Turning Consultant Work into Software
Sam Li and Austin Ogilvie, co-CEOs of Laika, on the compliance-as-a-service business model
The core advantage in compliance automation comes from turning expert work into product requirements, not from skipping the expert layer. Laika is watching where customers ask for help, which controls still need explanation, and where auditors reject simplistic outputs, then using that workflow data to decide what can become software. That is how a services-heavy process turns into a repeatable SaaS product without breaking audit quality.
-
Laika’s product already mirrors the consultant workflow. Customers connect tools like AWS, GitHub, JIRA, and HR systems, the software pulls evidence and monitors controls, then experts and auditors use the same system to finish the audit. That shared workflow gives Laika a direct map of which human steps are repetitive enough to automate next.
-
This is the same playbook used by tech-enabled services leaders like Carta and Pilot. First, learn the messy manual job in detail. Then build software around the recurring pieces. In compliance, that matters even more because auditor interpretation, policy review, access checks, and exception handling still depend on judgment, so bad product design shows up immediately in customer questions and audit friction.
-
The broader market structure reinforces this approach. Vanta, Secureframe, and Laika all started with SOC 2 preparation, then expanded by reusing the same integrations and control data across ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and other frameworks. The better a company understands the underlying human work, the easier it is to package one workflow into many compliance products.
Over time, the winners in compliance will look less like consultant networks and more like workflow systems that encode expert judgment one task at a time. The companies with the best record of how architects, auditors, and customers actually work will have the clearest path to higher margins, faster onboarding, and expansion from audit prep into year round security operations.