Drata intentionally keeps auditors independent to maintain the integrity of compliance reports. By building a tool that helps auditors work more efficiently and with higher integrity, Drata creates a powerful referral channel without a formal reseller agreement, differentiating them in the market.

Model ML, a fast-growing fintech AI company, started as an internal tool for the founders' family office to automate investment due diligence. The product was validated when senior finance professionals saw it and asked to use it, proving demand before it was even a company.

While building a legal AI tool, the founders discovered that optimizing each component was a complex benchmarking challenge involving trade-offs between accuracy, speed, and cost. They built an internal tool that quickly gained public traction as the number of models exploded.

Instead of pitching an idea upfront, the founders first conducted broad interviews, asking security leaders for their top 5 problems. Only after identifying a recurring pain that matched their thesis did they switch to phase two: presenting a specific solution to validate its acuity and demand.

Tech companies often use government and military contracts as a proving ground to refine complex technologies. This gives military personnel early access to tools, like Palantir a decade ago, long before they become mainstream in the corporate world.

A key competitive advantage wasn't just the user network, but the sophisticated internal tools built for the operations team. Investing early in a flexible, 'drag-and-drop' system for creating complex AI training tasks allowed them to pivot quickly and meet diverse client needs, a capability competitors lacked.

After years selling a "nice-to-have" edtech product, Drata's founder knew how rare it was to have customers desperate for a solution. This perspective created an intense appreciation that fueled the team's aggressive, execution-focused culture from day one.

The company originated not as a grand vision, but as a practical tool the founders built for themselves while developing a legal AI assistant. They needed a way to benchmark LLMs for their own use case, and the project grew from there into a full-fledged company.

Before launching, the Drata team committed to being their own first customer. They used their product to achieve SOC 2 compliance, ensuring it worked and embodying their core value of proving, not just telling.