Chaos To Clarity

Building Painkillers, Not Vitamins: How Daniel Marashlian Scaled Drata to 700 Employees

Episode Notes

In this episode of Chaos to Clarity, Eric Weiss sits down with Daniel Marashlian, Co-Founder and CTO of Drata, one of San Diego’s fastest-growing SaaS startups.

Daniel shares his 20-year founder journey, from building early web systems after the dot-com crash to co-founding Drata, a company now powering compliance automation for more than 8,000 customers.

He opens up about what it takes to scale from a small, scrappy team to 700+ employees — and the hard lessons learned along the way.

You’ll hear how a painful compliance process in a previous startup inspired Drata’s creation, and how Daniel transformed that frustration into a platform that changed how businesses build trust.

In this episode:

• The early lessons that shaped Daniel’s mindset as a founder
• How Drata turned compliance from a blocker into a growth engine
• Why “build a painkiller, not a vitamin” became his guiding principle
• The breaking points that come with hypergrowth — and how to fix them
• When to layer, delegate, and hire before you’re underwater
• How to turn security into a company culture, not a checkbox

Whether you’re a founder, CTO, or tech leader scaling fast, Daniel’s story shows what it means to build systems, teams, and culture that can withstand rapid growth.