Why Engineers Make the Best Entrepreneurs w/ Drata's Co-founder & CTO Daniel Marashlian

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Conor Bronsdon, executive producer and sometimes host of Dev Interrupted. Before we start this week's episode, I wanna ask for two minutes of your time that'll help us create hundreds of hours of content vital to your journey as a developer or engineering leader.
We've created a super quick survey to help us understand what you like about Dev Interrupted, what you dislike and what you want out of our podcast in general. You can find the survey linked in the show notes of the episode, so please take the time now or after the episode to help us make this a must-listend for you and thousands of other developers each week. Now, on to the episode.

**Daniel Marashlian** (0:32)
Okay, hey, let's give ourselves a year. Let's try to get to the million ARR mark. Let's maybe try to get 100 customers. That would, for most entrepreneurs, sounds like a hell of a big success.
I think we did that in like early March or something. So like, it was like, all right, holy cow. We found product market fit in six weeks. Like, it's crazy.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:54)
This episode is sponsored by LinearB.
Accelerate your development pipeline with data-driven engineering metrics, continuous improvement automation, and project visibility while cutting your software development cycle time in half. Sign up for your free demo at linearb.io and mention the Dev Interrupted Podcast discount for a one-month free when you sign up for an annual Pro membership.

**Dan Lines** (1:14)
Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Dan Lines, and today I'm joined by Daniel Marashlian, co-founder and CTO of Drata.
Daniel, welcome to the show.

**Daniel Marashlian** (1:27)
Thank you, thank you.

**Dan Lines** (1:29)
So oftentimes we start the show by congratulating the guests on their most recent funding round, but for you at Drata, it's super special. You had an amazing Series B in November of last year. You are in the realm, or actually at a billion dollar valuation within 10 months into founding your company. So super, super fast. This makes Drata one of the fastest SaaS companies to ever reach one billion dollar valuation, Mark.
Awesome, congratulations on that.

**Daniel Marashlian** (2:02)
Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been a ride, that's for sure.

**Dan Lines** (2:06)
It is a ride that we will dive into here in a minute. Also wanted to thank you for being at Interact, our engineering leadership conference. Your video on leadership mistakes was super funny. If anyone listening has not seen it and want to check out Daniel talking about that, his most embarrassing stories as a leader, perfect for you, Daniel, go to the Dev Interrupted YouTube. We'll put a link in the show notes.
All right, so to get started here, you're an engineer by trade, but you've also founded eight different companies, a lot of companies. So what we really want to know is, simple question to start out, as an engineer, how do you become an entrepreneur that is a founder of a $1 billion company?

**Daniel Marashlian** (2:56)
Yeah, it's a long journey, for sure. Sometimes, I was actually meeting with some people last night at an event out here in San Diego that I haven't seen in a bit because of COVID and whatnot. But, you know, they kind of asked me maybe a similar question, what's different this time? And on one side, it's like, nothing's different. Like we're doing, I'm doing the same thing as I did prior companies that we've started.
But then, you know, kind of to not fair in a way to say that because I have almost 20 years of experience of doing this now, of lessons learned, of what not to do. So, you know, compound that, that saying of get, you know, 1% better every day over, you know, almost 20 years is, I think, a big factor to that.

**Dan Lines** (3:41)
Right. Yeah, totally makes sense. Those eight companies that you founded previously, can you give us a spectrum of what happened to them in terms of, like, how you look at success?

**Daniel Marashlian** (3:52)
Holy cow. Well, the first one was a complete failure.
It was not in technology. It was, we actually manufacture nutritional supplements.
So that was probably the biggest lesson is stick with what you know and what you're passionate about. And in my fate, you know, aside, it's definitely technology.
Yeah, I mean, I don't really talk about that one too much. Like I, that actually caused me bankruptcy when I was really young, when I was about 24 or so, 25 So yeah, that was, that was brutal. And it took a long time and a long grind to get that behind me. But, but, you know, I think most important there, I think was the biggest lesson of all was stick to what you know. I even tell that to people and friends and the asking about like, you know, stock tips or this or that. Not that we know anything about what the market is tomorrow, but, but it's like, I think the same way. It's like stick with what you know. I only invest in companies I know. And that I'm like kind of customers up because I'm like, that's actually a really good company.