The Exchanges

Q That's interesting right there. You broke it off, right? It reports, right?

A Exactly, exactly because I really felt that, like, first of all, I found personally, I think being a very successful field marketer has more to do with having very tight alignment with your regional sales director. I mean, that's the KPI for me is, are they happy with them? And the way I like our field marketers was to ask the regional sales director, have you worked with somebody you liked before? Cause that will make it successful. So like in some ways I did not have a lot to give there, right? Like it's not something I felt like it's so important for them. I want the sales or to choose them and like them and work with them. I will still give the content. I will still tell them how they eventually look like. But it's more important that they work closely together. Things are very regional. So in my mind, that belong with sales. It also works that way when you hire, like you hire X sales person in Y region, you get the field marketer. So like, put it there.

AI assessment note: “So in my mind, that belong with sales.”

Q And then you realize like they work like, cause they're a touch. They are at You know, if you're doing them right. And so how, how do you, how did you measure it? Measure its contribution, that kind of stuff on the, on the quantify it.

A Yeah. I think because I came over to marketing from an engineer perspective, people really expected me to be like so obsessed with the numbers and not care about brand. When actually in reality, I kind of felt like the thing that will actually help me close deals is the brand side, like people hearing about us, hearing good things. First of all, I'll say that to this day, I'm involved in deals and I, you could sense it changing very easily over time. Like when I started, we would walk into a room and it was Cold, right? Like you would start from zero. You would have to be like, hi, I'm with, we're about security company. And then over time, you feel that the worms get, the room gets warmer, right? Now you walk into a room, it's warm, and your AEs feel it too. So there's also measurements that are not just numbers. But when it comes to numbers, I track a couple of things. First of all, my audience, My buyer, the budget at the end comes from CISOs, the, the senior executive that owns a security budget. They are a lot on LinkedIn. Like I trap how well we do on LinkedIn, how fast we grow. I need that exponential growth on LinkedIn. That's a good indication for me for brand because I can see the amount of buyers that Are subscribing to my content there. Then I have the other type of people, the people who actually use with like the, I mean, at the end, you'll have a CISO approve the…

AI assessment note: “when it comes to numbers, I track a couple of things.”

Q Well, the budget too, right? So yeah, not everyone wants to release, not every CMO wants to release any budget. There are fiefdoms out there in the world. There are a few folks who run fiefdoms and the last thing they wanted to do is release any budget.

A You know, I do think that one thing that can be under played in, in the fact that I didn't start it with as a CMO is that I exactly have always had a bit of the privilege to not live and die on metrics and have a lot of trust. So I'm, I was never afraid to let go of budgets or numbers or be, or saying, you know what, this measurement of pipeline, I know it looks good for my team, but I actually think it's like completely meaningless. And I'm going to focus my energy on what I actually think closes deals. And help sell with because that's what I'm here for. It enables you to do things very differently. I think it's very hard as marketers to work because you have to like gain that trust and you have to show the numbers, but in a lot of ways, they can also lead you in the right direction sometimes. So that's another core advantage I had by not starting as a CML, but by starting from a place where I had all the trust in the world by the exec and founding team because I was Almost like part of that before I took over the marketing role.

AI assessment note: “I was never afraid to let go of budgets or numbers”

Q That's interesting right there. You broke it off, right? It reports, right?

A Exactly, exactly because I really felt that, like, first of all, I found personally, I think being a very successful field marketer has more to do with having very tight alignment with your regional sales director. I mean, that's the KPI for me is, are they happy with them? And the way I like our field marketers was to ask the regional sales director, have you worked with somebody you liked before? Cause that will make it successful. So like in some ways I did not have a lot to give there, right? Like it's not something I felt like it's so important for them. I want the sales or to choose them and like them and work with them. I will still give the content. I will still tell them how they eventually look like. But it's more important that they work closely together. Things are very regional. So in my mind, that belong with sales. It also works that way when you hire, like you hire X sales person in Y region, you get the field marketer. So like, put it there.

AI assessment note: “Exactly, exactly because I really felt that... in my mind, that belong with sales.”

Q Well, the budget too, right? So yeah, not everyone wants to release, not every CMO wants to release any budget. There are fiefdoms out there in the world. There are a few folks who run fiefdoms and the last thing they wanted to do is release any budget.

A You know, I do think that one thing that can be under played in, in the fact that I didn't start it with as a CMO is that I exactly have always had a bit of the privilege to not live and die on metrics and have a lot of trust. So I'm, I was never afraid to let go of budgets or numbers or be, or saying, you know what, this measurement of pipeline, I know it looks good for my team, but I actually think it's like completely meaningless. And I'm going to focus my energy on what I actually think closes deals. And help sell with because that's what I'm here for. It enables you to do things very differently. I think it's very hard as marketers to work because you have to like gain that trust and you have to show the numbers, but in a lot of ways, they can also lead you in the right direction sometimes. So that's another core advantage I had by not starting as a CML, but by starting from a place where I had all the trust in the world by the exec and founding team because I was Almost like part of that before I took over the marketing role.

AI assessment note: “I was never afraid to let go of budgets or numbers”

Q I haven't seen any CRO say, Hey, I want to take over brand collateral and building booths. Okay. I've yet to see that, but I am seeing more and more CROs Build a parallel marketing org, mostly around demand. And I don't just mean hiring SDRs. I mean, building a parallel org. Have you seen that? Have you thought about whether those lines should blur or change when there's hypergrowth?

A Very interesting. I think blurry lines are a good thing. I mean, I have to say in width, I think we've always had a lot of blurry lines. I think really being involved in sales processes, which I am still to this day involved in deals, um, I think it's meaningful. It's really meaningful. It keeps you in touch with the sales org in a very meaningful way. I can understand why. Let's put it this way. If our CRO started building a shadow marketing org, then I think it's a great learning opportunity for me. I believe people should do whatever they need to succeed. So it's a good chance to understand, like, what are they doing that the marketing team did not Do. But it doesn't matter. I think there's many ways of having structures in orgs, and I think orgs are very different. So not necessarily seeing it as a problem. I think it could be a good opportunity. At the end of the day, I work for the sales team. That's how I see it in MeToBe, right? I do. I work for the sales team. Either I'm helping them close deals and get customers, or I'm not helping them close deals and get customers. I mean, if I was a CRO and I was unhappy, I might've done just that.

AI assessment note: “I think blurry lines are a good thing... not necessarily seeing it as a problem.”

Q And, um, what's the bar? How, how do you think about adding enough value or what does it take to build that, that those eyeballs from CISOs on LinkedIn? What have you learned?

A Yeah, being different, being a domain in your expert, like really bringing value, really, and not selling anything. Again, 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. Like how interested are you in hearing about the tool you do not use? Right. Not a lot, right? But like, if I know your domain and I bring you truly the best and deepest content in your domain, by the way, like you are doing very successfully, right? I've heard of faster. Why have I heard about it? Why do we listen to the episodes, right? Like, I think it's genuinely, truly good content, right? That is what makes me subscribe. It is sometimes as simple as that. So how do we deliver really deep content?

AI assessment note: “being different, being a domain in your expert, like really bringing value”

Q I haven't seen any CRO say, Hey, I want to take over brand collateral and building booths. Okay. I've yet to see that, but I am seeing more and more CROs Build a parallel marketing org, mostly around demand. And I don't just mean hiring SDRs. I mean, building a parallel org. Have you seen that? Have you thought about whether those lines should blur or change when there's hypergrowth?

A Very interesting. I think blurry lines are a good thing. I mean, I have to say in width, I think we've always had a lot of blurry lines. I think really being involved in sales processes, which I am still to this day involved in deals, um, I think it's meaningful. It's really meaningful. It keeps you in touch with the sales org in a very meaningful way. I can understand why. Let's put it this way. If our CRO started building a shadow marketing org, then I think it's a great learning opportunity for me. I believe people should do whatever they need to succeed. So it's a good chance to understand, like, what are they doing that the marketing team did not Do. But it doesn't matter. I think there's many ways of having structures in orgs, and I think orgs are very different. So not necessarily seeing it as a problem. I think it could be a good opportunity. At the end of the day, I work for the sales team. That's how I see it in MeToBe, right? I do. I work for the sales team. Either I'm helping them close deals and get customers, or I'm not helping them close deals and get customers. I mean, if I was a CRO and I was unhappy, I might've done just that.

AI assessment note: “I think blurry lines are a good thing.”

Q And, um, what's the bar? How, how do you think about adding enough value or what does it take to build that, that those eyeballs from CISOs on LinkedIn? What have you learned?

A Yeah, being different, being a domain in your expert, like really bringing value, really, and not selling anything. Again, 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. Like how interested are you in hearing about the tool you do not use? Right. Not a lot, right? But like, if I know your domain and I bring you truly the best and deepest content in your domain, by the way, like you are doing very successfully, right? I've heard of faster. Why have I heard about it? Why do we listen to the episodes, right? Like, I think it's genuinely, truly good content, right? That is what makes me subscribe. It is sometimes as simple as that. So how do we deliver really deep content?

AI assessment note: “being different, being a domain in your expert, like really bringing value, really, and not selling anything”

Q And then you realize like they work like, cause they're a touch. They are at You know, if you're doing them right. And so how, how do you, how did you measure it? Measure its contribution, that kind of stuff on the, on the quantify it.

A Yeah. I think because I came over to marketing from an engineer perspective, people really expected me to be like so obsessed with the numbers and not care about brand. When actually in reality, I kind of felt like the thing that will actually help me close deals is the brand side, like people hearing about us, hearing good things. First of all, I'll say that to this day, I'm involved in deals and I, you could sense it changing very easily over time. Like when I started, we would walk into a room and it was Cold, right? Like you would start from zero. You would have to be like, hi, I'm with, we're about security company. And then over time, you feel that the worms get, the room gets warmer, right? Now you walk into a room, it's warm, and your AEs feel it too. So there's also measurements that are not just numbers. But when it comes to numbers, I track a couple of things. First of all, my audience, My buyer, the budget at the end comes from CISOs, the, the senior executive that owns a security budget. They are a lot on LinkedIn. Like I trap how well we do on LinkedIn, how fast we grow. I need that exponential growth on LinkedIn. That's a good indication for me for brand because I can see the amount of buyers that Are subscribing to my content there. Then I have the other type of people, the people who actually use with like the, I mean, at the end, you'll have a CISO approve the…

AI assessment note: “But when it comes to numbers, I track a couple of things.”

Q How did you, as an engineer turned marketing, what like data set did you focus on initially? Like, what did you try to, I'm sure your brain initially is what can I optimize, right? What can I hack? And so, cause I'm actually seeing this more and more often, more and more folks are approaching marketing from an engineering perspective. So what were the first couple of things you attacked?

A I think not knowing marketing really shaped the way I came to think about it, because I knew exactly what I was trying to solve. Our problem at that time was nobody heard of Wiz at all. Nobody heard of Wiz. We had rate product market fit, right? But what would happen to us is we would meet a customer, right? It's a big enterprise. We would meet a customer and we would, you know, have a great first meeting and they would be like, oh my God, this looks so good. I wish I heard about it. Like three months ago when I just signed with one of her competitors, they did not know this existed even. And that's like, you know, it's like a knife to your heart because we know that had he heard of us, Had we been part of that process, we believed that he would have bought Wiz, right? So our pain point was nobody heard of Wiz. So I did not know anything about marketing, but I came into it was like, okay, what are all the things I can do to solve that problem? I just want the right person, like I want security buyers, which is a security product, I want security buyers, I want cybersecurity buyers to hear about Wiz, and ideally, Know that Wizz does cloud security so that if they need something for cloud security, they think of Wizz. That was a problem I set to solve. I was not focused on building pipeline because I did not even know I was supposed to be focused on that. I was just like thinking…

AI assessment note: “Our problem at that time was nobody heard of Wiz at all.”

Q How did you, as an engineer turned marketing, what like data set did you focus on initially? Like, what did you try to, I'm sure your brain initially is what can I optimize, right? What can I hack? And so, cause I'm actually seeing this more and more often, more and more folks are approaching marketing from an engineering perspective. So what were the first couple of things you attacked?

A I think not knowing marketing really shaped the way I came to think about it, because I knew exactly what I was trying to solve. Our problem at that time was nobody heard of Wiz at all. Nobody heard of Wiz. We had rate product market fit, right? But what would happen to us is we would meet a customer, right? It's a big enterprise. We would meet a customer and we would, you know, have a great first meeting and they would be like, oh my God, this looks so good. I wish I heard about it. Like three months ago when I just signed with one of her competitors, they did not know this existed even. And that's like, you know, it's like a knife to your heart because we know that had he heard of us, Had we been part of that process, we believed that he would have bought Wiz, right? So our pain point was nobody heard of Wiz. So I did not know anything about marketing, but I came into it was like, okay, what are all the things I can do to solve that problem? I just want the right person, like I want security buyers, which is a security product, I want security buyers, I want cybersecurity buyers to hear about Wiz, and ideally, Know that Wizz does cloud security so that if they need something for cloud security, they think of Wizz. That was a problem I set to solve. I was not focused on building pipeline because I did not even know I was supposed to be focused on that. I was just like thinking…

AI assessment note: “Our problem at that time was nobody heard of Wiz at all.”