Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history

Raaz Herzberg, CMO and VP of product strategy at Wiz, and formerly its first product manager and a Microsoft security leader, discusses how Wiz found product-market fit after an early pivot, why she moved from product into marketing, and how she thinks about brand, clarity and leadership. The conversation covers the company's rapid growth and the founding team's culture.

01Key learnings

• Early in a startup, look for signs of real pull, such as prospects asking about pricing, timelines, or introducing you to their team, rather than polite interest that feels good but signals nothing.
• Be willing to say 'I don't understand' in product discussions; a healthy culture makes admitting confusion a strength, and confusion is a signal the idea needs more work.
• Run a high volume of customer conversations (10 to 15 a day in Wiz's case) to find what actually resonates rather than relying on a few impressions.
• Use friction as a filter: if a prospect fills out a long questionnaire for a POV, they are committed; prospects who won't invest effort are not yet truly interested.
• Founders should personally handle early sales to learn the customer deeply before hiring; wishing a later hire will solve an unclear problem rarely works.
• Product thinking favors fewer features because every addition has maintenance cost, whereas marketing experiments are cheap and reversible, so try many bold ideas to create noise.
• Marketing messages must be crystal clear and free of internal jargon, since they lose meaning as they scale; ask whether a person outside your bubble would understand them.
• Pay attention to where the organization's 'heat' is and move your effort to the function that most needs help as the company grows.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.