Pre-launch website
A demand-validation site that explains the thesis, presents pricing experiments and accepts qualification interest.
About Trace · Pre-launch
Build the operating layer. Keep the judgement human.
Trace is a pre-launch managed data-rights operations company developing source mapping, evidence retrieval, review-ready case packs and audit trails for privacy firms and modern SaaS teams. Authorised privacy professionals retain legal judgement.
The operating thesis
Privacy advice and retrieval work should not compete for the same senior hour.
The recurring burden around a data-rights request is knowing who owns intake, which identity matches which records, which systems were checked, what could not be found and who is authorised to decide an exception.
Trace is testing whether source mapping, evidence retrieval and case preparation can become a dependable operations layer behind a privacy professional’s service. The goal is to make repeatable work reusable while leaving advice, judgement and the client relationship where they belong.
The first commercial hypothesis is a fixed-scope Readiness Sprint using synthetic data. Planned coverage comes only after the workflow is proven and the legal, security and delivery conditions can be satisfied.
Current reality
What exists, what is being tested and what is not ready.
A buyer should not have to reverse-engineer product maturity from polished screens. These labels are the shortest version of Trace’s present truth.
Case interface and pack format
Illustrative screens and files designed to test whether the proposed outcome is understandable and useful.
Source-mapping operating model
A proposed hands-on approach for early pilots. It is not a generally available or capacity-backed service claim.
Repeatable product workflow
Case orchestration, maintained source maps and controlled approvals are the long-term product direction.
Human review model
Reviewer role, qualifications, capacity, independence and responsibility must be confirmed for each accepted offer.
Legal and security assurance
DPA, engagement terms, retention, subprocessors, architecture evidence and formal security processes still require review.
Not claimed: live self-serve connectors, automated legal decisions, general reviewer capacity, completed certifications, production assurance or customer outcomes.
Operating principles
The rules should survive the roadmap.
These principles constrain both the proposed early pilot and any software that follows. If a feature breaks the review boundary or hides evidence quality, it weakens the product.
Sell an outcome, not an interface
A customer should receive something useful from one request before being asked to learn another compliance platform.
Connect as little as possible
A controlled export or narrow read path may be better than broad permanent access, especially during an early pilot.
Make uncertainty visible
Missing sources, ambiguous identity, third-party data and retention questions belong in the case—not under a green status.
Keep judgement human
Trace may organise and draft. An authorised person decides disclosure, correction, erasure, exceptions and final wording.
Prove the operating model before building breadth
One paid, well-run pilot says more than a large roadmap of connectors nobody has trusted with a real workflow.
Record every hand-off
The next person should understand what happened, which evidence was used and why a decision remains open.
Initial customer hypotheses
Partner-first, with a direct SaaS path.
The current validation objective is to learn which audience recognises the problem, which workflow consumes the most time and whether a €2,500 Readiness Sprint is within a realistic range.
- Outsourced DPO firms and privacy consultancies
- Approximately 3–20 privacy professionals
- Multiple retainer clients and recurring rights-request work
- Senior capacity consumed by retrieval and administration
- A desire to keep advice, judgement and the client relationship
- Modern SaaS, marketplace and subscription companies
- Approximately 25–250 employees with EU or UK operations
- Customer data spread across several structured systems
- No dedicated privacy-operations function
- Requests that coordinate support, engineering, legal and operations
Founder
Built from Amsterdam, in conversation with the people doing the work.
Trace was founded by Mees Tierolff in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The current work is commercial and operating-model validation, not a claim of general availability.
Mees Tierolff · Founder, Trace
What Trace is validating now
- Whether privacy firms want a technical operations layer behind their service
- Whether SaaS teams will pay to establish readiness before a live request
- Which retrieval and coordination problems are most expensive
- Whether the Readiness Sprint creates a useful standalone result
- Which operating, legal and security conditions must exist before production work
Trace is not a law firm, external DPO, certification body or autonomous decision system. It does not claim live connectors, production handling capacity, customer outcomes or qualifications that are not publicly evidenced.
Email Mees about your workflowWhere Trace is trying to sit
More operational than advice. More accountable than automation.
The pilot exists to learn whether this middle position creates enough value to support a real company and product.
A tool still needs an operator.
Trace does not expect a customer to configure a complex platform before seeing value. The first outcome should come from managed implementation and one case.
Managed work becomes a reusable path.
Proposed hands-on source mapping and case preparation should create an operational asset the next request can reuse, while every human decision remains visible.
Advice may not become infrastructure.
Trace is not a law firm or a substitute for counsel. Its product ambition is the structured evidence, hand-offs and maintained source map around the decision.
How this claim discipline worksRead the product and evidence methodology →
Founding design partners
Help test the operating thesis.
Join the design partner waitlist or describe the workflow in an email. Do not send request contents, identities, exports or credentials.