Design-Partner-Programm

Who this is for

Companies running compliance under a real regulatory deadline. CCD2, DORA, HDS v2.0, eIDAS 2.0, AI Act, ISO 42001 — frameworks where "we'll do it next quarter" isn't an option. Founders, heads of compliance, or CISOs who can give honest feedback when something doesn't work.

EU-based, 30 to 300 employees, in a regulated sector. If you're at a larger company or a CISO buying through procurement, we'd be happy to do a structured architecture review instead — same conversation, different shape. Email me directly.

What you get

BrickGRC, free for six months. Up to five framework bricks, ten users, 10 GB of evidence storage, five active engagements. Run your assessment, build your control mapping, generate audit-ready exports — the same product paying customers use.

200 AI assists per month on our shared Gemini key. Enough to evaluate the AI-assisted features (policy generation, gap analysis, evidence questions) without setting up your own provider. After that, bring your own LLM key — OpenAI, Anthropic, Azure, or local — and your data and inference run under your provider relationship.

Direct line to the founder. One scheduled call per month, plus async access for product questions. You're not routed through a CSM because there isn't one yet — that's the point of being a design partner.

Locked-in 30% discount on list pricing for 36 months after the partnership ends. Calculated against whatever bricks you've actually adopted — your post-partnership bill is your business, not a renegotiation.

What we ask in return

One hour of feedback per month. What works, what doesn't, what's missing. We'll record the call (with consent) so notes don't eat your time.

First refusal on building the bricks specific to your sector. If you're a French BNPL, we build the CCD2 brick with you. If you're a German defence prime, we build BSI/IT-Grundschutz with you. The brick lands in the product for everyone afterwards, but you shape it.

Optional public case study at the end of six months. You see and approve every word before anything ships. Decline if you'd rather stay private — there's no penalty either way.

What we are not

We are not a free tier in disguise. The standard product has a 30-day free trial that's open to anyone — that's the right starting point if you want to evaluate self-serve. The design partner program is a multi-year commitment to build the product together, with a real swap of value on both sides.

We are not seeking case studies dressed up as partnerships. The case study is optional and lives at the end. The partnership is what matters — your time on calls and ours on the product.

Cohort & timeline

Five spots in this cohort. Once filled, the program closes until the next round. We expect to fill the cohort over the next 6–8 weeks.

The six-month partnership starts when your team has finished onboarding (usually one week after the kick-off call). We won't start the clock until BrickGRC is genuinely usable for you — no clock-running while you wait on a brick we haven't built yet.

How to apply

Email me directly at [email protected] with three things:

1. Your company. Sector, employee count, where you're based, who owns the compliance program internally.

2. The regulatory deadlines you're tracking. Be specific. "CCD2 by 20 November" rather than "consumer credit stuff." This tells me how urgently the program lands for you.

3. One honest critique of how compliance tooling has failed you in the past. Vanta, Drata, manual spreadsheets, in-house — whatever you've tried. The more specific the critique, the more I learn before we even talk.

No pitch deck, no application form, no calendar tool. Just an email. I read every one and reply within two business days.

Why I'm doing it this way

I'm Alexandre Amaral, founder. Master's at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, where I built and validated a software tool for auditors using Design Science Research. The thesis taught me two things that BrickGRC is built around: audit assessments are slow and expensive enough that companies feel the pain in real money, and the academic capability-assessment family (ISO/IEC 330xx) isn't what regulated industry actually uses — companies live in 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, AI Act, DORA, sector-specific regimes.

BrickGRC is the production version of that work, hosted in Frankfurt, modular per framework, integration-first, BYO AI keys. I'm self-funding it from a Portuguese salary, which is why the design partner cohort is small and the offer is bounded. I can't run it for fifty companies — I can run it for five and do it well.

If you've read this far, the kind of partner I'm looking for is the kind of person who reads program terms before applying. Send me an email.