Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history | Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)
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Who is Raaz Herzberg and what is her background before joining Wiz?
You're one of the first ten employees, you're the first product manager was when you 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 you joined, there was a pivot.
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 like 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 change, 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 look for affirmation versus like a bias to 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 Wiz. 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 VPA 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 it 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 five hundred million Air R now. I know it's also not confirmed, but uh a certain company that rhymes with uh Lugal offered to buy you guys for uh twenty-three billion dollars and y'all turned that down, decided to stay private.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Raaz Herzberg and what is her background before joining Wiz?
0:00–10:44
2
How did Wiz discover the need to pivot and achieve product‑market fit?
10:44–19:41
3
What signals from early customer conversations indicated true product‑market fit?
19:41–27:41
4
Why did Raaz move from product management to become Wiz’s CMO?
27:41–37:25
5
What common mistakes do CMOs make and how does Raaz avoid them?
37:25–46:41
6
How did Wiz create noise and stand out with unconventional marketing tactics?
46:41–55:20
7
What lessons does Raaz share about company culture, failure, and taking risks?
55:20–1:04:02
8
What final advice and resources does Raaz give listeners in the lightning round?
1:04:02–1:05:15
Speakers
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