Podcast Summary:

The SaaS Podcast: Build, Launch & Scale Your SaaS
Episode: Product-Market Fit: From Edtech Vitamin to $100M Painkiller
Date: February 19, 2026
Host: Omer Khan
Guest: Adam Markowitz, Co-founder & CEO of Drata

Overview

This episode features Adam Markowitz, CEO and co-founder of Drata, a leading SaaS platform for trust management, compliance automation, and security assurance. The discussion traces Adam’s unique entrepreneurial journey—beginning with aerospace engineering, navigating the slow grind of EdTech with Portfolium, and eventually co-founding Drata, which exploded from startup to $100M ARR in less than four years. Adam shares candid lessons on product-market fit, building sales culture, leveraging partnerships (notably with AWS and auditors), and the core value of trust. The conversation dives deep into how Drata outpaced competition, the pains and breakthroughs of scaling fast, and why true resilience (not just hype) fuels SaaS hypergrowth.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Adam Markowitz’s Background and Portfolium Origins

• Aerospace Roots to Accidental Entrepreneurship

  • Adam always wanted to be an astronaut (08:06) and worked on NASA’s Space Shuttle Main Engine Team until the program’s 2011 retirement (08:43).
  • The leap to tech came from trying to differentiate himself in job interviews by bringing a portfolio of evidence—sparking the idea for his first company.

• Building and Selling Portfolium

  • Self-taught coding, built an MVP in PHP/MySQL, and soon partnered with a technical co-founder (12:00).
  • Portfolium became a leading EdTech platform, signing over 500 universities (>5 million students) and exited for $43M (13:24).
  • Key pain: selling into universities was grueling—long cycles, difficult buyers, and product-market fit was hard-won (18:03).

• Lesson Learned

  “Those first customers are the hardest… no one wants to be first, but no one wants to be last either…once you get a handful of universities, you get that flywheel going.”
  — Adam Markowitz (19:14)

2. The Lightbulb Moment for Drata

• During a major Portfolium deal, a university CIO demanded proof of their security posture; Adam realized he couldn’t provide real evidence (20:35).

• The irony: Portfolium’s mission was “proving things with evidence,” yet he was asking customers to just take his word.

• After Portfolium’s acquisition:

  • Adam saw everyone—from small startups to big corporates—managing compliance manually.
  • Recognized trust as the central, unsolved “painkiller” problem for modern SaaS—setting the vision for Drata (25:48).

• Mission Statement

  “The problem was trust—how it’s earned quickly and maintained continuously. Outside of time, trust is one of our most precious assets.”
  — Adam Markowitz (05:43)

3. Validating the Problem and Early Drata Days

• Despite personal experience, Adam’s team conducted dozens of interviews with companies and auditors before building anything (29:18).

• They identified that automating compliance (“the C in GRC”) would unlock massive value and product-market fit.

• Unusual Launch Approach

  • Spent six months building “in stealth,” refusing to sell Drata until they themselves used it to get SOC 2 compliant (32:00):

    “It was torturous but we held the line—we had to be our own first customer…fundamentally, that’s what trust is about.”
    — Adam Markowitz (32:00)

  • When launched, Drata added 100 customers in 6 weeks, 1,000 in its first year—far beyond EdTech benchmarks. (32:00-34:01)

4. Differentiation and Go-To-Market Execution

• Product Differentiation

  • Not just a tool to “check the box” for smaller companies; built to scale with customers as they mature, addressing multiple frameworks and larger enterprises from the start (34:26).
  • Combined deep automation with intuitive onboarding to help users that often “don’t even know what SOC2 is.”

• Aggressive and Deliberate Sales Culture

  • Adam built an aggressive sales culture intentionally, given the size of the opportunity:

    “Your sellers are aggressive, Adam.”
    “I know, you’re welcome. I'd rather hear that than the opposite.”
    — Adam Markowitz (49:00)

  • Built the go-to-market machine with inbound, outbound, and partner channels from the outset (37:24).

• Hypergrowth Pains

  • Systems (lead routing, org structure) kept breaking with scale. The team adapted constantly:

    “You build something that works for a short window of time… sometimes it doesn’t bend, it just snaps.”
    — Adam Markowitz (39:44)

  • The mantra: Growth is change, and “deliberately uncomfortable” is valuable.

5. Strategic Partnerships: Auditors & AWS

• Auditor Alliance

  • Drata didn’t try to replace auditors, but partnered and built tools to streamline their workflow, maintaining independence and credibility (41:41):

    “We never want to be considered audit services ourselves. The independence is what gives [a SOC2] report its weight.”
    — Adam Markowitz (41:41)

  • Built a marketplace of audit partners, enabling seamless choice for customers.

• AWS Marketplace

  • Drata became a top-5 ISV on AWS Marketplace in <2 years (44:34).
  • Success driven by a “give before you take” approach:

    “We would do things for AWS for a long while before we expected anything in return… it got us on their radar and built trust.”
    — Adam Markowitz (44:34)

• Lesson: Focus deeply on one partnership channel before spreading resources (all-in on AWS before diversifying to GCP, Azure).

6. Culture, Resilience, and Values

• Adam stressed deliberate company values and mission-driven culture as key for sustaining hypergrowth.
• Notably, he set boundaries around work-life balance even prior to launch:

  “I told early investors: Drata will never be the most important thing in my life—is that okay? The fact you’re thinking that way is why it’ll succeed.”
  — Adam Markowitz (58:56)

7. AI, Market Evolution, and the Enduring Value of Trust

• AI introduces both opportunity and risk for compliance and vendor management; Drata is launching new products to address AI-specific compliance frameworks (52:53).

• Adam believes “trust” is a timeless foundation for B2B SaaS—AI only increases the need for proof and assurance.

  “As new technology waves emerge, trust just gets more important. You need to continuously prove you’re doing the right things.”
  — Adam Markowitz (52:53)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Enjoy the Journey:

  “May you always remember to enjoy the road, especially when it’s a hard one.” — Kobe Bryant (Adam’s favorite quote, 05:14)

• Resilience and Humility:

  “What I wrote was held together with sticks and bubble gum. I had no ego about it. But I was relentless in figuring out how to get it in students’ hands.”
  — Adam Markowitz (12:05)

• Aggression With Purpose:

  “I’d rather be told we’re aggressive than the opposite. This is our expression of appreciation for the opportunity to solve a real problem.”
  — Adam Markowitz (49:00)

• Books for Founders:

  • Courage is Calling (Ryan Holiday)
  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz)
  • The Messy Middle (Scott Belsky)
  • Relentless (Tim Grover)
    (56:32)

• Crucial Founder Trait:

  “Resilience.” — Adam Markowitz (57:20)

Timestamps: Important Segments

• Adam’s background, dream of being astronaut: [08:06–09:24]
• Origins and journey of Portfolium: [09:48–15:17]
• EdTech sales and customer validation insights: [15:28–20:15]
• Founding insight for Drata (pain of SOC2): [20:35–25:48]
• Pre-launch validation and product-market fit: [29:05–32:00]
• Aggressive sales execution & scale challenges: [34:26–41:07]
• Building partnerships with auditors and AWS: [41:41–48:07]
• Hypergrowth reflections & work-life boundary: [58:56–59:55]
• AI, future of trust in SaaS: [52:53–55:55]
• Lightning round (advice, books, founder traits): [56:02–58:56]

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

• Solve a Real Pain: Adam’s path underscores the difference between “vitamin” (nice-to-have) and “painkiller” (must-have) products. Drata succeeded by addressing a truly burning problem around trust and compliance.
• Validate Relentlessly: Even with first-hand experience, Adam and team conducted extensive problem discovery before coding.
• Build to Scale, But Stay Agile: Prepare systems for fast growth, but expect that what works will constantly break—resilience and adaptability are essential.
• Strategic Partnerships Compound Growth: A “give first” approach built long-term trust with AWS and auditors, fueling Drata’s pipeline.
• Culture and Values are Non-Negotiable: Mission-driven clarity, resilience, and balance (family first) guided both personal and organizational success.
• Trust is Timeless: As technology evolves (think AI), the importance—and the challenge—of earning trust only increases.

For SaaS founders: If you’re seeking explosive growth, relentless customer focus, cultural clarity, and genuine partner leverage, this episode provides a nuanced, actionable playbook rooted in the real highs and lows of startup building.