This Former NASA Engineer Grew His Startup to $100M Revenue in Less Than 4 Years: ‘Lightning in a Bottle’
Before becoming a tech founder, Adam Markowitz was an aerospace engineer working on NASA’s Space Shuttle Program.
Key Takeaways
- Adam Markowitz is the co-founder of Drata, a startup that automates compliance processes for 8,000 clients.
- The startup reached $100 million in annual revenue in three and a half years.
- Markowitz said the startup achieved “lightning-in-a-bottle product-market fit,” filling a vital need for customers.
Adam Markowitz spent five years working as an aerospace engineer on NASA’s Space Shuttle Program before realizing that his interests were more Earth-focused. He taught himself how to code, founded a digital portfolio startup called Portfolium in 2013 and sold it to the learning management system company Instructure for $43 million in 2019.
In 2020, he co-founded his current startup, Drata, which automates compliance, governance, risk and assurance for thousands of customers worldwide. Drata has skyrocketed to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in three and a half years and now assists companies like Chipotle in automating compliance.
Here’s how Markowitz grew his company and his advice for entrepreneurs. Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and concision.
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 business today and in the future. I learned that firsthand as an aerospace engineer on NASA’s Space Shuttle Program, where nothing moved unless every component was validated, documented and trusted to perform. Tech companies today face a similar directive when earning the confidence of customers, partners and auditors. That’s where Drata comes in. Drata is an AI-native trust management platform helping automate governance, risk, compliance and assurance.
Where did you find inspiration for it?
The inspiration for the company originated from the time I spent at Portfolium.
We learned a valuable lesson while building Portfolium: Earning trust in business is a process, not a pitch. Given the high volume and sensitivity of student information, universities and enterprises wouldn’t partner with us until we proved we were doing what we should to protect their data. That meant grinding through every security questionnaire, audit and compliance review manually. It was slow, painful and distracting from the work we actually wanted to do, but it was essential.
After Portfolium was acquired, we realized companies of all sizes, from Fortune 100 to startups, lacked the tools to not only automate the compliance journey but to turn the broader governance, risk and compliance space into a business enabler.
How much money/investment did it take to launch?
We funded the earliest version of Drata using personal proceeds from the acquisition of our prior 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 set the tone for how we built the company from day one.
How long did it take you to see consistent monthly revenue? How much did the business earn?
We publicly launched in January 2021, but only after getting our own compliance in order first. When we publicly launched, we saw what I can only describe as lightning-in-a-bottle product-market fit. Companies were feeling the same pain we had experienced at Portfolium, and they needed an automated and continuous solution immediately. Revenue became consistent almost overnight.
We signed our first 100 customers in 45 days, and by the end of our first year, we had grown to support 1,000 customers with $10 million in annual recurring revenue and were accelerating — 10 times more than we originally projected.
Related: This Founder Solved His ‘Biggest Mistake’ to Go From 0 to 500,000 Customers
What do growth and revenue look like now?
Today, Drata supports more than 8,000 customers across 60+ countries and a wide set of industries and company sizes — including a third of the Cloud 100. Growing from $1 million to over $100 million in annual recurring revenue 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 advance the next era of trust management.
How much time per day do you spend working on your startup?
In the early days, the honest answer was: every waking hour. When you’re building something from nothing, you don’t have the luxury of balance — you have conviction, urgency and a mission you can’t ignore.
Today, with more than 700 team members, my focus and drive remain unrelenting. With rapid growth comes rapid change, and the job of a 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 the long-term strategy and ensuring we stay true to our core values as we scale.
I find balance in other ways, though. Rituals among chaos. Every morning starts with a 37-degree cold plunge and exercise. It’s a ritual I rely on because, for me, doing something difficult and uncomfortable before sunrise sustains discipline. And when you push yourself to an extreme physically and mentally first thing in the morning, it tends to make the rest of the day feel a bit easier by comparison.
What is your best piece of specific, actionable business advice?
Be intentional about your culture from day one and treat it as a system, not a slogan.
Founders often obsess over product and go-to-market strategy, but your culture will determine whether the company can scale, attract great people and make hard decisions when it matters most and you’re not in the room. Neglect it, and even the strongest product will struggle to survive.
The most actionable step you can take is to establish a clear set of values tied directly to your mission. As the team grows, your culture becomes the connective tissue. If you get culture right early, everything else becomes easier to scale. We’ve relentlessly focused on this at Drata, and as a result, I’m more confident than ever in our continued growth as we work to fulfill our vision of being the trust layer between great companies.
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Key Takeaways
- Adam Markowitz is the co-founder of Drata, a startup that automates compliance processes for 8,000 clients.
- The startup reached $100 million in annual revenue in three and a half years.
- Markowitz said the startup achieved “lightning-in-a-bottle product-market fit,” filling a vital need for customers.
Adam Markowitz spent five years working as an aerospace engineer on NASA’s Space Shuttle Program before realizing that his interests were more Earth-focused. He taught himself how to code, founded a digital portfolio startup called Portfolium in 2013 and sold it to the learning management system company Instructure for $43 million in 2019.
In 2020, he co-founded his current startup, Drata, which automates compliance, governance, risk and assurance for thousands of customers worldwide. Drata has skyrocketed to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in three and a half years and now assists companies like Chipotle in automating compliance.
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