From Counsel to Compliance
Announcing Kertos’ Series A to Build Europe’s Compliance Desk
by Kilian Schmidt, Founder & CEO, Kertos
When I started my career as a lawyer and legal counsel, compliance wasn’t exactly a passion — it was a necessity. My days were filled with GDPR data subject requests (DSRs), audits, and endless admin. It wasn’t love at first sight.
But the more I did it, the more one thought kept coming back: If this frustrates me so much, how many others are stuck in the same loop?
In Munich, Johannes and Alex were already deep in R&D, leading innovation at a tech lab and running a Company. When fate brought us together, it clicked almost immediately: legal insight + product vision + engineering power.
That frustration was the spark for Kertos. We started small: automating the most painful GDPR workflow, the Data Subject Request (DSR). Instead of lawyers or privacy managers drowning in spreadsheets and emails, Kertos handled it end-to-end. It worked — and it made us ask: What if compliance as a whole could run like this?
From a single workflow to the Compliance Desk
Fast forward to today, and Kertos has become an all-in-one compliance suite built for European SMEs and scaleups. What started with GDPR has expanded into ISO 27001, ISO 42001, NIS2, DORA, and TISAX.
Our mission is simple: compliance that actually does the work.
- No more screenshots, evidence chases, or rewriting policies every quarter.
- AI agents handle the heavy lifting, with your team in control for approvals.
- Compliance that scales as you grow — whether you’re 20 or 500 employees.
What makes Kertos different
- Lawyer-founded, EU-native: We understand the European regulatory maze from the inside — and we build specifically for it.
- Automation-first: Evidence, vendor checks, RoPA, policy drafting — all handled automatically.
- Peer-to-Peer Trust Graph: A network where companies can reuse verified controls with their customers and suppliers, turning trust into a shared asset.
- Beyond SaaS: Not just another platform — Kertos is your Compliance Desk.
Why this matters now
Europe’s regulatory wave — GDPR, NIS2, DORA, the EU AI Act — is only accelerating. SMEs shouldn’t be buried in paperwork or forced to buy fragmented tools. They need a partner that ensures compliance runs quietly in the background so they can build in the foreground.
The road ahead
With this €14 Milion Series A, we’ll deepen automation, expand the Trust Graph, and continue building the compliance of the future: peer-to-peer, automated, outcome-driven, and trusted by default.
To our customers — thank you for proving this vision works. To the Kertos team — thank you for turning a lawyer’s frustration into a product that powers Europe’s innovators.
Trust is the new golden standard. And we’re here to make it effortless.
– Kilian
