Raaz Herzberg
Raaz Herzberg is the chief marketing officer and VP of product strategy at Wiz. Wiz hit $100 million ARR within 18 months (the fastest growth in startup history) and, five years in, is generating over $500 million ARR. It also serves over 45% of the Fortune 100. Raaz was one of the first five employees at Wiz, joining as the first product manager, and helped the team pivot to what may be the most intense PMF in history. Before Wiz, Raaz led security products at Microsoft, including Azure Sentinel.
Career Skills
Successful transitions into new functions rely on leveraging deep domain expertise while being willing to learn the tactical language of the new role from scratch.
"I had a ton to learn about marketing, with what I knew really well... I spent my life in engineering, and in any product, it's not the go to market side, even. I was never part of the go to market, or..."
Accepting that you are an imposter when starting a new role allows you to focus on the work rather than the fear of being 'found out.'
"I do feel like an imposter, and I know there's always those statistics about many people feeling that way. So I think, maybe just, "Let's embrace it. I feel like an imposter, you feel like an imposter..."
Growth Skills
Product-market fit is signaled by a shift from polite interest to urgent, tactical questions about pricing and implementation.
"We really felt the type of questions change, right? Silly. The call sounded like, again, "How are you pricing this, or when can we start doing a POV?" I think naturally, as human beings, you have a bi..."
True pull is characterized by the customer driving the next steps of the engagement.
"It's almost like you need to see them pushing for the next step is what I'm hearing is, "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 th..."
Leadership Skills
High-stakes leadership roles require a foundation of deep trust with founders because marketing decisions are highly visible and easily scrutinized.
"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, and without a deep connection to the founding team. Everything you do in marketing..."
Marketing Skills
Effective positioning in a crowded market often requires taking a visual and emotional stance that is the polar opposite of industry norms.
"I wanted Wiz's brand to, again, my first motive, stand out. I wanted Wiz to have a very positive, optimistic type of brand. So I went all in on, "Scrap whatever we were doing before, which was dark, a..."
The 'Dummy Explanation' requires stripping away internal jargon and assuming zero prior knowledge from the audience.
"I keep going back to, I don't want us to forget that we are inside our own bubble. We go to work at Wiz every day... but reminding ourselves that customers don't live in that bubble, they're people in..."
Product Management Skills
Admitting a lack of understanding is a critical tool for identifying when a product vision is too 'fuzzy' to be executable.
"I still did not exactly understand what we were going to build, which was confusing, because I was a product manager... At some point, it was like, "Okay, I have to ask. What exactly are we," like, In..."
Sales & GTM Skills
Founders must personally close the first few million in ARR to ensure the sales motion is repeatable before hiring a sales team.
"We ended up selling before we had a seller's team. We ended up, almost in some ways, always being behind, right? Okay, I'm closing contracts with people, I haven't hired my first salespersons... if yo..."