Why startups and scaleups need to care about data protection (and it’s not for the reasons you might think)

I recently caught up with Anthony Rose, co-founder of SeedLegals. In our conversation we talked about data protection, startups and the perception of GDPR as being something only mature companies need to think about. Early on in our discussion Anthony raised an interesting point about the perception of data protection for startups:

Startups are focused on acquiring customers and getting investment, and whilst they probably “should” care about data protection, they always have other priorities which are more pressing and urgent.

And this isn’t surprising – if you’re fighting to find new customers and investment, pulling resources to deal with something you see as purely “compliance” is counterintuitive. Furthermore, it’s unlikely you’re ever going to be pulled up before a regulator and fined, so why bother?

And this is all true. But I think focusing on fines and sanctions misses the point. In my view, rather than seeing data protection as something compliance-related which will slow you down and be a cost to your business, it should instead be viewed as an opportunity to be leveraged – no matter what stage your business is at. And the best bit is that it needn’t involve a significant amount of work.

After I put this idea to Anthony, he asked me what benefits and competitive advantages I thought dealing with GDPR could bring.