Drata: Building A Unicorn In Compliance Tech
Announcing Drata’s $100M Series B, fuel for putting security & compliance on autopilot
It’s October 8, 2020, the day our team first (virtually) sat down with Drata CEO Adam Markowitz to discuss potentially partnering for their seed round. That meeting can be summarized by the following straight from our notes: “Adam is a scrappy founder”, “he notices the little things”, “he’s just very sharp”, and finally, “he believes compliance and audits should occur in software.”
We quickly did diligence on the team, their intended architectural choices, product roadmap, customer pain points, and competitive landscape. While other solutions existed, we concluded Drata’s vision for a software-driven solution to compliance was unique and extremely compelling.
Post-seed-financing, we were blown away by the quality and velocity of product execution 🚀
When Drata entered the market this past January, compliance concerns were at a high — and companies really needed a better solution.
Pressures around data privacy, compounded by the explosion of data, had led to mid-market and enterprise companies requiring most, if not all, vendors to meet compliance standards. Otherwise, their software wouldn’t get adopted. Becoming compliant with standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPPA had become a bottleneck to sales.
Since launching, Drata’s product has become revered in the market. They took what was historically a painful and time-consuming process and made it easy. Their 5-star customer reviews speak for themselves. Customers such as SmartRecruiters, Notion, Ada Support, Amplitude, Fullstory, Clearco, and Abnormal Security no longer waste time cobbling together software and services to become and stay compliant.
One year after our seed investment on the back of incredible product, team, and ARR momentum, Drata is announcing a $100 million dollar raise and has reached “Unicorn” status 🦄
Drata offers an end-to-end solution for compliance automation. They combine data collection, policy management, continuous monitoring, and auditor capabilities into one platform. And instead of telling you how amazing their product is, they let their customers do it for them.
Drata’s Twitter feed and LinkedIn page are full of customer testimonials. They celebrate their customers achieving SOC 2 with the gusto of a major customer win or new product announcement. They turned a process that founders, CEOs, CISOs, and VPs of Engineering have historically loathed into something fun 🥂
In this round, we are thrilled to welcome ICONIQ Growth to Team Drata along with Salesforce Ventures, Alkeon, and a powerful list of some of the biggest names in tech as angel investors. We’re also delighted to continue partnering with our friends at GGV Capital and Leaders Fund.
There is a massive market opportunity to put compliance and security on autopilot. We’re proud to partner with this amazing team changing the way customers think about what a compliance product can be. Congrats, team Drata! We’re so grateful to be on this journey with you.
PS Drata is also hiring! We’re looking for the most ambitious and talented folks to join our team. Check out our open reqs for GTM, customer success, engineering, and more roles here 💪
