key takeaways
- Adam Markowitz is the co-founder of Drata, a startup that automates compliance processes for 8,000 clients.
- In three and a half years, the startup’s annual revenue reached $100 million.
- Markowitz said the startup achieved “lightning-in-a-bottle product-market fit” by filling a critical need for customers.
Adam Markowitz spent five years working as an aerospace engineer NASA’s The Space Shuttle program began before he realized that his interests were more Earth-centric. He taught myself to codeFounded a digital portfolio startup called Portfolio in 2013 and sold it to a learning management systems company instructor For $43 million In 2019.
In 2020, he co-founded his current startup, drataWhich automates compliance, governance, risk and assurance for thousands of clients worldwide. Dreta has grown annual recurring revenue to $100 million in three and a half years and now helps companies like Chipotle In automating compliance.
Here’s how Markowitz grew his company and his advice to entrepreneurs. Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Tell me a little more about your startup.
At its core, Drata is built on a simple belief: trust is our most valuable asset in trading today and in the future. I learned this firsthand as an aerospace engineer in NASA’s Space Shuttle program, where nothing moves forward until every component is validated, documented, and reliable to perform. Tech companies today face similar directives when earning the trust of customers, partners, and auditors. This is where Drata comes in. Drata is an AI-native trust management platform that helps automate governance, risk, compliance, and assurance.
Where did you get the inspiration for this?
The inspiration for the company came from my time at Portfolio.
We learned a valuable lesson when creating the portfolio: earning trust in business is a process, not a pitch. Given the high volume and sensitivity of student information, universities and enterprises will not partner with us until we can prove we are doing what we should to protect their data. This meant manually checking every security questionnaire, audit, and compliance review. It was slow, painful, and a distraction from the work we really wanted to do, but it was necessary.
Following the acquisition of Portfolio, we realized that companies of all sizes, from Fortune 100 to startups, lacked the tools to not only automate the compliance journey but transform the broader governance, risk and compliance space into a business enabler.
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How much money/investment did it take to launch?
We funded the early version of Drata using personal income from the acquisition of our former company. Looking back, the most important part of our launch was the alignment we created to fuel our vision. As founders, we were all fully committed, and that dictated how we built the company from day one.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did you earn from the business?
We launched publicly in January 2021, but only after getting our own compliance first. When we launched publicly, we saw what I can only describe as product-market fit that looked like lightning in a bottle. Companies were feeling the same pain we experienced with Portfolio, and they immediately needed an automated and continuous solution. Revenues stagnated almost overnight.
We signed our first 100 customers in 45 days, and by the end of our first year, we were supporting 1,000 customers with $10 million in annual recurring revenue and growing—10 times more than the original estimate.
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What do growth and revenues look like now?
Today, Drata supports more than 8,000 customers in more than 60 countries and across a wide range of industries and company sizes – including a third of the Cloud 100. The increase in annual recurring revenue from $1 million to over $100 million in just three and a half years highlights both the urgency of the problem and the strength of our execution. This year, we also tripled our enterprise segment and acquired SafeBase, adding customers like OpenAI and CrowdStrike, to bring continuous assurance directly into the Drata platform and drive the next era of trust management.
How much time do you spend every day working on your startup?
In the early days, the honest answer was: every waking hour. When you’re building something from scratch, you don’t have the luxury of balance – you have conviction, urgency, and a mission you can’t ignore.
Today, with over 700 team members, my focus and drive remains constant. With rapid growth comes rapid change, and the job of co-founder and CEO is no exception. Today, I spend my time where it matters most: listening to customers, attracting and retaining top talent, shaping long-term strategy, and ensuring we stay true to our core values at scale.
However, I find balance in other ways. Ritual amidst chaos. Every morning starts with a cool 37 degrees and exercise. This is a ritual I rely on because, for me, doing something difficult and uncomfortable before sunrise builds discipline. And when you push yourself to your peak physically and mentally first thing in the morning, the rest of the day becomes a little easier in comparison.
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What is your best specific, actionable business advice?
Be conscious of your culture from day one and treat it as a system, not a slogan.
Founders are often obsessed with product and go-to-market strategy, but your culture will determine whether the company can scale, attract great people, and make the tough decisions when it matters most and you’re not in the room. Neglect this, and even the strongest product will struggle to survive.
The most actionable step you can take is to establish a clear set of values directly tied to your mission. As the team grows, your culture becomes the connective tissue. If you get culture early, everything else becomes easier to measure. We have focused on this relentlessly at Drata, and as a result, I am more confident than ever about our continued growth as we work to deliver on our vision of becoming the layer of trust between great companies.
Connected: This 29-year-old founder took a $150,000 salary cut to become CEO of his startup. Here’s why he says it was worth it.
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key takeaways
- Adam Markowitz is the co-founder of Drata, a startup that automates compliance processes for 8,000 clients.
- In three and a half years, the startup’s annual revenue reached $100 million.
- Markowitz said the startup achieved “lightning-in-a-bottle product-market fit” by filling a critical need for customers.
Adam Markowitz spent five years working as an aerospace engineer NASA’s The Space Shuttle program began before he realized that his interests were more Earth-centric. He taught myself to codeFounded a digital portfolio startup called Portfolio in 2013 and sold it to a learning management systems company instructor For $43 million In 2019.
In 2020, he co-founded his current startup, drataWhich automates compliance, governance, risk and assurance for thousands of clients worldwide. Dreta has grown annual recurring revenue to $100 million in three and a half years and now helps companies like Chipotle In automating compliance.
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