A deep dive into Raaz Herzberg’s unconventional journey from product manager to CMO at $32B cybersecurity leader Wiz. She joined us LIVE for SaaStr Workshop Wednesday — sign up for the next one here.
Top 5 Key Takeaways
- Technical expertise trumps marketing experience: Raaz’s product background enabled her to create deeply technical content that resonated with security practitioners, proving that domain expertise can be more valuable than traditional marketing skills.
- Solve one problem obsessively: Instead of trying to build traditional marketing funnels, Raaz focused laser-like on one issue: “Nobody has heard of Wiz.” This clarity drove every strategic decision.
- AI enables superstars to do 100x more: Every team member must demonstrate AI integration in their work. The focus isn’t on replacing people but on making exceptional talent exponentially more effective.
- Restructure marketing around what works: Raaz moved field marketing under sales leadership, recognizing that regional alignment matters more than organizational charts.
- Hire for curiosity over experience: In a rapidly evolving landscape, the ability to learn and adapt matters more than existing knowledge. Only 10-15% of people have this trait – hire exclusively from this group.
The Accidental CMO: When Product Meets Marketing
Raaz Herzberg’s story reads like a startup fever dream. As one of Wiz’s first five employees, she spent two and a half years building the product organization before her CEO asked her to take over marketing. Her response? “No. What are you talking about?”
“I had never been on a go-to-market org before,” Raaz recalls. “I was always on the engineering side. I did not know the first thing about marketing. When I took the role, I had never heard the term MQL. I knew what pipeline was, but very high level. I’d never heard of a PM or PR agency – nothing.”
But what she lacked in marketing vocabulary, she made up for in deep customer understanding. “I knew our business inside out. I worked with customers from the beginning. I sold to a lot of customers. I helped shape the selling process. I knew the customers and the product and our business inside out.”
The Core Problem: Nobody Had Heard of Wiz
While traditional marketers might have started with buyer personas and funnel optimization, Raaz’s engineering mindset led her to identify the singular problem holding back growth: awareness.
“Our problem at that time was nobody heard of Wiz at all,” she explains. “We had great product-market fit, but what would happen is we would meet a customer and have a great first meeting. They’d say, ‘Oh my god, this looks so good. I wish I heard about it three months ago when I just signed with one of your competitors.'”
This insight crystallized her entire strategy: “I was not focused on building pipeline because I didn’t even know I was supposed to be focused on that. I was thinking in terms of how do I solve this problem as fast as I can, whatever it takes.”
Standing Out in Security: Making Technical Content Fun
The cybersecurity space is notoriously conservative – black and red color schemes, fear-based messaging, and technical jargon that puts everyone to sleep. Raaz’s background as a security practitioner gave her a different perspective.
“Security products typically were black and red, and most marketing was done by scaring people – ‘Hey, I will help you prevent this bad thing from happening,'” she notes. “As an actual technical practitioner, that’s never what I want to hear. I don’t like people stressing me out. My job is hard enough.”
Instead, Wiz took a radically different approach: make security fun and approachable while maintaining technical depth.
The April Fool’s Meditation App
One of their most successful campaigns was releasing a meditation app for cyber practitioners on April Fool’s Day, complete with guided meditation sessions and “really deep cyber jokes.” It was weird, shareable, and perfectly targeted to their audience.
CTF Challenges
Wiz regularly releases complex Capture The Flag (CTF) challenges – essentially security riddles that teach hands-on cybersecurity skills. “There’s a lot of work that goes into it. It’s very deep content. Those things always work because you’re truly giving somebody really good value and speaking in their language.”
Building the Growth Marketing Machine
When it came to hiring, Raaz made an unconventional choice. Instead of hiring cybersecurity marketing experts, she focused on what she calls “growth marketing” – people who could make things go viral.
“I hired a team of brilliant people, some of the best marketers out there that are just doers. People who made things go viral in whatever domain. I was not looking for cyber experts. I know cyber. I needed people that know how to make things go viral and deliver them end to end.”
This approach paid off because deep technical expertise couldn’t be easily replicated, while growth marketing skills could be applied to any domain.
The Unconventional Org Structure
Perhaps most controversially, Raaz restructured her marketing organization in a way that would make traditional CMOs cringe. About a year ago, she moved field marketing out of her organization and under the sales team.
“I really felt that being a very successful field marketer has more to do with having tight alignment with your regional sales director,” she explains. “The KPI for me is: are they happy with them? It’s more important that they work closely together.”
This decision reflects a broader philosophy: organizational charts should serve results, not the other way around. “If our CRO started building a shadow marketing org, I think it’s a great learning opportunity for me. At the end of the day, I work for the sales team. Either I’m helping them close deals and get customers, or I’m not.”
The AI Revolution: 100x More Effective
Raaz has strong opinions about AI’s impact on marketing. Rather than replacing people, she sees it as a force multiplier for top talent.
“Every single person on my team has dramatically transformed the way they work. When we do team meetings, every person has to say what they’re doing with AI and show cool things to the team. It’s upscaled the capability of people to be effective 100x.”
The Wiz Spell Checker
One practical example is their internal GPT tool called the “Wiz spell checker.” Used by everyone in the organization, it ensures all customer communications match their brand voice and technical accuracy standards.
“You write the customer email, put it there – technically accurate, true to your brand. It checks every customer communication. I think it’s great. It helps you write everything, but I still believe that the people who are most successful are hungry and curious people.”
The Measurement Philosophy: Exponential Growth Over Attribution
Unlike many CMOs who get lost in attribution models and funnel metrics, Raaz takes a simpler approach: exponential growth across key indicators.
For CISOs (the budget holders), she tracks LinkedIn growth and engagement. For security engineers (the actual users), she measures community engagement on Twitter and specialized platforms.
“I don’t only look at high-level data and touchpoints, but I also measure key indicators that for me always have to show exponential growth. Every time you have a new sales leader, you measure it differently. Whatever it is, I want it to grow 20% quarter over quarter.”
Creating Content That CISOs Actually Want to Read
The key to Wiz’s content success isn’t just technical depth – it’s providing value to people who haven’t bought the product yet.
“I’m trying to talk to people who have not yet bought my product. So obviously talking too much about my product is not interesting. How interested are you in hearing about a tool you do not use? Not a lot. But if I know your domain and bring you truly the best and deepest content in your domain, that’s what makes me subscribe.”
This approach works because it positions Wiz as thought leaders in cloud security, not just another vendor pushing features.
The Hiring Philosophy: Never Compromise
With Wiz’s recent $32 billion acquisition announcement, Raaz could easily coast on past success. Instead, she maintains an obsessive focus on hiring quality.
“It’s not compromising. You sometimes feel like, ‘Okay, I’ll just bring in somebody – it’s the most important thing.’ No, it’s like a wedding. You have to build your A-team. It’s forever. Every single person you hire should be your best hire ever.”
Her hiring criteria is simple but demanding: “Unless you leave an interview very excited – like, ‘I wish this person was here right now, they lifted the energy in the room’ – don’t hire them. The right person will come.”
Looking Forward: Still Just Getting Started
Despite the massive acquisition, Raaz maintains that Wiz is still in the early days. “We feel like everything is in the cloud and everything is AI, but in reality, 90% of the workloads in the world are not on cloud even. AI is only pushing teams faster and faster to the cloud.”
This perspective – that even at $32 billion, they’re just getting started – reflects the growth mindset that has driven Wiz’s success.
The Broader Implications for B2B Marketing
Raaz’s success story challenges several conventional wisdoms about marketing leadership:
- Domain expertise can trump marketing experience when you’re selling to technical buyers
- Organizational structure should serve results, not traditional hierarchies
- AI amplifies great talent rather than replacing it
- Simple metrics focused on growth often work better than complex attribution models
- Hiring for curiosity and growth mindset matters more than specific skills
For founders building technical products, Raaz’s approach offers a blueprint: hire for domain expertise and growth mindset, focus obsessively on solving one core problem, and never compromise on talent quality.
Top 5 Unexpected Learnings
- Moving field marketing to sales improved performance: Contrary to marketing orthodoxy, Raaz found that field marketers performed better when reporting to regional sales directors rather than the CMO, because regional alignment mattered more than functional alignment.
- Security buyers want fun, not fear: While the cybersecurity industry typically uses scare tactics and dark branding, Wiz’s success came from making security content entertaining and approachable while maintaining technical depth.
- The “Wiz spell checker” AI is used company-wide: What started as a marketing tool for brand consistency became an organization-wide AI assistant that every employee uses for customer communications, showing how AI tools can scale beyond their original scope.
- Hiring viral marketers over domain experts worked: Instead of hiring cybersecurity marketing specialists, Raaz hired people who could make things go viral in any domain, then taught them security – proving that growth skills can be more valuable than domain knowledge.
- Measuring “room temperature” beats attribution modeling: Rather than complex funnel metrics, Raaz measures success by how “warm” rooms get when Wiz enters sales meetings – a qualitative metric that captures brand strength better than traditional KPIs.
