing could do it. That changed. So we started Trellis.
The founding team works on Trellis full time and has since the company was formed. Pre-Seed, raised under $1,000,000 from angel investors who have operated security and compliance programs.
The team
Co-founder and CEO
Ran security and compliance operations at a Series C infrastructure company, where she took the company through two SOC 2 Type II audits and watched both consume a quarter of engineering time. Started Trellis to remove that tax.
Co-founder and CTO
Built retrieval and evaluation systems for document-heavy workflows, including a legal review product that had to be right about what a document actually said. Owns the model layer and the evidence checks that keep Trellis honest.
Head of Compliance Research
Former audit senior at a regional firm that issues SOC 2 reports. She writes the control mappings and reviews every default policy template Trellis ships.
Founding Engineer
Previously built ingestion pipelines that parsed millions of unstructured documents a day. Owns the connectors and the ingest path.
What we hold to
Our score is arithmetic on control statuses, not a model's opinion. It is a less impressive claim and a more useful one.
A generous first result feels good and costs the customer a readiness call three weeks later. We would rather be harsh on day one.
We are not your auditor and never will be. Preparation and assurance are different jobs, and the second one is licensed for a reason.
Reading, deciding and writing is the part that eats the quarter. It is unglamorous, and it is the whole company.
Founding engineers, a designer and a first account executive.