Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history | Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)

You're one of the first 10 employees. You're the first product manager. It was when he joined, the founders kind of didn't really have an idea figured out yet. When they landed on an idea and then ended up being wrong, ended up not working, six weeks after he joined.

There was a pivot. At the time, you know, we didn't really have like a solid product yet. We would have like 10 to 15 meetings every day with like potential customers. I was hired as the first product manager. I set in on those calls. I still did not exactly understand what we were gonna build. which was confusing because I was a product manager, so I was supposed to start building it. And so at some point, I was kind of like, I have to ask, what exactly are we doing here? And that ended up pivoting us around to cloud security.

So things started to click a little bit more. You started seeing enthusiasm. Can you talk about just like what.

That phase was like? We really felt the type of questions changed, right? Silly the call sounded like, again, how are you pricing this? Or when can we start doing a POV? I think naturally as human beings, you have a bias to to look for affirmation versus like a bias look for what you don't want to hear.

You started as an engineer, you moved into product, and now you're in marketing, which is not a traditional path.

I had a ton to learn about marketing, but what I knew really well was.

Today, my guest is Roz Herzberg. Roz is Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Product Strategy at Wizz. Before moving into marketing, Roz was an engineer. and then for most of her career was a product manager. Prior to Wiz, Roz led security products in Microsoft, including Azure Sentinel, and at Wiz she moved from VP of product to CMO. If you haven't heard of Wiz, it's not only the world's fastest growing security company, it's also the fastest growing software company in history, hitting 100 million ARR just 18 months after founding, and then just under five years after founding was rumored to be exploring an acquisition by Google. for over $23 billion. Even more wild, as you'll hear in our conversation, the team initially went in circles on what they wanted to build, and it took them a while to actually land on the idea that is basically the most intense product market fit of any B2B company ever. In our conversation, Ross shares what signals told her and the team that the original idea wasn't going to work, and then what changed in their conversations when they finally found product market fit, why she moved into marketing, and what she wished she knew as a product leader from her new marketing lens. Also, her perspective on marketing and what marketing people often get wrong and why CMOs often fail. Also, something she calls the dummy explanation, why you need to pay attention to where the heat is within the organization. She shares her most contrarian take on leadership, and so much more. This was such a fun episode, and there's so much to learn here for product leaders, for marketing leaders, and for founders. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Roz Herzberg. Roz, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

So I want to start by giving a little context on Wiz for folks that aren't super familiar with the company. You launched just under five years ago at this point. Within 18 months, You all hit 100 million ARR, which is the fastest growth rate in history of any software company. It's faster than the two other companies I've had on the podcast that also claim to be the fastest growing software companies, Deal and Ramp. You guys grew even faster. I read that you are at over 500 million ARR now. I know it's also not confirmed, but a certain company that rhymes with, Lugal, offered to buy you guys for $23 billion and y'all turned that down, decided to stay private. And also something like 50% of Fortune 100 companies are customers of Wizz. Is there anything I missed? Anything I got wrong?

Never heard of that Noodle company, but other than that, yeah.

Okay, great. We're going to come back to that. What's even crazier is in spite of that, when you join the company, you're employed something like number seven.

Yeah, we kind of started like, I feel like the founders and like the first like six, seven employees, we just started once.

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When we started, it wasn't even Wiz. The company was literally officially founded as Beyond Networks. Because there was this idea of, hey, we want to do something, in the network security space. Actually, myself and the founding team and also the other five engineers that started with us, we actually all came from a background of building cloud security products before. But this time it was like, okay, we actually don't want to do cloud security. We want to do network security. And then what happened was in those initial few weeks, it also we started with Literally, exactly. Wizz was founded together with COVID It was like that March when the whole world shut down suddenly, everything went terribly, terribly strange on all of us. That's when Wizz started. So it was like our days looked like talking to 10, 15 customers. Wizz is a B2B product. The buyer is the CISO, the person that owns basically security for the entire company. so we would have like 10 to 15 meetings every day with potential customers. At the time, we didn't really have a solid product yet, but we kind of had an idea in the deck explaining our idea and what we're going to build and why. We were all a very technical group of people, and especially our founding team, a staff, our CEO at Wiz, before Wiz, he led the entire division of all of the Microsoft cloud security products. So they're very impressive, very technical, very well known and respected in the industry. And so, you know, we would join a call and kind of present and walk through our idea. And the person on the other end would be like, oh, it sounds interesting. Oh, yes, sounds interesting. We'd love to hear more. Yes, perfect. Sounds interesting. We'd love to hear more. And you finish calls with like, A good feeling. Like the person said, oh, yes, interesting, interesting. But I was, like you said, I was hired as the first product manager. I set in on those calls sometimes like officially participating, sometimes even not officially participated, but listening on all of the calls. And I finished like a couple of weeks of that, which is a lot of calls, like, I think two weeks or something. And I still did not exactly understand what we were which was confusing because I was a product manager, so I was supposed to start building it in some ways, like go to the dev team, start building it. And that was a point where I felt like, I don't know what we are talking about exactly. Now, I really thought, I don't know what we're talking about. I thought they all understood what we're building. And I thought every customer we had in the call, understood the building, It's just that I did not understand what we were building. And so at some point I was kind of like, okay, I have to ask, what exactly are we in the details, right? Not in describing a big problem and a high level, big potential approach to solving it, but what exactly are we doing here? And I think that ended up opening A really deep discussion of, okay, wait, maybe we are telling a bit of a broad story, and maybe the person on the other end is not going to tell you, like, they're not incentivized to tell you, you, know what? I don't know what you're talking about. It's really, I guess they felt a bit like me in some ways, and they were like, oh, it's a really smart group of people. I'm sure they're building something interesting. So, yeah, interesting. They're not incentivized to, like, really dig deep dive into the problems, right? And so I think that opened up a discussion for us, and we kind of understood that we were, listening in the wrong way, maybe, because we were looking for positive reinforcements, but not really listening intently to signs of deep enthusiasm. And that ended up pivoting us around to cloud security.

There's so much to learn just from the short story, and I want to get into what you started hearing that made it sound like, okay, wait, maybe this is a better idea. But first of all, just the fact that you were doing 10 to 15 calls a day, you said?

That was a bit of, in some weird way, Again, Wiz was founded in that terrible March where the world closed down. It seemed at the time a really bad time to start a company, right? Markets were frozen and everything. Even my mom, which knows nothing about what exactly I do or why, even my mom, I mean, I left Microsoft to join Wiz. Even my mom was calling me and telling me, this is not a good time to join a startup. But it ended up being in some ways an advantage because everybody were, we're home, like suddenly everybody were home. No meetings, no travel. So suddenly C-suites, which are like busy people, and you know, we started originally based in Tel Aviv, so we couldn't even fly, but suddenly it didn't matter because, I mean, everybody's home. So yeah, we took like 10-15 calls.

A day back to back, back to back. I think that alone is a really important lesson of just that's how you discover something that isn't working slash find the thing that is working is do many, many calls. That is a lot of calls. I don't even know how someone has time to do 10 to 15 calls a day. But again, I think that's how you do this. So I think that alone is a really important lesson for folks to take away. I love this point that people are going to try to be nice to you, especially if they think you're really smart and especially if you're describing things that sound, you know, that might be helpful to them. But what you're sharing is you need to not trust that that often is deceiving. Talk about what it felt like when it moved from just like, oh, this is cool. this was nice. And maybe I'll talk more to like, oh, maybe this is actually something they'll buy.

We really felt the type of questions changed, right? Suddenly the call didn't end and was like, oh, this sounds super interesting. Sure, like, please update me. I'd love to hear more. Suddenly the call sounded like, Wait, again, how are you pricing this? How much will this cost? Or wait, like, when can we start doing a POV? How long is a POV? Or somebody would like finish the call and be like, okay, I know exactly who I need to connect you to in my team. Those are like really strong indications that are the type of indications we learn to look for. Although there's something I think, you know, at the beginning of a company, it's very scary. I think naturally as human beings, you want to get affirmation from the other side. So you're actually, you have a bias to look for affirmation versus like a bias to look for what you don't want to hear. That's just natural being a person. So I felt like that is what we ended up really being in tune with. Like, no, I have to understand they're intently interested. Like they want to connect me to somebody. They want to know how much this costs. And if somebody just tells you, like you said, oh, super cool. Yeah. I want to take this as a good sign, but I shouldn't. It's almost like you need to see.

Them pushing for the next step is what I'm hearing is like, let's do a POV. What's the next step to do this? I want to connect you to this person to talk further about this versus just like, oh yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.

And then, okay, bye. Yeah, exactly. And also in B2B, that is really the process you have to take. After you have to get connected to the actual team that will test the tools, will deploy it, there needs to be real passion about doing something. And I guess that is the difference. It's real passionate about, Hey, I want this right now.

The other point you made is that you or the person, nobody was saying this thing that was kind of this elephant in the room almost of, what are we even building? I don't understand what's happening here. I read somewhere that you were like, you told, I need to quit. I don't understand what this is, and I'm not the right person for this role. And it turned out nobody understood exactly what was going on. Can you share that story?

It's funny because it's a story that some of the founders tell, and they tell it differently. They tell, she came to us, and she was like, we have to rethink. But that's really not how it that was not my that was not my perspective at all, right? Like my perspective was genuinely, okay, I have to confess. That was my perspective. I was like, I was so I was sure that I was the only one not understanding. It's hard to to kind of get the courage, I guess, like sometimes it's hard to get the courage to say, actually, I don't understand. But I think by now in my career, it's like my favorite question. I feel like I I say, I don't understand a lot of times today. And I think if you build a company with the right type of culture in a sense, then it's not a shame to say, I don't understand, or please explain again. It's having that culture in place that enables it. And I also have to say, when I think of the founding team and the founding team in Wiz, Wiz is a very flat organization in some ways. It's not about seniority, it's not, it's really about driving impact and everybody can have a seat at the table and voices are heard. And I think it also reflects really highly about them, you know, kind of just giving me the seat at the table in a sense to be even able to say, I don't understand. Then when I'm saying, I don't understand, not actually being open to, oh, maybe we have to also think again. And I think that tells a lot about the culture, even to this day. But it's definitely, for me, it's a very learned quality over my progression of my career, actually allowing myself to be more vulnerable, more easier in saying I don't understand or I don't know.

-I love this lesson so much. One, partly because you said it's really scary to be the person that's like, I don't know, understand, right? That puts you, that's like a very vulnerable thing to say because they're like, What? She doesn't get it. Maybe she's not as smart as we thought. And, you know, that can't be easy to be the person doing that. The other thing is this reminds me of Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's CPO, has this really great phrase. We may be wrong, but we're not confused.

And I feel like that's exactly what you're saying here. Exactly. Which is why I love this question to this day.

Like, I love it.

I do think that if something is not easy to understand, then maybe it needs a bit more chewing on it.

I love that. Okay, so things started to click a little bit more. You started seeing enthusiasm. Can you talk about just like what that phase was like and any lessons from just like that turn to things are actually working?

I have to say, I think the feeling after we made that switch, like what ended up happening is that after that, like, Big conversation that we know don't understand. We ended up having, and this never happens, I don't think it's ever happened since and was like almost like a long, like five hour discussion with all of the founders where we decided to like move away from that pivot to cloud security, which is what we really in some ways like, no best. That's our background. That's what we did before. And we felt the problems there was so big and so strong. And once we started having the conversations with the new pivot to cloud security, the room felt so different. I mean, it was Oliver's Zoom, right? But I mean, our room, it felt very different. Once we found the right path, it was so easy to distinguish it from the wrong path in some ways, because we did start getting those strong signals and in some ways they pushed us forward, right? Like a customer was like, okay, I want to start a POV and we're like, oh, okay, of course. Let's schedule for like Thursday next week or something, right? Like we tried to even postpone it a bit because we had to run fast. Another learning I have from that phase was I explicitly remember that first conversation where it was like, okay, let's do a POV. It was a Fortune 10 company, a really big company. We had a beginning of a product. We wanted to buy some time until we actually started the POV. And so just because of that, we kind of said, okay, also we want to really understand exactly what they will connect to us as part of the POV because everything was so initial. So we put this long list of technical questions, like what are you using for this? What are you doing here? What are you doing? And on the one hand, because we needed to know to actually build the thing, on the other end, just because we wanted to buy time, And I was super scared. I remember sending that email and being like, oh, like they want a POV and now I'm like, kind of scare them away with this list of things they have to do and list of questions. Like it's counterintuitive. But actually it came back filled a day later. And I remember my lesson being, you know what? This is actually good. I want to make sure they're committed, right? I don't want to push somebody into a POV, if he is not committed to me at this stage, I mean, it's not a well-built product. It's going to be a journey we take together. So they need to really want it. I need that commitment from the other side. I'm not trying to push something on someone, especially not at this point, in my opinion, not ever. Like not even today, not even when you sell it large scale. I'm not trying to push anybody to anything. I really want to make sure they want it. I have to feel that want back. Um, so that was another learning for me. It's like, first of all, when it works, it works, and you do know when it works. And the second, is don't be too afraid to, get the pull from the customer. Like, it's okay. Like, you need that pull from the other end as well. Don't push too hard.

I know people always talk about like, look for pull. And I love that you're describing what pull looks like. Somebody's next day filling out a really complicated, annoying questionnaire because they just want this product they've never heard of before, before you chatted with them. And now they're like, it's Give it to me now. I'm going to do anything you need. Is there anything else along these lines before we move into your current role and learnings there?

I also think that one of the things we did very, almost uniquely at Wiz, was that because things started rolling so fast for us once we found the right path, we ended up selling before we had a sellers team. And we ended up almost in some ways always being behind, right? okay, I'm closing contracts with people. I haven't hired my first salesperson. I don't know what we're doing here. Like, I don't know how to have the conversations. But we ended up learning so much from that, like from us ourselves, us being the founders, myself, closing the deals, like actually going all the way to contracts and everything by ourselves kind of. We've learned a lot. We learned a lot. And then when we hired our first sales hire, It was also like, look, like we sold a couple of million of this. So you for sure, as a salesperson, right? Like you kind of give that confidence. So I thought, I felt like there was multiple places where that ended up happening just by accident because of how fast things ended up happening for us. And actually it was a really good learning experience to do it for the first time ourselves. I think sometimes when you start building a company, you have this like wish that if you can't do something, you're going to hire the right person. and he will be able to do it. Like, okay, I feel like my message is not clear enough and we just started this company. It's okay, I'm going to hire my first product marketer and that's going to be it. Or I feel like we can't close a deal, okay, because I need to hire my first salesperson and that will be it. I hardly find that... I don't think we've ever had that work for us, honestly. It's like, if you can't do it one time end to end and you're like the core, core, core group, The chances of just bringing somebody from the outside to solve that problem, it's wishful in some ways, but it never ends up that way.

I love this advice so much. There's kind of like two parallels here. Like if the founder can't do it, who has the most context and passion and motivation, it's unlikely an employee is going to be able to do it. And it's similar to the selling point that if your early customers aren't pulling from you, later customers are not going to have a good time, right? It's like the most passion comes early. How long did you all stay doing sales as a founding team? Like how many millions ARR roughly, do you remember?

Oh, a couple million. I don't remember the exact- A couple million.

Awesome. That's incredible. Often the hero story I hear is like one or two millionaire and then you start to hire salespeople. Okay, that was an awesome lesson. I love that. I want to talk about your current role. So currently you're Cmo and also VP of product strategy at Wiz, you started as an engineer, you moved into product, and now you're in marketing, which is not a traditional path, especially for product people. First of all, why did you decide to move into marketing from product?

Yeah, it's not a traditional path for anyone, I think. Also not one I would have necessarily expected myself to be on. First of all, it's not like I had this plan, right? In general, I myself, people sometimes ask me about career progression and I never had a plan for anything. That is just the only thing I did was like follow good people around. That's it. I never had a plan for anything I do. And so myself coming to Wiz was following Asaf and Inan and the founding team. And like two and a half years into Wiz, at that time was already like it was a very clear product market fit. We had like our revenues were already there. Like we had A sales team that was fully functioning, but at that point it was, we felt marketing was still something we didn't fully figure out. It wasn't working super well for us. We were at this stage where, yes, if there was a POV, a proof of value happening, we would win it versus competition. But many times we would come to a customer and they would be like, oh, I wish we heard of Wiz. We just signed with a competitor. which, like, it breaks your heart, right? Because I know they would have chosen me had they heard about me in time. So you started feeling that challenge around awareness and marketing. So two and a half years into the company, basically a staff, our CEO asked me if I was willing to take on marketing. Originally, I thought it was, I remember he, like, You know, like knocked on my, like bothered me while I was working on my computer. And we went into this like super cold room. It was like, when you were a fast growing startup, all of the rooms are always full, you know what I mean? So we went into this like server room, which is freezing cold, and I was in the middle of something and told me, I think you should leave the marketing org now. And I told him, okay, I was like, Asaf, I'm cold, I'm going back to work. I have a lot to do. It sounded that bizarre to me. I have never, It's not only do they not know marketing, I spent my life in engineering and then in product. It's not the go-to-market side even. I was never part of the go-to-market org. I have never heard of a lead in my life. I did not know the word pipeline. All of those things were very remote to me. And so it sounded like such a bizarre motion, but that was on a Thursday. And then I spent the weekend because he asked me to. And again, I just follow good people and do what they tell me to do. so I spent the weekend, like, listening to a ton of podcasts talking to CMOs just to even understand, like, what do CMOs do? Like, what do marketing orgs do in B2B companies? And then they ended up deciding to just give it a try, and we did not know if it was gonna work. I also don't know if it's gonna work forever, right? But, like, we ended up deciding to give it a try, and. And I think the thing that convinced me to do it was that in some ways, I really felt like. If in the early days of the company, finding product market fit is a major block for the company, and then building a sales organization becomes a major block for the company, I felt like we were at the point where you have to figure it out to scale. At some point of every product, people start looking really heavily at brand, whether we think that way or we don't. When I buy my iPhone, I have no idea how it really is compared to an Android phone. I did not look at the specs. I truly have no idea. So why do I like, why do I buy an iPhone? I just know it's like the thing to buy B2B products, even the most complex products. People are still people. They still buy it because brand matters a lot. So that was part of what convinced me that this is super important. So I if if I'm asked to attempt, I'll at least try I'll at least try because I do think it's really important.

I love this. I love the detail of the cold room, by the way. Speaking of cold, when we were chatting earlier, you had this really beautiful metaphor of heat and where heat is within organization and how it shifts as the company grows. Can you share that?

Yeah, it's exactly that. It's like that in the early, early days when we just started Wiz, I remember I felt like the heat was in the product kitchen. 'Cause it's like everybody's, Waiting to have something people want to start doing something, right? And then they felt like, okay, you start understanding it and now the heat moves a bit to the engineering side, like, okay, build it. Somebody wants it, build it, make it work. And then I felt, okay, so we closed a couple of deals now, right? We had our first couple of clients, now you bring in sales and the heat kind of moves to sales because they're like, okay, we have this thing now, go sell it. And then the heat starts moving to marketing, in my opinion, where it's like, okay, we have a product market fit, sales people can sell it, but they're saying, give me more pipeline. Like, hey, nobody heard of Wiz, give me more. So the heat kind of moves to marketing at that point. So in my, that's kind of, I've always felt like, yeah, in some ways I also naturally kind of, I guess, follow the heat.

And I think it's actually more so that they put the best people in the places that need the most help. and clearly that was you when they did that. This episode is brought to you by Cloudinary, the foundational technology for all images and video on the internet. Trusted by over 2 million developers and many of the world's leading brands, Cloudinary is the API-first image and video management platform built for product leaders who rely on visual storytelling to express their unique product value, who are building engaging web and app experiences, and who understand that harnessing the power of AI to automate is the only way forward. Gil Grossman, Engineering Team Lead at Fiverr, says that our users share billions of images, video, and audio files. Cloudinary's ability to automate our post-production work at scale amounts to a savings of up to 92,000 workdays per month. Think bold, build big, ship fast, let Cloudinary handle your media needs. Start your free plan today at cloudnary.com/leni. I asked one of your board members, Shardul Shah, what to ask you. He's a partner at Index Ventures, and here's what he told me. Speaking of kind of this move to marketing, he said that when you were in your first board meeting, the Wiz board meeting, presenting marketing and sharing your plan, and you asked him, Hey, can you introduce me to all these marketing leaders so I can learn from them? He basically did the opposite. He's like, no, I'm going to introduce all my marketing leaders to you because I think they need to learn from you. Why do you think that's the case?

I think Shirdal is very kind. I deeply remember that meeting because funny enough, it was my first board meeting ever. And that is a funny thing by itself because with this board, we have Shirdal on our board, we have Doug Leona, we have Jeff from Insights. We have It's a very, it's almost like it's very humbling to sit down in front of those people, period. And since I decided to take marketing and I took to the CMO role, this was also my first board meeting ever. And also it was like the meeting where it's like, you know, in some ways, I was not that, I was like, you know, the, okay, we took our product manager person. She was never a CMO with any company. Now she has a CMO here. And so it was just like a very, you know, the whole setting was very stressful for me. So I just ended up, it was like, I think that, I think we just had the meeting like two months after I took over marketing. And so it was more of like an update of like, Hey, those are the changes I made. And this is how I'm thinking of approaching this. And this is all the things I've done in the past two months. It's funny because I am a very non-traditional marketer just because I really don't, no marketing. Like at this point, I kind of know already, because I've been doing it for two years and I read a lot and I, but at that point, I generally did not know. Like I could not even explain to you how untraditional my approach was in some ways. I just really did what I thought, I mean, what I knew. I had a ton to learn about marketing, but what I knew really well was the problem we solved and I really knew our audience. So like, I myself, I come from, Security. I come from cloud security. I read all the right Twitters and I follow all the right people on Twitter and I read all the right blogs and I know it's funny. I know it matters. I know it's interesting right now. Generally because this is my space. I live in that space truly as a customer. So I was kind of just thinking, okay, what are things I could do to start fixing the problem that mattered most? And that was Nobody heard of Wiz at that time. So those were just like, I was like kind of saying, okay, I think in order to do that, I'm willing to take chances. I'll just focus on making a lot of noise. And I think even in those, even in that like short time of two months, we saw like changes happening already in some ways. So I think that what Shirdal meant by that, of course, although I do think he's being very, very kind, and they have learned a lot from many many marketing people, including my own team, by the way, which is another interesting thing, right? Like, I took over a large team of people who are marketers, and I'm this, like, person knows nothing about marketing, but will now manage this. So I learned a lot from many marketers, including my own exceptional team. But I think he meant really kind of looking at it differently, just thinking, okay, what is the end to the goal of having the right people? hear the right thing about my company, ASAP versus a ton of like, I know, a ton of like kind of traditional aspects of building pipelines and different things. I really did not know how to do at that time.

So following that thread, I'm curious, what is it that you think CMOs mistake or often do wrong? And why do you think CMOs often don't work out? And they've brought in someone like you with this very fresh perspective. What do you think, where do you think folks often go wrong?

First of all, I think CMO is a very, very hard role. And also, I think it's a role that is very hard to do without a lot of trust and without a deep connection to the founding team. Everything you do in marketing is very visible. I mean, and you're kind of touching something that matters so deeply to the founding team. And you are the one, like, representing it to the world. So it's very hard to build that trust and it's very easy to break it because one bad ad or something that one of the founding team will say, oh, this is not us. This is not what I mean. This is not the right thing. It breaks the trust really easily. And I think it's especially challenging. I mean, I really don't know how somebody that does not come from a security background could be successful deeply in this type of a role for a company like Wiz because it is really about understanding your customers and it is really about understanding your product. I think that's very, very hard to gain. So I guess I would kind of say, I think it's the deep trust you need with the founding team and the really deep connection you need to the product and to the market. And I think both of that, when you kind of come from the outside in a way, because you are not part of the founding team, And also, you may become from outside the market sometimes, because it's a very technical market or it's a very different domain, then I think it's two really big challenges. I'm not saying you can't come over them, but I think it's just a very, very hard job. And on top of that, it's a very diverse job. Like when I was a product manager, I managed product managers. I know exactly what they like, what they don't like. That's my audience. I know who to hire. I have the best network. I know every single PM in security. around me, it's so different when you're a marketing leader. You manage performance marketing, which is a numbers game. You manage designers and brand, and then you manage events and field. There's nothing in between those things that is deeply correlated. And so it's just a very, very challenging and very interesting role.

This trust point is so interesting, especially based on what you said earlier, where what you wanted to do is Create noise, take some risks. That's extra hard if you're not someone that the founding team trusts. Can you share some of the things you did that helped create noise and get the Wiz name out there that might inspire folks of like, oh, that was really cool. We should do something like that.

Yeah. Another insight I had about marketing in the early days was how different it is from product. As a product manager, I was always and still believe it's so important to think really hard about everything you add. Less is more. If you decide to build a feature in a product, then A, you're taking engineering time, which is the most valuable resource in every company, in my opinion. And B, in some ways you can.

Never take it back.

It's complicated your product. Even if one customer likes it and uses it, at least at B2B, you're never going to be able to suddenly take it away. And every new product you add to your product will have, like every new feature you add to your product, you will have to think about, okay, how does it work with that feature? So it's like making a mistake, like adding something to the product that is not the right thing or that is not truly, truly what your customer needed, even if it's what they asked for. But if it's not what they truly needed, it has a huge cost, like a huge cost associated with it. Marketing is quite the opposite, in my opinion. There is no cost to anything, no maintenance to anything, no technical depth, no anything. If tomorrow I post a video on Wiz's LinkedIn page, and I think that video is super funny and nobody likes that video, nothing happened. Tomorrow I'll post a different video, no maintenance, bye-bye, forgot it ever happened. So in some ways it kind of dawned on me how opposite those things were. And I was kind of like, okay, we have to just use it to our advantage. Let's try everything. Let's try everything. I'm trying to make noise. It was right before when I took over, it was before RSA. RSI is like the super ball of security companies. So it's where every vendors come to kind of showcase and all of our buyers are there and you kind of, you know, you know how those conferences go. You kind of pay for having a space assigned to you. It's like a very expensive space to assign to yourself. And we had the exact same spot we had the year before. And I said, okay, it's like, like it's a booth at a conference. I'll just make it the weirdest booth ever, because my goal is just having people look and be like, oh, what is Wiz? Right? Because they've never heard of me. So instead of doing like a classical cyber booth, I decided to say, okay, let's scrap our booth and do a Wiz of Oz booth, which literally looked like a Wiz of Oz booth. And we had actors like Dorothy and like all those things like hanging around there. And it looked nothing, nothing like any booth in the show, which is a cyber security show. Things are like red and black and like people with hoodies. And we decided to take a completely opposite approach. In general, I also decided that we're going to take a completely opposite approach with brand. I wanted Wiz's brand to, again, my first motive, stand out. So I wanted Wiz to have a very positive, optimistic type of brand. So I went all in on scrap whatever we were doing before, which was dark, and go pink, go bright blue, always go optimistic and focus on magic. not scaring people from attacks, but magic. And that ended up like, and it was scary, don't get me wrong. I, half of me was like, I remember feeling so scared walking to the show, to the floor trade, because I was like, is this gonna be the most terrible, bizarre? Are people gonna be like, what is she thinking? So I knew it could either be like a failure or a hit, and it ended up The amount of people that stopped by our booth was five times the amount of people that stopped by the year before. And it's the exact same space, the exact same investment because you invest in the space. But also ever since we do themed booths, every time we change themes to keep it fun, at this point you will see other cyber companies even doing themes because we were just like, okay, we'll do whatever it takes to make noise. And this is just one example.

That is an amazing story. And you said that other companies now try to do something similar. Oh man. So along these lines, when we were chatting earlier, you shared that you kind of have this mindset of being very okay with failing. That's kind of a core part of you. And it feels like that comes up again and again in the stories you share, where you just try stuff and you're okay if it doesn't work out. Can you just talk about that part and why that's so important?

Almost every single thing I've done in my career in some ways, even before, I never thought it was going to be successful in it. And so I guess, you know, there's, there's a lot of times it's like a lot of talk about like being more confident in yourself. I don't know, at least for me, I don't really know if that's like a real option. Okay. I just know that I'm kind of okay with being pretty sure I'm going to fail at something and still attempting it. that is, that is like the thing that has grown in me, where it, you know, when I took the job it was, I was sure they're gonna like, I was sure they got confused that they offered to take me with them. I was certain that it's gonna be like, okay, they're gonna figure out that I'm not the right fit for that like super smart and talented group of people who have all worked together before, by the way. I was sure they're gonna like find me out and I was sure I was gonna, I was pretty sure I was gonna fail, but I, I will still take it, like, right? So it's like, I thought I was going to fill out the product manager role too, although I did have the experience. So that also makes it easier to move in some ways. If I think I'm going to fill out anything, I'm like, okay, whatever, I'll try. And I think over time, yeah, it releases you a bit. Like, sure, I might fail. By the way, I might still fail. It's also fine. Like, it's even in my current role, right? Like, probably not for every scale. It will make sense for me to do it. But that's also fine. It's still just giving yourself the opportunity to fail.

That is really empowering. Is there anything that helped you build that skill? Because that's not natural to a lot of people, being okay with failure and leaning into things that they think they will probably fail at. Where did that come from for you?

Depending on what you believe in, everything comes from childhood. So in some ways, I do think it has to do with the way I was, I think the way my mom kind of raised me, My mom really believed that if you're good at something, so that's not where you should invest your energy. She really believed in kind of pushing us to the places where we were less continent than I guess. I mean, I was a very shy kid. My natural inclination as a young kid was to close the door in my room, read a book. I had no interest in meeting other kids or doing sports or nothing, nothing really. super, super shy and I think also slightly unsocial by nature, really. But so for my mom, she could have been like, oh, so she's really good with like books and math and so let's focus, like let's perfect, like let her build up that skill and be really good with that. But no, she would like make me go swimming and like make me go meet other kids. And in some ways I feel she always used to say that like friction is good. Like if you brush your teeth, and there's like a bit of blood somewhere, then you need to brush harder there. It's kind of like that idea that like friction is kind of good. If you're good at something already, then you're good at something already. So it's like a bit more about learning how to learn how to push yourself in other areas. Like I think she put hard work and courage in some ways or friction mostly above talent. Like talent only gets you so far, but like the hard work and the friction gets you More.

That is an awesome story. It's interesting that friction is good circles back to the story you shared about creating hurdles for potential prospects early on and looking for enthusiasm where they're filling out these long surveys. How about that?

No, it's true. You're right. It shows something. It shows if you do, it's always easier to be in like, inertia, right? That's why I also say sometimes it's like, It's like a breakup advice I give my girlfriends over the years. Where it's like, well, if you decide to break up with somebody, it's for sure the right decision, right? Because not breaking up with somebody is much easier. It's so hard to break up. So that makes it my default, the right decision. So it's like, yes, where there's friction.

It means that you put something extra in. I want to circle back to marketing slash product advice, going back full circle a little bit. So folks that are in product, Now that you're in the marketing world thinking about marketing, what do you think you wish you knew as a product leader that you think product leaders should be thinking more of or maybe miss that you now see as a marketing leader?

Having done products for many years, I really did not understand the criticality of marketing and even of product marketing. I really did not understand deeply enough that sometimes even gap between When you're in the product and you really live inside the product, in the technical domain, you can sometimes not understand how far you are from a common person in your market or a seller in your market. And marketing in a lot of ways bridges that gap. It's like a multiplier, but the further you get away from the core engineer than product, then In order for the messages to move correctly, they have to be crystal clear. That is something I understood only when looking at it from the other side. If you're on the product side, you can often kind of work with things that are like fluffy or blurry or like gray. Somebody will ask you, can the product do this? And you'll be like, yeah, not exactly, but you know, it can do blah, blah, blah. Kind of work around something, right? It doesn't have to be crystal clear because You can kind of go around things in a way that when you try to scale your message, you can't. It gets lost in translation. You have to be crystal clear, black and white. You have to communicate very clearly, especially as an organization scales, you have to communicate very clearly. Suddenly looking at the product org from the outside in the company that scales fast, I understood, whoa, product marketing and marketing plays a a, a, a really important role in being able to take that message and amplify it. And if you are giving signals that are even a bit gray, fuzzy, then it's not going to work. And you can't expect them to do a good job with it in some ways. So I really, by understanding the go to Market perspective and the user perspective and the sell perspective, I suddenly understood how things that can look simple on the inside of that side are very complex when you kind of cross over to to the go-to-market side. And I think learning the difference is so, so, so important for product people to understand that they have to deliver those crystal clear messages about the product.

Is there an example of that where you're like, oh wow, I thought this was good, but no, nobody understands what we're talking about?

There's so much. I think, for example, in our domain, it's very almost custom to talk in a lot of initials. and a lot of things in security are like use initials for them. You say like CSBM for cloud security poster management and you use a lot of those types of initials and you keep assuming that the world knows what you mean. But then when I actually looked at things over from the marketing side, if you ask our product people, engineers, where does our product fall in terms of category, it would be like CNAPP, cloud native application Protection. But if you go over and you look at Google, people are not googling that word. They're googling cloud security solution, right? So that's just a simple and silly example, but it's that example that when you live inside something very technically inside your marketing and certain domain, you're very remote sometimes by accident from the buyer. And so a lot of those learnings clicked for me only once I saw everything from the marketing side.

You have this concept that you described as a dummy explanation when someone, you just need it to feel really, really simple. Can you color, add some color to that?

Yes. It's when I, now in marketing and in everything we write and everything our team produces in terms of anything, anything written by Wiz, I keep kind of going back to, I don't want us to forget that we are inside our own bubbles. We go to work at Wiz every day. Wiz is a cloud security company. It's cloud security. We live inside our own bubble, but reminding ourselves that customers don't live in that bubble. They're like people in the world. Their life is not Wizz. So every time you write something, I wanted to not assume knowledge about Wizz or knowledge about the product or deep knowledge about the market. I'll give just a simple example. Wizz itself is based on part of the deep innovation that Wizz brought to the market that enabled the scale. was very high correlated signal that's based on a graph database. So inside Whiz, we have the Whiz graph database for security. If you write something that says the Whiz graph database, I don't like it because why would a common person know what is the Whiz graph database, right? So it's making sure that every single thing you say is understandable by anybody. There's no reason to use complex terminology when you can keep things straight and simple.

Easier said than done, but such a good reminder to always be. Is there a framework here? Are you just trying to remember? People outside don't understand anything we are talking about and simplify it further. How do you actually practice that? I imagine everyone's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I know, I know all this stuff, but they don't actually do it. Is there any tips there for how.

To actually practice this? I constantly remind myself about the bubble. Every time somebody says, oh, we haven't changed our color for so long or our website's headline. It's like, or, you know, a lot of those things for me, it's like, you are the only one that is sick of it, right? Your customers are just learning what you put there like 10 months ago. You are the only one looking at this thing like day after day, after day, after day, after day. You're actually going to change it only, like they're just starting to grasp it and you're changing it under their feet. It's living in that bubble and constantly reminding myself, like, it is a bubble. I'm in that Wizz bubble, right? But my audience is not. So yeah, it's a daily reminder. It's hard to get, it's hard, it's a hard daily reminder.

That is so funny. Okay, just a few more questions. One is, so there's four co-founders of Wizz, is that right?

Yeah.

What is your relationship with them? How has that changed over the years and over time? And just like, I imagine it's very difficult being a not a founder, trying to have a lot of influence on strategy and vision and all these things. Just, I guess, how has that relationship changed over the years? Anything there that might be helpful to folks? And any advice for people in a similar boat to work well with founders who are also very product oriented and very opinionated about everything?

Yeah, I think the Wiz founding team is a truly incredible team. They also have a very unique story. Wiz is actually their second company together. So before Wiz, they founded Adalon, which sold to Microsoft. That's how they all ended up in Microsoft in the first place. And even before that, they all worked together in the Israeli army. So they've known each other for like, they've been working together for like 30 years, right? It's a long, long time. Well, not 30. I made them older, like 20, 22, 23 years. It's a very, very, very unique team where there is complete trust. between the team members and also a very clear understanding of what falls under each has his own clear domain. And that's why decisions are made super fast, super fast. Because they're complete trust and everybody has their clearly own domain. And I think the unique thing about Wiz, and I truly think it defines our company's culture to this day, is exactly that they did not have to work hard. to be able to impact strategy and get a seat at the table. I think that it's open, like it's a very open culture and an open company that goes back to the beginning of like being able to say, I don't understand. They really believe in employees and they really believe in giving everybody a chance to have impact. Regardless of title or experience or anything, if you want to drive more impact, you will get the chance. I think it's something I really learned to adore in that team. It's like they will give their trust to someone and they will allow you to try. And I think it also causes employees to have a lot of loyalty because you are given those opportunities and you are given that chance. And it builds a very, very healthy culture. And I think also a culture that's very loyal, like everybody feels part of what's being built here.

Incredible. And how many employees are there? How large is Wiz at this point, just for folks to get a sense if they want to potentially join Wiz someday?

Around like 1,500?

Okay. Awesome. Amazing. Okay. Well, potentially final question. I want to take us to contrarian corner. I'm curious if there's something you have a very contrarian opinion about, something that you believe that a lot of other people don't believe. We've already covered a number of things, I think, like that, but is there anything else that comes to mind?

It's so funny because I don't think we've covered anything contrary yet.

Okay.

I think like one thing is maybe goes back to what I was talking about before, but was failing in confidence. I think like kind of being, at least like being a woman in tech, you get talked to a lot about like imposter syndrome and building up your confidence. And I actually do think that like my approach to it, at least for me, has been just more effective. Like I won't be able to build with confidence. I do feel like an imposter. And I know there's always like those statistics about many people feeling that way. So I think like maybe just like, let's embrace it. I feel like an imposter. You feel like an imposter. Everybody feels like an imposter. It's like kind of maybe embrace it, but don't let that stop you from making a decision. Like maybe they will find out you're an imposter. Maybe let them find out. Like it's fine. Like I just, you know, if you want to, If you think about trying to go to an interview for a company and you start thinking, oh, no, I won't get accepted. They won't take me. Perfect. Let them not accept you. Like, you think you're not good enough? Perfect. That's on them to not accept you, right? Like, give yourself that opportunity. And I think for me, maybe less talking about like the imposter syndrome, more talking about just like, okay, but ignore it.

Like, you will never know your limit if you don't try. The best advice I've heard along these lines, which is basically what you're saying, is that when you take on a new role, you actually are an imposter. You've never done this before. And that's okay. And that's very normal. Most people in a new role, when they're promoted, given a big opportunity, yeah, you are an imposter in many ways, but that's okay.

That's exactly what you're saying.

I never heard it, but I love it. Roz, is there anything else you wanted to share? Anything else that we haven't touched on that you think might be helpful to.

Folks before we get to our very exciting lightning round? I deeply, deeply believe that we're doing something super special in Wiz. and I think the company is in such an interesting place of hyper-scaling, but still keeping that authentic and I think flat and enabling culture. I think there's literally interesting opportunities across every domain. So yeah, just to say that we are always hiring for great people trying to make an impact.

Are there any roles or areas you're specifically most focused on hiring right now in case folks are listening and are like, oh shit, I'm gonna apply?

Truly, we are hiring across, like the beauty of hyper scaling is we are hiring across everything. But also, if you feel super strongly about joining and you don't find the right role, we'd still love to talk to you. There's many, many things for passionate people to do here.

Awesome. We'll link to the career page in the show notes. And with that, Roz, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready?

I'm ready. I hope.

First question, what are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people?

So I focus a bit on the product side of things. So we mentioned the Heat in the Kitchen. Actually, one of my most favorite business books, and I've read a lot of them, is probably Setting the Table by Danny Meyer, which is he owns Shake Shack and a chain of really great restaurants in New York. And it's such an interesting business perspective from a different domain than obviously tech or SaaS. But there's so many applicable lessons there from the deep connection to hosting, focusing and obsessing over your customer. You know, Shake Shack, unlike other chains where they optimize for you not to sit down, they optimize for you to sit down there. It's a very, very unique culture and unique vision. And I've learned a lot, and some of the most memorable lessons come from his management thoughts. Imagine, you know, huge chains, but also very high-end restaurants. And I think it's a very, very inspiring book and different, like just different from my domain, but very applicable in my domain as well. And then a second book I really like, I read it early on in Wiz, and so did the entire founding team, I think. The book by Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, no Rules Rules, which also I think talks very clearly Netflix has a super unique culture and story, right? Like moving, talk about pivots, like they sold cassettes over mail and somehow pivoted to what it is today. That's an insane story. And think about like pivoting from like a tech company to a company that has production studios and produces reality TV, like, right, like talk about the type of culture you would need to truly pivot. I think it's a super interesting read for anybody thinking about like putting strong culture in place.

I'm going to call an audible and ask about marketing specifically. You said that early on you read some marketing books and listened to marketing podcast. Is there anything else that your recall was very helpful in helping you ramp up in this world and do marketing?

Honestly, I think at the end for me, I just ended up saying, you know what? What are the companies I feel do things really well? What are the brands I love? and what do I love about them? And then really obsessing about what did they do? What are their team doings? And then also obsessing about the people behind them. So for example, I think Gong does an amazing job in marketing for a B2B product. And so it was like, okay, so what are all the things Gong did? And then I would look up every single talk their CMO gave. So it's like kind of, I always like backed up into it. I did not care if it's like a security company or not security company. I actually don't like the way most security companies market things. It's mostly by like frightening and fear and that's not really, I don't like it. So for me, it was just like looking at brands I love and then backtracking from there.

I love that. We have the CPO of Gong and co-founder coming on the podcast very soon. So I will ask him about this.

Oh, cool.

All right, next question. Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed?

Honestly, like, I hardly, hardly, hardly watch anything. I think the Wire is the best, like, show ever created. I will take that fight with anybody. But yeah, I haven't really watched anything super recent.

The only problem with the Wire is it's so long to watch. I've watched, I've seen it. I love it, but it's like a large commitment. It's like an hour times 22 episodes times, I think, five seasons. But worth it.

Worth it.

Next question. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?

It's a funny question in the world we live in where there's just so many.

That's why. Which one should we pay attention to? That's the question.

I'll answer a pretty random answer. I always go around with a notebook and a pen, still that type of person. I mean, I constantly walk around with them, across office rooms, blah, blah, blah. and I always care deeply about the notebook and the pen. Like, I'm a very picky person. I pick pens, I pick notebooks, and I often lose my pens, which is sad. And I recently bought like this cute something you, it's like very geeky, but like you can like a pen holder for a notebook. I did not know they existed. It's a very nice feature. It's like small magnetic and it like.

Claps into your notebook and then you can put the pen in it. Really nice feature.

How does one find this? Is there a brand or a name or something? I'll send you a link, but if.

You look like notebook pen holder, you'll find a ton. okay, cool. We'll link to in the show notes, whatever one you recommend. Just a couple more questions. Do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to and find helpful in work or in life?

I think keeping it simple, like if something, if you start feeling like something is too complex or an answer is too complex or something you're building in the product is too complex, probably, or something in your life feels too complex, like probably it does mean something, but sometimes you just have to like maybe take two steps back. Leave it there until you come back to it again and you find a simple way out. Whether it's a product feature or anything, if you start getting to if something starts getting too complex and you don't know how to design it or how to find end from start, it does mean it's not the right solution. It's too complex. It's not the right solution. But sometimes take two steps back and they find it applicable to anything in life almost.

Reminds me of the story when you were trying to sell the initial version of Wiz/ new beyond, whatever it was called early on, and it was just too complicated and no one understood what the hell was going on. And so I love how that circles back. Final question. I know you can't talk too much about this, but I'm also just curious what you're able to share. As I said, allegedly a company whose name rhymes with Google wanted to buy you guys for many billions and you all decided to decline that and stay private. Anything you could share there about maybe why you decided to do that? if that was true at all?

Yeah, I mean, I can't address like any specific offers. Obviously, Wiz over the years has gotten many acquisition offers. I can share that. I think for us, us being the founding team, the employees, the customers, the board, and staying on an independent path, we all really believe that Wiz can become one of the biggest security companies in the world. When you look at Wiz today, and I mean, we spoke about the unconventional growth, when you think about it, in some ways Wiz addresses the biggest growing market of security. Like cloud security, cloud is the fastest growing, cloud is such a fast growing market. Cloud grows like 20-30% year over year. We feel like everything is in the cloud, but in reality, the estimation only like 20%, 15 to 20% of the infra today is in cloud. So it's a really, really fast growing state in the fast growing market. And security by nature is a bit of like a market of leaders, right? I mean, it's a bit like buying insurance for something. You want to buy it from the best, from the leader in this domain. And today Wizz really is that leader because it's a new space. Wizz is considered, I think, in many ways, and that is also what makes marketing and brand, not just marketing, but truly brand, so important, like is considered, I think, the cloud security company in a lot of ways, right? Still, of course, it's ours to lose. There's a ton of work ahead of us, right? But that is a huge opportunity in front of us, becoming the cloud security company. And I think nobody thinks we are anywhere near ready to give it up in a way.

I totally understand that. And again, this is hiring in case you are inspired by what you're hearing. Raz, this was incredible. I'm so happy that you did this. Thank you so much for being here. Two final questions. Where can folks find you online if they want to reach out and maybe follow up on stuff?

And how can listeners be useful to you? Find me on LinkedIn. And yeah, no, apply. We love great people who are learners, which I think is what this podcast is all about. So definitely the right place to find the right people.

Awesome, Raz. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenniespodcast.com See you in the next episode.