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

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:00)
You're one of the first 10 employees, you're the first product manager, Wiz. When you joined, the founders 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 you joined, there was a pivot.

**Raaz Herzberg** (0:13)
At the time, we didn't really have a solid product yet. We would have 10 to 15 meetings every day with potential customers. I was hired as the first product manager. I sat in on those calls. I still did not exactly understand what we were going to build, which was confusing because I was a product manager, so I was supposed to start building it. At some point, I was like, I have to ask, what exactly are we doing here? That ended up pivoting us around to Cloud Security.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:37)
So things started to click a little bit more. You started seeing enthusiasm. Can you talk about just what that phase was like?

**Raaz Herzberg** (0:43)
We really felt the type of questions change. Suddenly, 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 look for affirmation versus a bias for what you don't want to hear.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:57)
You started as an engineer, you moved into product and now you're marketing, which is not a traditional path.

**Raaz Herzberg** (1:03)
I had a ton to learn about marketing, which was I knew really well.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:11)
Today, my guest is Raaz Herzberg. Raaz is Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Product Strategy at Wiz. Before moving into marketing, Raaz was an engineer and then for most of her career was a product manager. Prior to Wiz, Raaz 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 Raaz Herzberg.
Raaz, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the podcast.

**Raaz Herzberg** (2:58)
Thank you for having me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (2:59)
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. Deel 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 dollars and you all turned that down, decided to stay private. And also something like 50% of Fortune 100 companies are customers of Wiz. Is there anything I missed? Anything I got wrong?

**Raaz Herzberg** (3:52)
Never heard of like that Noogle company, but I'm in the back. Yeah.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:57)
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 employ something like number seven?