Why is secrets management still so painful for startups?

Over the last few months, while building VaultLite, I kept noticing the same pattern across small engineering teams:

• .env files shared in Slack

• production keys sitting in Notion

• API credentials copied between teammates manually

• secrets managed through random Google Docs

• broken deployments because env vars drifted between environments

And honestly… most teams KNOW this is bad.

But existing solutions often feel:

• too enterprise-heavy

• too expensive

• too operationally complex

• too DevOps-centric for small teams

A lot of startups don’t need a giant infrastructure platform.

They just need:

• secure secret sharing

• environment sync

• GitHub/CI integration

• audit visibility

• easy onboarding

without spending days configuring infrastructure.

That realization is what pushed me to start building VaultLite.

Curious how other founders and developers here are currently handling:

• environment variables

• API key management

• team secret sharing

• deployment secrets

What’s the biggest pain point in your current workflow?