Key Takeaways<\/p>\n
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- A problem born from his own working life.<\/strong> Kilian Schmidt experienced data protection work firsthand as a lawyer at Home24, TIER Mobility and Gorillas, and in 2021 turned that experience into a product of his own, together with Johannes Hussak and Alexander Prams.<\/li>\n
- European rules as the starting point.<\/strong> The platform covers standards including ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2, the EU AI Act and TISAX, and runs on European infrastructure.<\/li>\n
- Rank 20 on the Sifted 100.<\/strong> On the Sifted 100 list for the DACH region and Central and Eastern Europe, Kertos ranks 20th with revenue growth of 248.91 percent over two years – the only compliance platform on the list.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
Related:<\/strong> NIS2 enforcement hits 29,500 German companies<\/a><\/p>\n
A Lawyer with a Grievance<\/h2>\n
Kilian Schmidt encountered compliance from the side where the work actually piles up. He began his career at Home24 as Senior Legal Counsel and Group Data Protection Officer, then moved to the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer before joining TIER Mobility. There, according to Kertos’s company page<\/a>, he helped build out the legal and public-policy functions as the scooter rental company grew from operating in a single city to 65 and expanded its workforce from 50 to 800 employees. He later advised the delivery service Gorillas.<\/p>\n
![\"Kertos](\"https:\/\/www.securitytoday.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/kertos-kilian-schmidt-quer-hero.jpg\")
Dr. Kilian Schmidt worked as a lawyer at Home24, Freshfields, and TIER Mobility before founding Kertos. Image: Kertos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n This period is where the experience that still shapes Kertos today comes from. “When I started my career as a lawyer and legal counsel, compliance wasn’t exactly a passion,” Schmidt writes in an open letter announcing the Series A<\/a>. He identified data subject access requests – where individuals want to know what data a company holds on them – as the most burdensome process under the GDPR (the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation).<\/p>\n
It was exactly this process that Schmidt set out to automate. What began as a single tool for handling data subject requests gradually grew into a full suite that today covers, among other things, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, NIS2, DORA, and TISAX. Schmidt had experienced compliance as a mandatory chore. Now he was building a tool for the people who fulfill that duty every day.<\/p>\n
What is compliance automation?<\/strong> Compliance automation refers to software that continuously generates and verifies evidence for standards such as ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2, or SOC 2 directly from a company’s systems. The goal is to let proof accumulate where teams actually work, rather than scrambling to assemble it right before an audit.<\/p>\n
Three Founders from Munich<\/h2>\n
Schmidt didn’t found Kertos alone in 2021. Johannes Hussak and Alexander Prams already knew each other from a previous company and brought experience in engineering and the day-to-day realities of founding a startup. Kertos today operates out of Munich and Berlin.<\/p>\n
![\"Die](\"https:\/\/www.securitytoday.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/kertos-gruender-cover-hero.jpg\")
Kilian Schmidt, Johannes Hussak, and Alexander Prams founded Kertos in Munich in 2021. Image: Kertos<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n For Hussak, Kertos is, according to the company, his third venture. He studied mechanical engineering and international management at the Technical University of Munich, completing a master’s degree in both, and went through UnternehmerTUM’s Manage&More program. He then founded an e-commerce company and spent more than two years heading the innovation department at a Munich-based development firm.<\/p>\n
Prams started programming at age eleven and, by 16, was already contributing to a game engine. While studying computer science at the Technical University of Munich, he released two apps in the App Store; he later spent more than five years leading the AI and computer vision division at a Munich development company. In 2020, Hussak and Prams co-founded Aitaro GmbH together, a year before joining Schmidt to launch Kertos.<\/p>\n
Today the roles are clearly divided. Schmidt runs Kertos as CEO, Hussak oversees day-to-day operations as COO, and Prams leads the technology as CTO. A lawyer, an engineer, and a computer scientist – bringing together legal expertise, operations, and software within a single founding team.<\/p>\n
European Rules First<\/h2>\n
The founders put European rules at the very beginning. Schmidt explains the reasoning this way. “Compliance automation has long been dominated by providers optimized for North American frameworks. The European counterpart had to be built differently from the ground up, with European frameworks first and data sovereignty as the default. That’s exactly the position we wanted to claim when we started in Munich in 2021,” he said in mid-September in a statement on the Sifted ranking<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In its Series A letter, the company describes itself as “lawyer-founded, EU-native” – founded by lawyers and rooted in Europe. The platform is built for European law and runs on European infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Johannes Hussak knows the starting point at many companies. “Many companies still see data protection and compliance as a necessary evil. It is necessary, since there are laws that are binding for companies,” he said in early 2025 in an interview with Business Punk<\/a>. In the same conversation, Schmidt outlined the counter-approach: “Seeing compliance not as a brake but as an accelerator for digital growth – that’s our goal with Kertos.”<\/p>\n
Capital for its own path<\/h2>\n
A seed round financed the start: in 2023, Kertos raised 4 million euros, according to Munich Startup<\/a>. In 2024, funding from the European Union followed. Under the EUProFIT project, Kertos received 2.2 million euros, which it planned to use, according to its own statement<\/a>, to develop a knowledge graph, chatbot and autofill functions, and a compliance monitor, among other things. The goal was to make GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance easier for small and medium-sized enterprises.<\/p>\n
The Series A followed in September 2025. A total of 14 million euros flowed into the company, according to Finance Forward<\/a>, with fintech-focused investor Portage joining as a new backer. Existing investors PiLabs, Redstone, 10x Founders (led by Felix Haas) and seed + speed Ventures invested again, after Kertos had received around 5 million euros in earlier rounds. According to Finance Forward’s assessment, the sector is riding a global tailwind – around the same time, US-based provider Myriad AI also raised fresh capital.<\/p>\n
\n - European rules as the starting point.<\/strong> The platform covers standards including ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2, the EU AI Act and TISAX, and runs on European infrastructure.<\/li>\n
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