How does a SaaS startup CTO balance development speed and security?

Practical guidance for early-stage SaaS startups on prioritizing security: avoid reinventing common systems (authentication, payments, databases, email, logging) by using managed services; implement global guardrails (CSP, WAF/RASP, prototype freezing, safe serialization); educate developers with simple threat-focused questions during planning; prioritize high-risk parts of the codebase (payments, auth, uploads, webhooks); enforce strong account protections (2FA/YubiKeys); and automate recurring security tasks and monitoring using tools such as Aikido, which the author promotes to centralize scans and push actionable findings to developers.