Seven years selling a nice-to-have. Then 1,000 customers in year one. Adam Markowitz spent nearly a decade grinding in edtech before finding product-market fit at Drata. In this episode, founders will learn how to tell the difference between a vitamin and a painkiller - and why that distinction changes everything.

Adam shares how experiencing a compliance pain at his first startup became the foundation for Drata, why he refused to sell until his team used their own product to get SOC 2 compliant, and how a "give before you take" approach to AWS made Drata a top 5 ISV on Marketplace in under two years.

Drata has over 8,000 customers across 60 countries, more than 600 employees, and crossed $100 million in ARR before its fourth birthday. The company has raised over $300 million.

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🔑 Key Lessons

• 🎯 Product-market fit shows in buyer urgency, not just signups: Drata signed 100 customers in 6 weeks and 1,000 in year one - a stark contrast to Adam's edtech company where the first 5 university customers took years to close.
• 🛠️ Dogfood your product before selling it: Drata refused to accept customers until they used their own tool to get SOC 2 compliant, giving them instant credibility and proving the product worked under real conditions.
• 🔍 Validate by talking to every stakeholder, not just buyers: Adam spoke with dozens of companies and auditors before writing code, discovering identical pain patterns that made the initial product scope obvious.
• 🤝 Give before you take with strategic partners: Drata brought thousands of first-time customers to AWS Marketplace before asking for anything in return, becoming a top 5 global ISV in under two years.
• 📉 Selling a vitamin versus a painkiller changes everything: Seven years in edtech taught Adam what product-market fit feels like when you don't have it. At Drata, customers lined up because compliance wasn't optional.
• 🚀 Reassemble a proven team to compress execution time: Adam brought back the same co-founders, engineers, and go-to-market team from Portfolium. The muscle memory from working together for 7 years accelerated every phase of Drata's launch.
• 🏢 Keep partners independent to build a distribution moat: Drata's Auditor Alliance kept audit firms independent rather than competing with them. Two-thirds of Drata's pipeline is now sourced or influenced through partner channels.

Chapters

• Introduction
• What Drata does and the trust problem it solves
• Revenue, customers, and team size
• From astronaut dreams to NASA's Space Shuttle program
• Building Portfolium after NASA retired the shuttle
• Teaching himself to code and finding a CTO
• Selling Portfolium for $43 million
• The long road to product-market fit in edtech
• The university sales cycle that changed everything
• How the Portfolium pain led to founding Drata
• Validating the problem before writing code
• Getting the band back together
• Using Drata to get their own SOC 2 before selling
• Signing 100 customers in six weeks
• How Drata differentiated in a crowded market
• What broke at 1,000 customers
• Building the Auditor Alliance partner program
• The AWS Marketplace strategy and give-before-you-take
• Why aggressive sales culture was intentional
• AI tailwinds for compliance and trust
• Lightning round
• Closing thoughts

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Resources

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