Give Before You Take: The Partner-First Growth Playbook

The Framework

Most founders think about partnerships backwards. They ask: what can this partner do for us? How many leads can they send? What's the co-marketing opportunity?

Adam Markowitz at Drata flipped that question entirely. From day one, the mindset was: "What can we do for you for a very long time before it's what's in it for us."

That's not just a nice philosophy. It's the strategy that made Drata a top 5 global ISV on AWS Marketplace in under 2 years and drove two-thirds of their pipeline through partner channels. A third sourced directly by partners. Another third influenced by them.

Most partnership programs are transactional. Drata's was deliberately generous first.

The 3 Steps

1. Pick one partner and go all in. Drata integrated with AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure for compliance monitoring. Their customer base was overwhelmingly on AWS. Instead of spreading thin across all three platforms, they went all in with AWS first. Adam said: "Rather than spreading ourselves across the board, let's really go all in." Today, 5 years in, they work with all cloud platforms. But the early focus on one partnership built the proof that made the others possible.
2. Bring value they didn't ask for. Drata started bringing customers to AWS Marketplace who had never transacted there before. These weren't large enterprises with committed cloud spend. They were smaller companies who had never even heard of Marketplace. Adam explained: "We were bringing companies that had no committed spend, they had never even heard of Marketplace." That volume and those new-to-Marketplace customers got Drata on AWS's radar fast. The value was obvious without Drata having to ask for anything.
3. Build the auditor alliance without controlling it. On the audit firm side, Drata took what Adam called a "Declaration of Independence" approach. They never forced customers to use a specific auditor. They never tried to become an auditor themselves. Instead, they made auditors faster and more efficient by giving them continuous monitoring data. The result: auditors could conduct more audits with higher integrity. Everyone won. And the partnership became a moat because not every competitor took that approach.

Real Numbers

The numbers tell the story clearly.

AWS Marketplace: Top 5 global ISV by transaction volume in less than 2 years. Thousands of transactions brought to Marketplace in the first couple of years.

Partner pipeline: A third of Drata's pipeline sourced through partners. Another third influenced by partners. Two-thirds of total pipeline touched by the partner channel.

Auditor Alliance: Customers can use any audit firm. No lock-in. But audit firms experienced with Drata deliver faster, more streamlined engagements. That builds loyalty without mandates.

Customer growth: 8,000+ global customers across 60+ countries. $100 million in revenue before their fourth birthday. The partner channel was a major driver of that trajectory.

When It Fails

This approach requires patience. If you need partner-sourced revenue this quarter, a give-first strategy won't work. It also doesn't work if your product isn't genuinely useful to the partner's customers. Drata made AWS look good by bringing net-new Marketplace transactions. If your product doesn't create visible wins for the partner, generosity alone won't build the relationship.

Your First Move

Pick one partner where your customers already overlap. Don't pitch a partnership. Instead, find one thing you can do for them this month that costs you very little but creates real value for them. Do it. Then do it again next month. Track the volume you bring them. When the numbers are obvious, the partnership conversation happens naturally.