Wiz CISO Network Success

A story about how Wiz, a cybersecurity company, achieved massive growth through a strategic network of Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs).

"Wiz is a cybersecurity company for enterprise customers. If you're using large cloud tools, their tool scans it and identifies potential cybersecurity threats. They're the fastest company ever to get to $100 million in annual revenue - took about 18 months.

The founder was previously an Israeli defense guy in the military. He had another company that he scaled and sold to Microsoft - it was also a cybersecurity cloud company - sold for $1 billion. He gets through his non-compete, spends time at Microsoft, things go well, and then starts his next company called Wiz.

So far they've raised $2 billion, of which $1 billion came in one round, and the company is only 18 months old. They've already hit $350 million in recurring revenue in just 3 years, and something like 80% of the Fortune 100 companies are using the tool.

Their last valuation was $12 billion, but there was a rumor that Google was going to buy them for $23 billion. The founder sent an email to the entire company saying 'Let me cut to the chase - our next milestones are $1 billion in ARR and an IPO.' He explained they weren't accepting this offer from Google because they want to make it big and be this huge thing."