Most B2B startups begin with founders solving their own problems. But the truly exceptional ones emerge when those founders discover their personal pain points reflect an entire industry in transition. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Austin Ogilvie shared how his experience with enterprise security reviews at his previous startup led to building Thoroughpass, a company transforming how businesses handle digital compliance.

Finding the Right Market at the Right Time

The contrast between Austin’s two startups tells a compelling story about market timing. While his first company took four years to reach $1.5 million in ARR, Thoroughpass hit that milestone in just 12-13 months. Even more impressive, “the one to 10 million we achieved in six quarters or something like that,” Austin notes. This dramatic difference wasn’t just about better execution—it was about being perfectly positioned as the digital compliance landscape exploded.

The catalyst came from Austin’s previous startup, Yhat, where enterprise deals with companies like “Intuit, doximity, Stripe, PayPal, Johnson” revealed a critical insight: compliance wasn’t just a bottom-line issue—it was increasingly affecting top-line growth. As Austin explains, “If you’re a software company and you don’t take security and privacy controls seriously, not only is that a bad thing to do because it puts the company theoretically in jeopardy, but it also is really damaging to streamlined sales.”

Building the Right Team for the Mission

Instead of rushing to market alone, Austin took time to assemble the right founding team. He connected with Sam, who shared a surprisingly parallel background—both UVA alumni, both Y Combinator graduates, both experienced in New York tech. But the missing piece was Eva, who brought two decades of experience managing cybersecurity governance at Citigroup.

This combination of perspectives—founders who understood the customer pain point firsthand and an expert who knew how to solve it—proved crucial. As Austin explains, “Sam and I came to be commercially and intellectually interested in this space, but we don’t come from the solution side. Right? We care about this set of problems because we ourselves have these problems.”

Executing a Focused Go-to-Market Strategy

Rather than getting distracted by competitive noise, Thoroughpass maintained laser focus on their core vision. “We just ran our playbook, we just ran our game, and we’re very focused on serving our customers with the best experience for getting through it audits in a way that we ourselves would want,” Austin shares.

Their key differentiation came from a crucial insight: “If you’re passively collecting all of the digital exhaust that’s relevant in compliance audits, that’s great. But if you have to export all the data and go talk to a separate cottage industry audit firm, it really defeats the purpose of all of the automation in the first place.”

This understanding led Thoroughpass to build not just tools for companies to collect compliance data, but also solutions for auditors to leverage that structured data effectively. The company positioned itself at the intersection of three growing markets: governance and risk compliance (GRC), IT auditing, and third-party vendor risk management.

Navigating Brand Evolution

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of their journey was a complete rebrand. Originally called Leica, the company faced confusion with similarly-named competitors. The solution? “We did a wholesale rebrand, changed the name of the company, changed the name of all the email addresses and the website and the whole thing, all an entirely new messaging framework, totally different copy.”

The technical complexity was staggering: “We have whatever 100 or so SaaS products that we ourselves use. Our web application integrates with tons of different APIs. We have APIs that are consumed by other companies, all of that. Everything has to change.” Austin’s advice to founders is clear: “Get the name of the company right as early as possible and just buy the domain you’re going to want.”

Looking Ahead

Thoroughpass’s vision extends beyond just compliance management. They’re building “this single pane of glass where all software companies come to manage their IT audits across any of these standards.” As software companies increasingly evaluate each other’s security practices, the opportunity continues to grow. “If Slack is selling or buying something from another software company, they’re now engaging in these kinds of third party vendor risk management problems.”

For founders watching Thoroughpass’s journey, the lesson is clear: sometimes the biggest opportunities come from solving the problems that are holding back an entire industry’s growth. By focusing on removing friction from enterprise sales processes, Thoroughpass isn’t just building a compliance platform—they’re helping accelerate the entire B2B software ecosystem.