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

23:55So currently your CMO and also VP of product strategy at Wiz, you started as an engineer. You moved into product and I your 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 I also not one day with 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 it was like follow good people around.

24:33That's it. I never had a plan for anything I do. And so myself, moving coming to Wiz was following a soft and you know, in the founding team. And like two and a half years into Wiz, at that time Wiz 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, the way we felt marketing was still something we didn't fully figure out. Like 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.

25:13But 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 I know they would have I know they would have chosen me had they heard about me in time. So it's you started feeling that challenge around awareness and marketing. So two and a half years into the company, basically a staff hour CEO asked me if I was willing to take on marketing. Originally I thought was I remember he, he like, you know, like knocked on my like bothering me, but I was working on my computer. And that and we went into this like super cold room.

25:53It was like when you are fast -running startup, all 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 you told me, I think you should lead the marketing org now. And I told him, okay, I was like, 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 marketing. I spent my life in engineering and then the 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.

26:24I did not know the word pipeline. 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 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 CMS. Just to even understand like what do CMS do? Like what do marketing orgs do and B2B companies? And then I 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. But we ended up deciding to give it a try.

27:03And 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, 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 some point of every product, people start looking really heavily at brand, whether we think that way or we don't. Like 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.

27:39So 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 if I'm asked to attempt, at least try, 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?

28:19Yeah, it's exactly that. It's like that in the early, early days, when we just started with, I remember I felt like the heat was in the product kitchen because 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 like the engineering side. Like, okay, build it. Somebody wants it to build it. Make it work. And then I felt, okay, so we closed a couple of deals now, right? We had our first beer, we had our first like a 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 that goes sell it.

28:56And then the heat starts moving to marketing in my opinion. And we're like, okay, we have five markets fit. Sales people can sell it, but they're, but they're saying, give me more pipeline. Like, hey, I'm nobody heard of was 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 CloudNary, 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.

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30:16Start your free plan today at cloudnary .com slash Lenny. I asked one of your board members, Shardul Shah, what to ask you. He's a partner at index ventures and your hoodie told me, speaking of this move to marketing. He said that when you were in your first board meeting, the was board meeting, presenting marketing and sharing your plan, and you asked him, hey, can you introduce me to all these marketing leaders? I could learn from them. Basically, he did the opposite. He's like, now I'm going to introduce all my marketing leaders to you because I think they need to learn from you. What do you think that's the case?

30:50I think Shardul is very kind.

30:55I deeply remember that meeting because it was my first board meeting ever. That is a funny thing by itself because with this board, we have Shardul and we have Daghlone and we have Jeff from inside. It's a very humbling to sit down in front of those people period. Since I decided to date marketing and I took to the CMO role, this was also my first board meeting ever. Also, it was the meeting where it's like, in some ways, I was not that. I was like, okay, we took our product manager person. She was never a CMO with any company. Now she has a CMO here. It was just like a very, the whole setting was very stressful for me.

31:43I just ended up, I think we just had the meeting two months after I took over marketing. It was more of an update of 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'm a very non -traditional marketer just because I really don't know marketing. At this point, I know already because I've been doing it for two years and I read a lot. At that point, I generally did not know. 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, what I knew really well was the problem we solved and I really knew our audience.

32:28I myself, I come from security. I come from cloud security. I read all the right Twitter's and I follow all the right people on Twitter and I read all the right blogs and I know what's funny. I know what is funny because this is my space. I mean, 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 with 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.

33:07I think even in those, even in that short time of two months, we saw changes happening already in some ways. So I think that what you're doing 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? It took over a large team of people who are marketers and I'm this person knows nothing about marketing, but we'll 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.

33:59I really do not know how to do it 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 brought in someone like you with this very fresh perspective? What do you think? What do you think, folks, often go wrong? First of all, I think CMOS 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.

34:41And you're the one representing it to the world. So 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 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 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.

35:18I think that's like very, very hard to to gain. So 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 products into the market. And I think both of that when you kind of come from the outside in the way because you are not part of the founding team. And also you may become from outside the markets 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.

35:50And on top of that is 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 and security around me. Like it's so different. When you're a marketing leader, you manage like the immense performance marketing, which is a numbers game. You manage designers and grand. 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 role.

36:22This 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 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 was 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 they 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.

36:57Like less is more. If you decide to build the feature in a product, then a, you're taking engineering time, which is a most valuable resource in every company in my opinion and be in some ways you can never take it back. Like it's complicated to your product. Even if one customer likes it and uses it, at least it's B2B, you're never going to be able to like suddenly take it away. In every new product you add to your product, well, 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.

37:33But if it's not truly truly needed, it has a huge cost, like a huge cost associated with it. Marketing is quite the opposite to my opinion. There is no cost to anything, no maintenance to anything, no technical depth, no anything. Like if tomorrow I post a video on Wizards 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 opposites things were and I was kind of like, okay, we have to just like use it to our advantage.

38:07Like let's try everything. Let's try everything and try 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 the buyers are there and you kind of know how those condenses 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 it's a booth and 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?

38:47Because 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 booths 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 it completely opposite approach. In general, I also decided that we're going to take it completely opposite approach. It was brand. I wanted Wiz's brand to again, my first motives stand out.

39:22So 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 focus on like magic, not scaring people from the tax but magic. And that ended up like and it was scary. Don't get me wrong. I hassle me was like, I remember feeling so scared walking to the show, to the floor trade. So 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 the amount of people that stopped by our booth was like 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.

40:16But also ever since we do this themed booth is like every time we change themes to keep it fun. At this point, you will see other cyber companies even doing themes because like, 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. 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.

40:51You 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 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 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 like the thing that has grown in me. And where, you know, when I took the job it was, I was sure they're going to, like, I was sure they got confused that they offered to take me with them.

41:36I 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 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 going to, I was pretty sure I was going to fail, but I, I will still take it. Like, right? So it's like, I thought I was going to fail 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 fail at anything. I'm like, okay, whatever, I'll try.

42:04And I think over time, yeah, it releases you a bit. Like, sure, I might fail. But like, I might still fail. It's also fine. Like, it's, 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 anything that helps you build that skill? Because that's not natural to a lot of people, uh, being okay with failure and leaning into things that they, they think they will probably fail at. Where did that come from for you? You know, depending on like, uh, what do you believe in everything comes from childhood?

42:37So, and some ways like, I do think it has to do with, um, like, the way I was, I think the, the, the way my mom kind of raised me, 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, um, like pushing us through the places where we were less content than I guess. I mean, I was a very, um, I was a very shy kid. My natural inclination as a young kid was like, close the door in my room, read the book. I had no interest in like, meeting other kids or doing sports or like, nothing, nothing.

43:12Really like, it's super, super shy. And I think also slightly on social by nature, really. But so much 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, let's perfect. Like, let her build up a 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, they 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.

43:46If 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 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?

44:24No, it's true. You're right. It shows something. Like 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 a breakup advice. I give my girlfriends over the years. 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 very default. Like 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.

44:59So 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 leader 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 like when you're in the product and you really live inside the product and 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.

45:44It's like a multiple supplier, but it's like the further the further you get the way from like the core like 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. Like if you're in the product side, you can often kind of work with things that are like fluffy or blurry or like gray. Okay, somebody will ask you can't the product do this and you'll be like, yeah, not exactly, but like, you know, it can do like, well, like kind of 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.

46:25Like it gets lost in translation. You have to be crystal clear, black and white, you have to communicate very clearly, especially as an organization's scale. You 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 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 self 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.

47:14And 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 like, oh, wow, I 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 custom to like talking a lot of initials. Like a lot of things in security are like use initials for them. You say like, CSPM for cloud security post -traumatement. And like you use a lot of those types of initials and you keep assuming that the world knows what you mean.

47:51But then when actually looked at things over from the marketing side, like if you ask our product people and engineers like, what is our, where does our products 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 about words. 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 inside something very technically and like inside your market insert, you're very remote sometimes back to them from the buyer.

48:26And so a lot of those learnings kind of clicked for me only once they saw everything from the marketing side. You have this concept that you described as the dummy explanation when someone, you just needed 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 and everything are team produces in terms of anything, anything written by Waze, I keep kind of going back to I don't want us to forget that we are inside our own bubble. We go to work at Waze every day with a cloud security company, if cloud security like we live inside our own bubble, but reminding ourselves that customers don't live in that bubble.

49:06They're like people in the in the world. They're not their life is not with. So every time you write something, I wanted to not assume knowledge about Waze or knowledge about the product or deep knowledge about the market. I'll give a simple example. Waze itself is based on like part of the deep innovation that was brought to the market that enabled the scale was very high -colyte signal that's based on a graph database. So inside Waze, we have the Waze graph database for security. If you write something that says that Waze graph database, I don't like it because why would a common person know what this like the Waze graph database, right?

49:47So 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 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?

50:18I constantly remind myself about the bubble. Every time somebody says, oh, we haven't changed our color for so long or a website's headline. It's like, or you know, a lot of those things for me, it's like you're 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 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 myself like it is a bubble.

50:50I'm in that with bubble, right? But 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 whiz there, right? Yeah. What is your relationship with them? How's that changed over the years and over time and just like, imagine it's very difficult being a not founder having a lot of 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.

51:38Yeah, I think as the whiz founding team is a truly incredible team, they also have a very unique story before whiz is actually their second company together. So before whiz they founded Adalam 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 made them older like 20, 22, 22 year. 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 like each has his own clear domain and that's why decisions are made super fast, super fast.

52:26Because they're complete trust and everybody has their their clearly own domain. And I think the unique thing about whiz and they truly think that the five or companies culture to this day is exactly that they did not have the work hard to be able to impact strategy and get us to 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.

53:06I 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 giving those opportunities and you are giving that chance. And it builds a very, very healthy 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 there? How large is it? Is whiz at this point just for folks to get a sense if they want to potentially join whiz someday? Around like one one thousand and five hundred.

53:45Okay. Awesome. Amazing. Okay. Well, potentially a 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 contrarian. Okay.

54:08I think like one thing is maybe goes back to what I was talking about before but it was failing in confidence. I think like kind of being at least like being a woman in tech, you get to talk to a lot about like imposter syndrome and building up her confidence and 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 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.

54:40Everybody feels like an imposter. It's like kind of maybe embrace it but don't let that stop you from 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 too. That's the 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.

55:17Like 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 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 they're promoted given any big opportunity like yeah you are you are an imposter in many ways but that's okay. That's exactly what you're saying. I never heard of I love it. Ross is there anything else you wanted to share anything else that we have in touch that may think might be helpful to folks before we get to our very exciting lightning round.

55:49I deeply deeply believe that we're doing something super special in ways and I think the company is in like such an interesting place of hyper scaling but still keeping that authentic and I think flat and enabling culture. I mean 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 in areas you're specifically most focused on hiring? Now in case folks are listening you're 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're if you feel super strongly about joining and you don't find the right role we'd still love to talk to you.

56:31Like there's many many things for patients people to do here. Awesome. We'll link to the career page in the show 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 like it with like the product side of things and so we mentioned like the heat and the kitchen. Actually one of my most favorite business books that I've read like a lot of them is probably setting the table by Danny Mayer which is he owns Shake Shack and like 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.

57:22You 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 and managing you know you'd change but also very high -end restaurants and I think it's a very inspiring inspiring book and different like just different from my domain but very applicable in my domain as well. And in the second a second book I really like I read it early on and was and so did the entire founding thing I think the book 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 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 productions to do then 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.

58:33I'm gonna call an authorful and ask about marketing specifically you said that early on you read some marketing books and listen to marketing podcast is there anything else that your work all was like very helpful in helping you ramp up in this world and do marketing. Honestly I think I think it 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 it obsessing about like what did they do like what is 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 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 Gong and co -founder coming on the podcast very soon so I will ask him about this oh cool all right uh next question do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show you really enjoyed honestly like a 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 um but yeah I haven't really watched anything super recent the only problem with the wires it's so long to watch I watch 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 the really love is it 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 that's the question I'll answer pretty random answer I always go around with like a notebook in a pen still that type of person I mean they constantly walk around with them right like across office rooms 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 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 also you'll link but if you look like notebook pen holder you'll find a ton okay cool we'll link to an a show notes whatever when you recommend just a couple more questions do you have a favorite life motto that you often come back to and find helpful and 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 like leave it there until you come back to it again and you find a simple way out and whether it's a product feature or anything if you 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 studentplex it's not the right solution but sometimes like 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 whizz -lash new beyond whatever it was called early on and it was just too complicated and no one understood what the hell's 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 wanted to buy you guys for many billions and you all decided to decline that and stay private anything could share there but 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 was over the year over the years has gotten many acquisition offers I can share that I think for us as being the thawney team the employees the customers the board and staying on an independent path we all really believe that whizz can become one of the biggest security companies in the world and when you look at whizz today and I mean we spoke about the unconventional growth when you think about it in some ways whizz addresses the biggest growing market of security like cloud security cloud is the fastest growing 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 reality based amazing only like 20 % 15 to 20 % of the in -fret 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 by insurance for something you want to buy it from the best from the leader in this domain and today whizz really is that leader because it's a new space like whizz 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 whizz is considered I think the cloud security company in a lot of ways right still of course it's our solution 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 in a way I totally understand that and again this is hiring in case you are inspired but you're waiting by what you're hearing Ross this is incredible I'm so happy that you did this thank you so much for being here two final questions we're looking for expanding a line if they want to reach out and maybe follow up on stuff and how can listeners be useful to you find me on Lincoln and and yeah no apply we love 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 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 Podcasts Spotify or your favorite podcast app also please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's podcast .com see you in the next episode