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

0:00 you're one of the first 10 employees you're the first product manager it 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 6 weeks after you joined there was a pivot the time 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

0:20 hired as the first product manager I set 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 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

0:40 seeing enthusiasm can you talk about just like what that phase was like we really felt the type of questions change right suddenly the call sounded like again how are you pricing this or when can we start doing a PO I think naturally as human beings you have a bias to look for affirmation versus like a bias for what you don't want to hear you started as an engineer you moved into product and a marketing which is

1:02 not a traditional path I had a ton to learn about marketing with what I knew really well was today my guest is Ros herberg Ros is Chief marketing officer and VP of product strategy at whiz before moving into marketing Ros was an engineer and then for most of her career was a product manager prior to whiz Ros LED security products in Microsoft including Azure Sentinel and at whiz she moved from VP a product to cm if you haven't heard of Whiz It's not

1:32 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 5 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 basic basically

2:00 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 that what changed in their conversations when they finally found product Market fit why she moved into marketing and what she wish 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

2:24 also something she calls the dummy explanation why you need to pay attention to where the heat is within your Oran gation she shares her most contributing 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 followed in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube it's the best way to avoid

2:45 missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously with that I bring you Ros herberg RZ 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 Whiz for folks that aren't super familiar with the company you launched just under 5 years ago at this point within 18 months you all hit 100 million ARR which is the fastest growth rate in

3:16 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 a are 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 you all turned that down decided to stay private and

3:43 also something like 50% of Fortune 100 companies are customers of whiz is there anything I missed anything I got wrong never heard of like that nle company but other than that yeah okay great we're going to come back to that what's even is in spite of that when you join the company you employe something like number seven yeah we kind of started I feel like the founders and like the first like six seven employees we just started

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6:40 Lenny okay so you're for one of the first 10 employees you're the first product manager was yeah and what I read is that when you joined the founders kind of didn't really have an idea figured out yet when they landed on an idea and it ended up being wrong ended up not working weeks after you joined there was a pivot so the fact that that was true and you went from this like this isn't working to Boom a hundred

7:07 million AR I want to spend some time here because I think there's a lot people can learn here so let me just ask looking back at that point when the idea wasn't working to realizing hey maybe this is a better idea what do you remember are some signals that told you this isn't working and okay maybe this is because a lot of Founders are in that stage with their product when when we started I it wasn't even

7:33 whiz the company was literally officially founded as Beyond networks because it was this like idea of hey we want to do something in the network security space actually myself and the founding team and also the other like 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 like in those

8:02 initial like few weeks you you kind of it also we started with literally exactly whiz was founded together was Co like it was like that March when the whole world shut down suddenly everything went like terribly terribly strange on all of us that's when wh started so it was like our days looked like talking to 10 15 customers wasz is a B2B product the buyer is is the the ceso the people that the the person

8:32 that owns basically security for the entire company so we would have like 10 to 15 meetings every day was like potential customers at the time you know we didn't really have like a solid product yet but we kind of had like an idea in the deck explaining our idea and what we're going to build and and why we were all like a very technical group of people and especially our founding team Asaf our CEO at whz before whz he led

8:58 the entire division of all the Microsoft cloud security products so they're very 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 would love to hear more yes perfect sounds interesting we love to hear more and you finished calls was like a good feeling like the

9:29 said oh yes interesting interesting but I was like you said I was hired as a first product manager I set in on those calls sometimes like officially participating sometimes even not officially participated at 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 going to build which was confusing because I was a

9:57 product manager so I was supposed to you know like start building it in some ways like go to the dev team start building it and that was like 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 like I thought they all understood what we're building and I thought every customer we had in the call understood what we're building it's just that I did not

10:22 understand what we were building and so at some point I was kind of like okay I have I have to ask like what did exactly are we like in the details right not in describing a a big problem in like a high level big potential approach to solving it but like what exactly are we going to are we doing here and I think that that ended up like opening a really deep discussion of okay wait maybe we're telling a bit

10:53 of a broad story and maybe the person in the other end is not going to tell you like they're not in to tell you you know what I'm 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

11:13 problems right and so I think that opened up a a discussion for us and we kind of understood that we were listening in the wrong way maybe that we were looking for like positive reinforcements but not really listening intently to like signs of deep enthusiasm and that ended up like pivoting us around to Cloud security there's so much to learn just from the short story and I want to get into like what you started hearing that made it

11:36 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 like in some weird way again whiz was founded in like that terrible March where the World closed down it seemed at the time like a really bad time to start to start company right like Markus or froze and everything even my mom which knows

11:57 nothing about like what exactly I do or why even my mom I mean I left Microsoft to join whiz even my mom was like calling me and telling me this is not a good time to join a startup but it ended up being in some ways like an advantage because everybody were were home like suddenly everybody were home no meetings no travel so suddenly cils which are like busy people and you know we're we started originally based in Tel Aviv

12:21 so we couldn't even fly but suddenly it didn't matter because I mean everybody's home so yeah we took like 105 calls a day back to back back to back I think that alone is an 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 does a lot of calls I don't even know how someone has time to do 10 to 15 calls a day but again I

12:42 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 but you're sharing is you need to not trust that that that often is is deceiving talk about what it felt like

13:04 when it moved from just like oh this is cool this is nice and maybe yeah let's 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 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

13:28 start doing a PO how long long as a PO or somebody would like finish the call 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 of a company it's very scary I think naturally as human beings you want to get affirmation from the other side so

13:53 you're actually you have a bias to look for affirmation versus is 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 intensely interested like they want to connect me to somebody they want to know how much this costs I if somebody just tells you like you said oh super cool yeah I want

14:19 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 and also like in B2B that is really the process you

14:40 have to take right like after you you have to get connected to the actual team that will test the tool that will deploy it like there needs to be real passion about doing something and and I guess that is the difference it's like real passion about hey I want this right now the other point you made is that you were the person like nobody was saying this thing that was kind of this elephant in the room almost of what are

15:02 we even building I don't understand what's happening here I read somewhere that you were like you told I need I need to I need to quit like I don't understand what this is and I'm not like the right person for this role and 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 differently like they tell like she came to us and she was like we

15:25 have to rethink and 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 it 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 care

15:55 it's like my favorite question I feel like I say I don't understand a lot of times today and I think I I think if you build a company with the right type of of culture in a sense then it's not a shame to say like I don't understand or please explain again it's it's having that culture in place that enables it and I also have to say like when I think of you know the founding team and the founding team in

16:22 whiz whiz is a very like 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 on the table and voices are heard and I think it also reflects really highly about them you know kind of just giving me the 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

16:46 maybe we have to also think again and I think that tells a lot about the culture even 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 more more easier and 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 understand right that puts you

17:12 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 toor Cohen LinkedIn 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

17:34 love it I 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 in 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

18:06 after that like big conversation of you know I don't understand we ended up having and this never happens I don't think it's ever happened since it was like almost like a long like five hour discussion with all the founders where we decided to like move away from that pivot to Cloud security which is what we really in some way like no best that's our background that's what we did before and we felt the problems there was so

18:30 big and so strong and once we started having the conversations with like the new like the new pivot to Cloud security the room felt so different I mean it was all over Zoom right but I mean our room it felt very different you could once we once we found the right path you could just it was so easy to distinguish it from the wrong path in some ways because we did start getting those like strong signals and in some ways they

19:00 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 from that phase was I 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

19:26 and we had you know a beginning of a product we wanted to buy some time until we actually start the POV and so just because of that we kind of said okay also we want to really understand like exactly what they will connect to us as part of the POV because everything was so initial so we put this like long list of technical questions like what are you using for this what are you doing here what are you

19:48 and on the one hand because we needed to know to actually build a thing on the other hand just because we wanted to buy time and I was super scared I remember sending that email and being like H like they want a POV and now I'm like going to scare them away with this like 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

20:11 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

20:36 opinion not ever like not even today not even when you sell at large scales 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 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

20:59 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 give it to me now I'm going to do anything you need is there anything else along these lines before

21:18 we move into your current role and learnings there I I also think that like one of the things we did very almost like uniquely it was was that because things started rolling so fast for us when we found like the right path we ended up selling before we had a sellers team and we ended up like kind of almost in some ways always being behind right like okay I'm closing contracts with people I haven't hired my first

21:44 salesperson I don't know what we're doing here like I don't I don't know how to have the conversations but we ended up learning so much from that like from us ourselves as being the founders myself closing the deals like actually going all the way to contracts and everything by ourselves kind of we've learn we learned a lot we learned a lot and then when we hired our first sales higher it was also like look like we

22:08 sold a couple million of this so you for sure as a salesperson right like you 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 yourself I think sometimes when you when you start building a company you have

22:28 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 I we just started this company it's okay I'm GNA 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 that will be it I I hardly

22:50 find that I don't think we we've ever had that work for us honestly it's like if if you can't do it one time and to end then you 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 I 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 do it who has the most context in

23:14 passion and motivation it's unlikely an employee is going to be able to do it and it's similar to the the selling point that if you're early customers aren't pulling from you later customers are not going to have a good time right it's like the most passionate comes early how long did you all stay doing sales as a founding team like how many millions AR roughly do you remember oh a couple million I don't remember the exact couple million yeah

23:43 awesome that's that's that's incredible often the heres thing I he 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 your CMO and also VP product strategy at whiz you started as an engineer you moved into product and now you're marketing which is not a traditional path especially for product people first of all why did you

24:08 decide to move into marketing from product yeah it's not a traditional path for anyone I think I also not one I would have necessarily like expected myself to be on first of all I it's not like I had this plan right in general I myself people sometimes ask me about you know 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

24:34 plan for anything I do and so myself Mo coming to whz was following Assaf and inan and the founding team and like two and a half years into whiz at that time whiz 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 like at that point it was we felt marketing was still something we didn't fully figure out like it wasn't working

25:04 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 whiz we just signed with a competitor which like it breaks your heart right because I I know I know they would have I know they would have chosen me had they heard about me in

25:27 time so it's you started feeling that challenge around awareness and 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 he he like you know like knocked on my like bothered me while I was working on my computer and I and I and we went into this like super cold room it was like when you are fast

25:55 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 he told me I think you should lead the marketing or now I told him okay I was like a 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 did they not know

26:14 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 or I have never heard of a lead in my life I did not know the word pipeline like all those things were very remote to me very and so it sounded like such a bizarre motion but that was like on a Thursday and then I spent the weekend because he asked me

26:38 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 Works do in B2B companies and they ended up deciding to just give it a try we did not know if it was going to work I also don't know if it's going to work forever right but

27:00 like we ended up deciding to give it a try and and I think the thing that's convinced me to do it was that in some ways I really felt like if in the early days of the company like finding product Market fit is like a major block for the company and then like 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 like at

27:23 some point of every product people start looking really heavily at brand whether we think that way or we don't like when 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

27:48 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 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 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 of heat and where

28:14 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 whiz I remember I felt like the heat was in the product kitchen cuz it's like everybody's waiting to have something people want to start doing something right and then they felt like okay you start you start understanding it and now the heat moves a bit to like the engineering side like

28:40 okay build it somebody wants it build it make it work and then I felt okay so we Clos a couple of deals now right we had our first few we had our first like 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

29:02 sales people can sell it but they're but they're saying give me more pipeline like hey I'm nobody heard of whiz 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 and 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

29:25 they did that this episode is is brought to you by Cloud ner the foundational technology for all images and video on the internet trusted by over two million developers and many of the world's leading Brands Cloud Nary 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

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30:27 partner at index Ventures and here's 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 Whiz 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 he basically did the opposite he's like no I'm gonna introduce all my marketing leaders to you because I think they need

30:47 to learn from you why do you think that's the case I think sh doel is very kind it's I even I I deeply remember that meeting because funny enough it was my first board meeting ever and that is a funny thing by itself because wiz's board you know we have sh our board we have dou Leona we have like Jeff from Insight we have it's it's it's a very it's almost like it's very humbling to sit down in front of those people period

31:17 And since I decided to take marketing and I took 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 at any company and now she is a CMO here and so it was just like a very you know the whole setting was very stressful for me

31:43 so I just ended up it was like I think the 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've made and this is how I'm thinking of approaching this and this is all the things I've done in the past months it's funny because I'm a very non-traditional marketer just because I really don't know marketing like at this point I kind

32:06 of know already because I've been doing it for two years and I read a lot and I but at that point I genuinely 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 with what I knew really well was the problem we solved and I really knew our audience so

32:27 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 like I know it's funny I know what matters like I know it's interesting right now I I generally because this is my space I mean I live in that space truly as as a as a customer so I was kind of like just

32:49 thinking okay what are things I could do to start fixing the problem that mattered most and that was nobody heard of whis at that time so those were just like I was like kind of saying okay I think to 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 we saw like changes

33:14 happening already in some ways so I I think I think that what shuel 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

33:37 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 aspect of building pipelines and different things I really did not know how to do at that time so following

34:02 that thread I'm curious what is it that you think cmo's mistake or often do wrong and why do you think SOS 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

34:25 and without a deep connection to the founding team everything you do in marketing is very visible I mean and and you're kind of touching something that matters so deeply to the founding team and you're the one like representing it to the world so it's it's very hard to build that trust and it's very easy to break it because like one bad ad or something that one of the founding team will say like oh this is not us this is like not

34:56 what I mean this is not the I think 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 from from a security background could kind of 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 like very very hard to to gain so

35:21 I guess I would kind of say I think it's like the trust 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 or it's a very different

35:44 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 like it's so

36:04 different when you're a marketing leader you manage like you manage Performance Marketing which is a numbers game you manage designers and brand and then you manage like events and field like there's nothing in between those things that is deeply correlated and so it's just a very very challenging and very interesting Ro this trust point is so interesting especially based on what you said earlier where the what you wanted to do is create noise take some risks that's

36:31 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 whiz name out there that might Inspire folks of like oh that was really that was really cool we should do something like that yeah another like 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

36:56 really hard about everything you add like 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 like it complicated your product even if one customer likes it and uses it at least at B2B you're never going to be able to like suddenly take it away and every new product you

37:17 add to your product will H 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 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

37:37 huge cost associated with it marketing is quite the opposite in my opinion there's no cost to anything no maintenance to anything no technical depth no anything like if tomorrow I post a video on Wizz 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

38:04 were and I was kind of like okay we have to just like use it to our advantage like let's try everything let's try everything I'm trying to make noise it was right before like when I took over it was like before RSA RSA 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 pay

38:27 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 what is whiz right because they've never heard of me so instead of doing like a classical cyber Booth I decided to

38:52 say okay let's scrap our booth and do a whiz of Oz Booth which literally looked like a wiz of osoth and we had actors like Dorothy and like all those things like hanging around there and it looked nothing nothing like any boost in the show which is a cyber security show things are like red and black and like people was hoodies and we decideed to take a completely opposite approach in general I also decided that we're going

39:16 to take a completely opposite approach was brand I wanted wiz's brand to again my first motive stand out so I wanted Wiz to have like a very positive optimistic type of brand so I went all in on like scrap whatever we were doing before which was like dark and go pink go bright blue always go optimistic and and focus on like magic not scaring people from the attack but magic and that ended up like and it was scary

39:44 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 going to be the most terrible bizarre are people going to be like what is she thinking so I knew it could either be like a failure or a hit and it ended up like it the amount of people that stopped by your booth was five times the amount of people

40:10 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 we do themed Booth is like every time we changed themes to keep it fun at this point you will see other cyber companies even doing themes cuz like we were just like okay we'll do whatever they Tak to make noise and this is just one example that is an amazing story and you said

40:32 that other companies now try to do something similar right 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 you just talk about that part and why that's so

40:53 important almost every single thing I've done in my my career in some ways even before I never thought I 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 than yourself I don't know at least for me I don't really know if that's like a a real option okay I just know that I'm kind of okay with

41:19 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 were it you know when I took the job at whz I was sure they're going to like I was sure they got confused that they offered to take me with them I was certain that it's going to be like okay they're going to figure out that I'm not the right fit for that like super smart

41:42 and talented group of people who have all worked together before by the way I was sure they're going to like find me out and I was sure I was gonna I was pretty sure I was going to fail but I I will still take it like right so it's like I thought it was going to fill the product manager role too although did have the experience so that also makes it easier to move in some ways if I

42:01 think I'm going to fail with anything I'm like okay whatever I'll try and 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 like it's still just giving yourself the opportunity to fail that is really empowering is there

42:24 anything that helped you build that skill cuz that's not natural to lot of people being okay with failure and leaning into things that they're they think they will probably fail at where did that come from for you you know depending on like what you believe and everything comes from childhood so in some ways like I do think it has to do with like the way I was I think the the the way my mom kind of raised me

42:46 my mom really believed that like if you're good at something so that's not where you should invest your energy like she really believed in like kind of pushing us like pushing us through the place where we were less confident in I guess I mean I was a very I was a very shy kid my natural inclination as a young kid was like to close the door in my room read a book I had no interest in like meeting other

43:10 kids or doing sports or like nothing nothing really like it's 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 let's perfect like let her build up this 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

43:33 feel she always used to say that like friction is good like if 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

43:57 courage in some ways or friction mostly above Talent like Talent only gets you so far but like that hard work in 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 like hurdles for potential prospects early on and creating looking for enthusiasm where they're filling out these long surveys how about that no it's it's true you're right it shows something like it shows

44:28 if you do it's always easier to be in like iner 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 like not breaking up with somebody is much easier it's so hard to break up so that makes it by default like the right decision so it's like yes

44:49 where there's friction it means that you put something extra in I want to Circle back to marketingproduct advice going back full circle a little bit so folks they 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 leader should be thinking more of or maybe miss that you now see as a marketing leader having done products for many years I

45:15 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 like 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 mult it's like a multiplier

45:46 but it's like the further the further you get away from like the core like engineer than product then in order for the messages to move correctly they have to be still clear that is some something I understood only when looking at from the other side like if you're on the product side you can often kind of work with things that are like fluffy or blurry or like gray okay like somebody will ask you can the product do

46:11 this and you'll be like yeah not exactly but like you know it can do like blah blah blah like kind of w work around something right like 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 like 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

46:33 have to communicate very clearly like suddenly looking at the product or from the outside in the company that scales fast and you said whoa like you 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

47:00 really by understanding the goto Market perspective and the user perspective and the seller 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 the go-to market side and I think learning the difference is so so so important for product people to understand like that they have to deliver those like Crystal Clear messages about the product is there an example that where you're like oh wow I

47:27 thought this was good but no nobody understands what we're talking about there's so much like I think for example in our domain it's very almost customed to like talk in a lot of initials like and a lot of things in security are like use initials for them you say like cspm for cloud security poster management and like you use a lot of those types of initials and you you keep assuming that the world knows what you mean but then when I actually looked

47:53 at things over from the marketing side like if you asked our product people Engineers like what is our where does our product fall in terms of category it would be like cnap Cloud native application protection but if you go over and you like look at Google like people are not Googling that word they're Googling like Cloud security solution right so it's that's just like a simple and silly example but it's it's that example that like when you live

48:19 inside something very technically in like inside your Market inside domain you're very remote sometimes by accident from the buyer and so a lot of those learnings kind of clicked for me only once I saw everything from the marketing side you have this concept that you described as the dummy explanation when someone you just need it to feel really really simple can you color add some color to that yes it's it's when I now in marketing and in everything we write

48:45 and everything our team produces in terms of anything anything written by wiiz 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 it whz every day wasz is a cloud security company it's Cloud security like we live inside our own bubble but reminding ourselves that customers don't live in that bubble they're like people in the in the world they're not their life is

49:10 not whz so every time you write something I wanted to not assume knowledge about whz or knowledge about the product or deep knowledge about the market I'll give just a simple example whiz whiz itself is based on like part of the deep innovation that whz brought to the market that enabled the scale was very high correlated signal that's based on a graph database so inside whz we have the whiz graph database for security if you write something that

49:38 says the whz graph database I don't like it because why would a common person know it is the like 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 like a framework here are you just like trying to remember people outside don't

50:06 understand anything we are talking about and simplified further like how do you actually practice that because it's like I imagine everyone's like yeah yeah yeah I know I know I know all the 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 like a lot of those

50:30 things for me it's like you 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 it's living in that bubble and constantly reminding your like it is a

50:50 bubble I'm in The Whiz bubble right but but my audience is not so yeah it's a daily reminder it's hard to get it's 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 whiz that right yeah what is your relationship with them how's that changed over the years and over time and just like I imagine it's very difficult being a not founder having a lot of

51:20 trying to have a lot of influence on strategy and vision and all these things just I guess like how's 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 also very product oriented and very opinionated about everything yeah I think the whz founding team is a truly incredible team they also have a very unique story before whiz is actually their second company

51:46 together so before whiz 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 it's a long long time well not 30 I I made them older like 20 22 22 years it's a very very very unique team where there is

52:11 complete trust between the team members and also a very clear understanding of what falls under like each has his own clear domain and that way decisions are made super fast super fast because the complete trust and everybody has their 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

52:42 impact strategy and get a seat at the table I think that it's open like it's 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

53:09 in 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 you are given those opportunities and you are given that chance and it it builds a very very health culture and I think also very a culture that's very loyal like everybody feels part of what's being built here incredible and how many employees are

53:33 there how large is Liz is whiz at this point just for folks to get a sense if they want to potentially join whiz someday around like one one 1, 500 okay awesome amazing okay potentially a final question I want to take us to contrarian Corner yeah 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

54:00 that but is there anything else that comes to mind it's so funny because I don't think we've covered anything contrarian okay I 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 imposer syndrome and building up your confidence and and I actually do think that like my

54:24 approach to it at least for me has been just more effective like I I I I won't be able to build that 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

54:46 from making a decision like maybe they will find out your random poster 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 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

55:09 that opportunity and I think for me maybe less talking about like the imposer syndome 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 out a new role you like 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

55:33 they're promoted given a big opportunity like yeah you are you're an imposter in many ways but that's okay that's exactly what you're saying I never heard it but I love it Ros 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 whiz and I think the company is in like such an

55:54 interesting place of hyperscaling but still keeping that authentic and I think flat and enabling culture I 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 areas you're specifically most focused on Hing now in case folks are listening are like oh I'm GNA apply truly we are hiring across like the beauty of hypers saing is we are hiring across everything

56:25 but also if if you're if you feel super strongly about joining and you don't find the right role we'd still love to talk to you like 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 Ros 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

56:48 focused like it was like the product side of things so we mentioned like the heat in the kitchen actually one of my most favorite business books in read like a lot of them is probably setting the table by by Danny Mayer which is he owns Shake Shack and like a chain of of really great restaurants in New York and it's such an interesting business perspective from a different domain than obviously Tech or SAS but there's so many applicable lessons there

57:17 from the deep connection to hosting focusing and obsessing over your customer you know Shake Shack like unlike other chains where they optimize for you not to sit down they optimize for you to sit down there like it's a very very unique culture and unique vision and I've learned a lot and some of the most like memorable lessons come from his management thoughts Imaging you know hug chains but also very high-end restaurants and I think it's a very very

57:43 inspiring inspiring book and different like just different from my domain but very applicable in my domain as well and then a second a second book I really I read it early on in Wiz and and so did the entire founding team I think the book by by Netflix co-founder Reed Hasting no rules rules which also I think talks very like very clearly Netflix has a super unique culture and story right like moving talk about pivots like they sold cassettes

58:14 over mail and somehow pivoted to what it is today that's an insane story and think about like pivoting from like tech company to a company that has Production Studios and produces reality TV like right like talk about the type of 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

58:38 read some marketing books and listened to marketing podcast is there anything else that youall was like very helpful in helping you ramp up in this world and do marketing honestly I think I think at the end for me I just ended up saying you know what what are the companies I feel do do things really well like what are the brands I love and what do I love about them and then really obsess obsessing about like what did they do

59:08 like what what is what are their team doings and then also obsessing about the people behind them so for example I think gong did does like 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 like every single like talk their CMO gave so it's like kind of I always like back backed up into it I did not care if it's

59:34 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 CPU of gong and co-founder coming on the podcast very soon so I will ask him about this oh cool all right next

59:56 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 I will take that fight with anybody but yeah I used I haven't really watched anything super recent the only problem with the wies it's so long to watch I I I've watched I've seen it I love it but it's like a large commitment it's like

60:18 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 it's like a funny question in the world we live in where there's like 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 Rec I always go around with like a notebook and a pen still

60:42 that type of person I and I constantly walk around with him right like across office rooms blah 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 pen 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

61:04 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 oh I'll I'll send you I'll send you a link but if you look like notebook pen holder you'll find a ton okay cool we link to in the show notes whatever when you recommend just a couple more questions do you have a favorite life

61:25 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 it does mean something but sometimes you just have to like maybe take two steps back like leave it there

61:47 until you come back to it again and you find a simple way out whether it's a product feature or anything I feel like if you start getting too 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 like take two steps back and they find it applicable to anything in life almost

62:08 reminds me of the story when you were trying to sell the initial version of whz Slash 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 Lugal

62:30 wanted to buy you guys for many billions and you all decided to decline that and stay private anything could share there about maybe why you decided to do that if that was true at all yeah I mean I can't I can't address like any specific offers obviously Wiz over the year H 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 staying on an independent

62:59 path we all really believe that whiz 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 wiiz addresses the biggest growing Market of security like Cloud security cloud is the fastest grow like cloud is such a fast growing Market cloud cloud grows like 20 30% year-over-year we feel like everything is in the cloud but in

63:26 reality by estimation only like 20% 15 to 20% of the infra today is in Cloud so it's a really really fast growing State and a fast growing market and security by nature is a bit of like a market of leaders right I mean it's 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 whiz really is that leader because it's a new space like whiz is considered

63:54 I think in many ways in that is also what makes marketing and brand not just marketing but truly brand so important like wi 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 we are anywhere near ready to to give it up

64:20 in a way I totally understand that and again wi is hiring in case you are inspired but your by what you're hearing Ros this was incredible I'm so happy that you did this thank you so much for being here two final questions where can folks finding 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'd love we love great people who are

64:42 Learners which I think is what this podcast is all about so definitely the right place to find the right people awesome Ross thank you so much thank you so much for having me bye everyone thank you so much for listening if you found this valuable you can subscribe to the show on Apple podcast 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

65:09 find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenp podcast.com see you in the next episode