Privacy Guard

Executive Summary

Led the end-to-end product strategy and development for an AI-powered privacy compliance platform designed to help SMBs achieve GDPR and CCPA compliance affordably and efficiently. The platform automates website and app scanning for privacy violations, generates compliant policies and cookie consent banners, and provides continuous monitoring with remediation guidance. It targets SMBs unable to afford enterprise tools or full-time privacy officers, with aggressive goals of reaching 5,000 customers and $9.6M ARR by Year 3.​

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Problem Statement

Businesses serving EU or California customers face complex privacy laws with severe penalties. Existing compliance solutions are expensive, complex, or limited in scope, leaving most SMBs at risk. Manual compliance audits or hiring legal experts are cost prohibitive, and cookie-only tools provide insufficient coverage.

 

 

Strategic Approach​

• Applied advanced strategic frameworks from my Master’s in Strategy and Management for rigorous market segmentation, pain point analysis, and competitive positioning.

• Focused on SMBs underserved by enterprise solutions by delivering an affordable, AI-driven automated scanner integrated with continuous monitoring and actionable remediation, differentiating through price, ease of use, and comprehensive coverage.

• Prioritized developing an end-to-end product ecosystem—from scanning, violation detection, policy generation, to ongoing compliance assurance—with a value-based pricing model.

 

 

Prioritization & Focus​

• Balanced pain points and business impact through customer discovery interviews and user data analysis to prioritize features such as website scanning, violation detection, and compliance dashboard initially.

• Applied a phased MVP strategy delivering high-value capabilities that meet critical compliance needs rapidly, followed by scalable growth features like continuous monitoring, vendor DPA management, and DSAR tools.

• Incorporated legal risk severity and user effort reduction as key factors in prioritization to maximize compliance effectiveness and user adoption.

 

 

Pain Point Identification

• Conducted stakeholder interviews with SaaS startups, agencies, e-commerce owners, and app developers to identify common compliance challenges, workflow inefficiencies, and cost barriers.

• Mapped compliance workflows and quantified risks including fines and operational disruptions to validate urgency and market size.

 

 

AI Model Evaluation & Integration

• Oversaw AI integration using Claude API for contextual policy analysis, violation severity scoring, and fine risk estimation aligned with legal frameworks.

• Developed rigorous testing and confidence scoring to minimize false positives/negatives and increase trust in automated compliance assessments.

• Implemented continuous improvement cycles leveraging user feedback and updated regulation changes.

 

 

Key Product Features

• Automated website and app scanning with headless browser crawling detecting cookies, tracking scripts, third-party integrations, and privacy policy gaps.

• Violation detection engine evaluating over 80 GDPR and CCPA rules, severity ranking, and plain-English explanations for non-lawyer users.

• Compliance dashboard with visual scores, categorized violations, remediation steps, and reporting/export capabilities.

• AI-powered Privacy Policy and Cookie Consent Banner generators simplifying compliance setup.

• User authentication and subscription management with flexible plans tailored to diverse SMB needs.

• Planned future features: continuous automated re-scans, vendor DPA management, DSAR tooling, multi-jurisdiction support, white-labeling, API access, and data flow mapping.

 

 

Technical Highlights

• Cloud-native architecture using Next.js frontend, Node.js backend, Python crawler, and Claude API, ensuring scalability, security, and responsiveness.

• Sophisticated crawling technology capturing JavaScript-heavy SPAs and handling dynamic content.

• Modular compliance engine allowing rapid updates aligned with regulation changes.

• Integration-ready with standard payment processors and communication tools.

 

 

Decision-Making & Trade-offs

• Made trade-offs balancing comprehensive AI-driven automation and human review to ensure accuracy and trustworthiness.

• Chose targeted MVP features mitigating legal risk and delivering rapid ROI for SMBs with phased rollout reducing time-to-market.

• Opted for modular product architecture to allow incremental feature expansion and optimization based on user adoption data.

 

 

Risk Mitigation Strategies

• Built-in human oversight and frequent legal reviews to reduce guidance inaccuracies.

• Conservative alerting and educational approach to avoid legal liability and build user confidence.

• Scalable infrastructure planning to handle growth and complex crawls with rate limiting and caching strategies.

 

 

Measurable Impact & Metrics

• Year 1 goals of 500 paying customers and $300k ARR, scaling to 5,000 customers and $9.6M ARR by Year 3.

• Target gross margin of 80-85% with efficient CAC leveraging organic SEO, referral marketing, and partnerships.

• Key performance indicators include compliance score improvements, scan frequency, feature adoption, churn rate, and NPS.

 

 

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Directed interdisciplinary teams spanning AI development, compliance legal experts, engineering, UX, and marketing.

• Aligned stakeholders on strategic priorities, go-to-market plans, and regulatory risk management.

• Managed product roadmap balancing user needs, legal requirements, and technical feasibility.

 

 

Learnings & Evolution

• Early validation underscored the importance of continuous monitoring and clear user education on compliance complexity.

• User trust is critical, cultivated through transparent AI outputs and accessible plain language explanations.

• Planned product iteration focused on expanding multi-jurisdiction compliance and improving alerts and remediation workflows.

 

 

Future Vision

Position the product as a dominant SMB compliance platform with enterprise-grade capabilities at accessible pricing to democratize privacy compliance globally. Envision expanding jurisdictional coverage, deep integration within app ecosystems, and AI-driven predictive compliance risk management.