March 19, 2025 • 36 mins
Google makes a monumental $32 billion acquisition of cloud security leader Wiz, marking one of the largest cybersecurity acquisitions in history after previously attempting to purchase the company for $23 billion last year.
• Wiz offers simple cloud security deployment that provides immediate visibility into cloud environments
• Founded by a team that previously sold their startup Adallom to Microsoft
• Achieved unprecedented growth, reaching $100 million ARR faster than most enterprise software companies
• Created strong operational excellence with defined founder responsibilities and accountability
• Primarily serves AWS customers, creating an interesting dynamic where Google will generate revenue from customers using a competitor's cloud
• Potential for combining Google's AI capabilities with Wiz's cloud security platform creates exciting possibilities
• Competition between cloud providers (Google, Microsoft, AWS) intensifies with this strategic acquisition
• No immediate changes expected for existing Wiz customers, though long-term integration questions remain
• Demonstrates cybersecurity remains a top investment priority despite economic conditions
• Spawns opportunities for new startups and validates venture investment strategies in cybersecurity
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I thought of you, richard, to vendor in the
cybersecurity space.
I wanted to turn to you andthen I thought of Chad.
Chad, you saw this Wizacquisition coming down the line
.
You saw it from a million milesaway.
When was this like that?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
you first had it's like probably third quarter of
23.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Okay, and I remember you saying, okay, these guys are
going to be big, and you werealways talking about whiz, and
you started to integrate whizinto trust map.
And so let's start with Richard.
Right, I'm going to be theidiot here and I can say that
I'm playing the idiot, but thetruth is I am.
I'm depending on you guys toeducate me and educate the
(01:08):
person who is listening to thisin their car or wherever they
are.
So, richard, did you see thiscoming?
Were you surprised by this?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, I was surprised because last year we went
through this before.
Surprised because last year wewent through this before.
So when I saw the rumors thatit was happening and these
rumors came out yesterday, Isaid, well, they're just playing
the same game, right, Gettingeverybody excited and then
calling it off.
For some reason, Of course, wenever got the backstory of what
happened last year, when Googleand Wiz were dancing and Google
(01:41):
and Wiz were dancing and Googleoffered $23 billion, which was
amazing.
Right, that was twice whattheir current valuation was at
their last amazing funding round, and this is easily the most
meteoric rise for anycybersecurity company ever Maybe
scales with inflation and allthat.
(02:03):
But, come on, it took.
I mean, Check Point did gopublic.
They went from zero to publicin three years, but they were
nowhere as big.
Right, they had $30 million inrevenue their second year, not
$100 million like Wiz did.
So it's just the pace of things.
Right, Wiz had a really simpleto deploy, really simple concept
that customers valuedimmediately.
(02:26):
Right, it was hey, deploy it inminutes and all of a sudden, I
can see everything in the cloud.
So I did extremely well withthat, had the right backing from
CyberStarts from day one,CyberStarts, is known for taking
Israeli startups to that nextlevel quickly.
But I was kind of hoping, youknow, because the team at Wiz,
(02:48):
you know this isn't their firstrodeo.
They've sold companies beforeand you would think that they
would want to be a standalonepublic company someday.
And, you know, join the ranksof Palo Alto and Zscaler and
Fortinet CrowdStrike and justkeep playing in that game and
contributing, and I can't hopethey would be too.
(03:09):
But now they're going to bepart of Google.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Chad, for the person that's listening to this, who
they've never heard of Wiz.
What is Wiz?
What is the concept of Wiz?
Richard just said that theconcept is pretty simple to
grasp.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I mean it is simple.
I mean, at the base of it, whatthey've done really well is
allow customers to measure theirsecurity, vulnerabilities,
misconfigurations and, you know,things that can lead to real
threats and risks in theorganization for cloud assets.
You know that was their breadand butter when they came out of
(03:46):
the gate.
That's what they did, and Ithink they did a really good job
of kind of pre-warming up theircustomer base before they went
and did public availability,let's call it.
And so they came out with agood base of customers.
They could ratchet up thatrevenue very quickly in the
(04:06):
first year as a result of thatactive customer base and use
that as a launchpad to multiplytheir growth over the next
several years, all the way towhere we got today.
And I think, by the way, whatRichard said what was it a year
ago, richard, roughly, whenGoogle was courting Wizz $23
(04:27):
billion?
Well, look, they got anotheralmost $10, call it $9 billion
more in 12 months, which isincredible amount of value add
in that short of time.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Why is that?
What changed in the last year.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That made that valuation skyrocket in that way,
Richard what do you think?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It continued to grow right, and we've all seen the
story before right when whoeverit was Google or Microsoft
offered whatever billions forYahoo and Yahoo turned them down
, and then obviously they shouldhave taken that deal, and so we
all.
One of the outcomes that quitefrequently is seen is they go
(05:06):
public for $5 billion, eventhough they could have sold last
year for $23 billion.
But I think what happened isthat they continued the momentum
.
So if they were worth that muchthen, and they continue to grow
at the rate they've beengrowing, then they're easily
worth however much growth.
That was right, turn ARR intomarket cap, kind of thing.
(05:30):
I watched them and I was amazedthat such a young company could
handle hiring 150 people a monthand just imagine what their HR
processes are in order to beable to grow a team that size.
Now it reminded me of thedot-com boom.
When I first joined PwC, wewere hiring 5,000 people a month
(05:51):
and you know we did that bydistributing every office, of
which there were 1,000 of, hadto hire, you know, 100 people,
kind of thing.
So the processes they built tobe a fast growing company is
pretty phenomenal, and I thinkif Google probably could learn
something from that right.
(06:12):
They're no longer a fastgrowing company like that, so
they may want to be inspired bythat ability to move into new
areas and grow quickly into them.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Is that because of their venture backing?
Who did they have in theircorner that helped them grow
that fast to do those quickhirings and take care of the
operational stuff and themanagement and what, what did?
Who was their, their, theirknight in shining armor?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I don't know.
I think it's the managementteam that gets all the credit.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The internal management team.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Internal management, the founders Wow, they get all
the credit.
They set that up and recognizedquickly that it was happening
and set themselves up forsuccess, which is a little
easier to do after you get acouple hundred million in
venture backing, you know.
(07:07):
You can then step back andthink about how you want to
build your company, whereasbootstrap companies have to
think about where the nextdollar is coming from right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So it turns out that in business, money solves
everything.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
It also creates additional problems.
Though you got to be careful,yeah yeah, like what?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
what kind of problems would it?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, you know, for example, if you don't have the,
if you don't execute on funding,you raise a couple hundred
million in funding, or maybe noteven that much, maybe it's 50
million in funding.
You have to be able to deploythat capital in a very smart way
to achieve the results thatthose investors are looking to
achieve in a very specificamount of time, and so that's
(07:48):
the other side of the equationhere.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
All right.
So let's talk about themanagement a little bit, because
somebody is out there trying tobuild a similar company and
they're going to want toreplicate what Wiz did.
Once you see this kind of news,the first thing that people are
going to be thinking how didthey do that and how do I
replicate it?
So was this a fluke, or is thissomething that you think that
(08:12):
managers and teams can learnfrom?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I personally think it's what Richard said earlier,
it's the founding team, and thekey word there is team, right?
So they had I think was itthree or four, essentially more
than four founding team members.
Okay, well, there you go.
And they didn't just decide tohave an idea and go for it.
(08:40):
They clearly had a verywell-drawn, well drawn out,
strict strategy that they heldeach other accountable for and
they executed very well.
And they there was an interviewI saw I don't remember all the
details of it, or read, I shouldsay I think I read this
interview from one of their cofounders a while back, and
(09:03):
that's essentially what theyhave established is, each person
had a very distinct role inthat founding team and they kept
out of each other's way andthey just, you know, also kept
through that, each otheraccountable for delivering upon
the responsibilities that eachindividual was assigned to
deliver upon Right.
And so they they removed thepossibility of friction, but
(09:26):
they also increased theopportunity for accountability.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You guys know their backgrounds, the founding
members.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
They sold their previous company, adalarm, to
Microsoft, if I'm pronouncingthat correctly.
So an Israeli startup Onceagain, microsoft buys them.
I forget how much it was for,but it was sizable, If I'm
pronouncing that correctly.
So an Israeli startup onceagain, microsoft buys them.
I forget how much it was for,but it was sizable.
So when they got back togetherthey could think about how are
we going to do this this time?
We want it to be big.
They spent a lot of time asMicrosoft executives as well, so
(10:02):
they saw you know technologycompanies at scale, so they
hadn't yet built anything as bigas they experienced at
Microsoft.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So that's the secret sauce, maybe that's it's hard to
compete with people who comefrom that environment who are
able to replicate what they'veseen at these bigger companies,
and they just sort of spun it up.
I mean, if you really thinkabout it that way, it's kind of
microsoft versus google here.
Uh, have you seen any othercompanies?
(10:28):
Sort of this is a conspiracytheory.
I'll admit it's a completeconspiracy theory.
But they say hey, why don't youguys go off, do your own thing
and then, when you get bigenough, we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Maybe we'll bring you back into the pool.
Yeah, Cisco does that all thetime.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
What's that called?
Is there a name for that, or isthat just kind of a?
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I don't know Corporate nepotism, I don't know
.
It's totally okay to do right,and it happens a lot with
Microsoft as well.
Founders sell to them, stay onfor a year, get their buyout or
whatever that sweetened offer is, and then they move on and do
it all over again.
And I think that is key to, uh,the successes that you had the
(11:14):
senior management with seniorexperience, because at a lot of
startups, if it's your firststartup, if you're out of y
combinator, which means you'regoing to be 19 years old and
you're building something, andeventually, after your A round
or B round, the investors aregoing to replace you with
somebody with gray hair.
Just happens so often.
(11:34):
That's just going to happen,right?
Or Symantec, right, eubanks wasreplaced by a 20-year IBM
executive, john Thompson.
A 20-year IBM executive, johnThompson.
They always bring in the adults, right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And are the founding members still?
They're still the people whoare running Wiz right Yep.
Okay, so they're very happytoday.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Head of products.
Head of technology CEO and oneother role.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I'll add this to what Richard was saying
(12:41):
no-transcript.
Large enterprises that's hownew products get released.
But more often than not, whenyou see a huge success, like in
the case of Wiz, that's notgoing to be because of internal
(13:02):
innovation at a Fortune 500company, as an example.
Yep, and that's the way to bebecause of internal innovation
at a fortune 500 company, as anexample yep, and that's the way
it's been forever.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
In my experience.
The, the large companies yes,they'll have great product teams
and they'll listen to theircustomers and innovate in order
to deliver what the customersask for fantastic.
But as soon as somebody saysthis is all wrong, we are doing
it wrong, we should be doing itthis way.
That's when it has to be afresh founder startup who might
(13:32):
leave Microsoft and mightactually create the company that
he or she thinks would fit intoMicrosoft really, really well,
and then sell it back to themafter they demonstrated hey look
, you can, you know, whateveryou know totally revamp your
word processor and replace therevenue you're going to lose
(13:54):
from the old people using itwith the new kids on the block
that you know.
Which brings me to thecompetition between Google and
Microsoft.
So, unlike Google and Amazon,which you know, both the Google
and Amazon and Microsoft hadhuge computing infrastructure
(14:14):
and they all came at creatingcloud services the same way.
It's like wow, we've justinvested hundreds of millions in
creating this flexible, elasticsystem.
We could rent space on that toeverybody else.
We could get back into whatBoeing Computer Services was in
when I got out of schooltimeshare computing, and but the
(14:37):
difference here is that betweenMicrosoft and Google.
Microsoft created Bing in orderto get a piece of Google's
action right.
They didn't do too well at it,but you know they got into the
advertising business, so Googlehistorically has thought of them
as their main competitor,though in actuality the main
competitor is actually Amazonand Amazon Web Services.
(15:00):
So you got the three of them andI'm wondering if I don't think,
you know, we're going to haveany antitrust issues at all,
because it's giant, massive,almost $2 trillion Google buying
a little tiny cybersecuritycompany.
Not a big deal, but that littletiny cybersecurity company grew
(15:21):
off the back of AWS customers.
Right, because they're cloudand AWS is, you know, 80% of the
cloud, especially for theenterprise, whereas Google might
have an 80%, you know, cloudpresence in universities.
That's not the same thing ashaving the enterprise.
And so now, all of a sudden,the major cloud security
(15:46):
provider for AWS is owned bytheir major competitor, google.
What happens?
And I'm not sure, but AWS couldmess that deal up if they
wanted to.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Is this a loss?
For Microsoft if they wanted toIs this a loss for Microsoft.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I, you know Microsoft has been making a.
I think it's more of a poke inthe eye from Google, because
Microsoft has been pretendingthat they're the biggest
cybersecurity vendor by givingaway stuff that nobody in their
right mind would pay for becauseit's less, it's subpar, right.
(16:26):
So here they are claiming nowthey're up to $20 billion in
revenue from cybersecurityproducts, even though you know
they haven't actually everproved that to us.
And Google just making amassive, you know, cutting edge
cybersecurity acquisition right,it's not like Microsoft buying
(16:47):
CrowdStrike.
That would be a big deal, right, Because they would indicate
that they really were concernedabout security on their
endpoints if they did that.
No, they're going to createjust barely good enough
antivirus to put AVG and Avastand Norton LifeLock out of
business unless they combineforces as they did.
(17:07):
So, yeah, I think it's a goodplay, good anti-Microsoft play,
because, don't forget, Googledoes compete with Microsoft.
They want to be the one to havethe Google desktop and Google
workspaces, compared toMicrosoft's Office 365.
They've got an editor that'sfantastic.
They've got a spreadsheet thatI think is better than Excel.
(17:30):
They've got everything you needPowerPoint.
You've got all that and it'sall online.
It's modern, it's actuallyweb-based.
So, yeah, I think that's a goodmove on their part.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Are they what Microsoft would be if they got a
crowd strike Like does thismake Google now a serious player
in cybersecurity?
Do you think of them now as acybersecurity company?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, yeah, because the Mandiant acquisition didn't
do that right.
Mandiant gave them street credbecause now they got some really
good researchers, but it didn'tgive them the product so much.
But now they've got best ofbreed product.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Is Wiz going to come off of AWS and are they going to
be on Google's cloud, or do youthink Google is going to allow
them to remain on AWS whileproviding the rest of the
service?
I mean, that would be crazy,but how do these things work?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
They have to stay on AWS right, or else they just pay
$32 billion for no revenue.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And if you think about that, it's a
diversification, greatdiversification play for Google.
In a way, they can now getrevenue from AWS customers.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Huh.
So this is good news not onlyfor Google, but this is good
news for AWS, for Amazon as well.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I don't know.
I don't know because Amazon hasa bunch of security products
and a lot of them and they'vegot a whole marketplace full of
security products.
They have a security conference.
They won't appreciate beingpushed aside for market share,
or mind share at least.
Maybe that's great for theindustry because maybe they'll
(19:11):
start acquiring Trouble withAmazon acquiring because they've
got so many partners.
If they acquire one, they'regoing to piss off the others.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
The tension is so thick you can cut it with a
knife.
It's like thick butter, and I'mexcited to see what happens
next.
So is this a done deal, or isthere any chance that this
acquisition might not go through?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Ooh, I could see that .
You know we'd have to see thelegal terms.
But yeah, there's alwayscaveats why it won't go through.
If you know, if the stockmarket crashes and Google stock
isn't worth as much as it usedto be, maybe that could kill the
deal there could be lots ofouts.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So, Chad, when you were looking at Wiz a long time
ago, what was it about Wiz thatmade you feel like they were
going to be big?
And what?
Because you weren't surprisedby this acquisition?
No, what was it that you saw inthem?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Primarily what I was hearing on the street with
customers, what I mean by that.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
More customers, or customers in general, in the
cybersecurity market.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Both really yeah.
So we were getting requests forWIS integration and, as I was
talking to former colleagues andalso customer prospects,
talking about what tools theywere using, wiz was definitely
top of mind back then, and so itwas pretty evident that they
(20:50):
were going to go somewhere, andgo somewhere very quickly,
because rarely do you comeacross a product where almost
everybody is acquiring it ortalking about acquiring it.
And, richard, you probably sawthe same thing over the last two
, three years.
Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer for a while and
people give Orca credit forcoming to market earlier than
Wiz, but Wiz just got thebacking, had the team, all A
players across the board, sothey won.
(21:29):
The other one to watch that'svery similar is Syera.
Who similar thing.
Right, I think they took in$200 million in funding last
year and they're killing itSyera.
Think about it.
If WIS is configurationmanagement, sayera is data
discovery and classification.
(21:50):
But unfortunately for Sayera,over a year ago WIS introduced
their own data securityclassification solution.
So Sayera is a competitor toWIS, but specialist data
security classification solution.
So you know Sayura is acompetitor to Wiz, but
specialist and it is different.
And they are different buyingcenters.
You know the network cloudarchitects by Wiz, the data data
(22:12):
privacy chief digital officersby Sayura.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
What does this mean for customers, for CISOs, CTOs?
Is anything going to change forthem?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I don't think so, not in the short term anyway,
certainly not.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Maybe things get better.
Maybe more integrations, maybemore unification.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think that depends where a customer's stack is in
the cloud, right.
So if they're in Google, youhave to be very happy with this
announcement.
If you're in AWS, perhapsthere's some uncertainty, which
we already discussed.
But I think you know, before wesee any major direction one way
(22:56):
or the other, first this dealhas to have ink on paper and
closed, and then, two, it'll beinteresting to see where Google
plans to take Wiz Because, asRichard said earlier, the
Mandian thing was reallyinteresting at first, but then
the excitement fizzled out, Ithink fairly quickly, and there
wasn't a lot of announcementfrom Google on what they were
(23:18):
planning to do on a more broadermarket perspective with that
acquisition, whereas Wiz issomething obviously as a product
is very scalable and they offerquite a robust cloud services
already.
So that is going to become avery interesting to watch for
everyone on what Google plans todo and how that could or could
(23:42):
not change the currentrelationship over the next
several years with AWS.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
There's someone who's like a real.
Sorry, Richard, you're going tosay something, Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I was just going to say.
Keep in mind there's noconnection between a company
that makes billions and billionsof profits from selling ads and
anything else.
There's just the businessprocesses are totally different.
The margins are totallydifferent.
There's no better margins thanthey make on selling ads.
So when it comes push to shove,ad revenue is going to come
(24:16):
first, right?
And so Google is anti-privacy,right.
They need to see all your data,so they give away a lot of free
products so they can see yourdata.
And Wiz is a security company.
Those two are going to clash ifthey ever hit the market
together.
And Wiz is a successful,growing security company that
(24:37):
probably invested a lot incustomer support.
So I bet you anything.
A Wiz customer can call a phonenumber and talk to a human.
And have you ever tried to dothat with Google?
Yeah, doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Does it make Google a more secure product, because
they're all in the cloud.
They do a lot of cloud.
Does this make them better, ordo they just see this as an
additional revenue stream?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So if they could deploy Wiz for their own IT
operations and they've got Idon't know how many tens of
thousands of employees, they'vegot big IT operations, so they
need it Right and they've hadincidents in the past that Wiz
will help them avoid, like whatGoogle Aurora 2010.
(25:31):
Chinese just owned Google,stole all their source code and
compromised all their biggestcustomers.
It was a disaster.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So this is good news for customers.
There was someone I spoke to ifyou're listening and you can
hear me, I'm sure it was a guestthat I had on the show a long
time ago who is just so antigoogle and they're like, even if
you met.
So everybody knows that Iusually meet guests in google
meets.
First, our shop is a googleshop.
(26:00):
We do everything in Google.
I love Google and it just makesthis person livid and I wish I
could remember who this was.
It's like I can't even picturethe face.
I can't remember the name, butI remember talking to this
person and they were like ifanybody does anything in Google,
you're an idiot, becauseespecially if you're in security
(26:22):
, because if you're claimingthat you're in security, you're
all about security, you're usingGoogle, something's wrong with
your head and they would nottouch it.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You just maybe use a Chrome browser to record this
podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Right, right, because Riverside only use.
Yeah, I can't, I can't.
If I were to not be a Googleshop for security reasons or for
(26:57):
whatever reason, I got to closemy shop and I'm sorry, I'm just
not willing to do that.
But should people like mebreathe a sigh of relief, and
should people like my friend, hewho shall not be named because
I can't remember his name shouldthat person now feel better
about using Google, now thatthey've clearly put cloud
security in the forefront?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
There's a huge difference between cloud
security and privacy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the issue.
I suppose you know what, Nowthat I'm thinking about this,
this could have been Adam Stone.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That could very well be.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah, that sounds like something that shout out to
Adam Stone.
It could be something that he Imean he's the privacy guru and,
as a matter of fact, I would beinterested in what his take is
on this.
But so you're saying that thisdoes not touch privacy at all,
which, where the concerns peoplemay have around privacy, may
(27:41):
not have been addressed here.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
The data discovery.
So you know, using Wiz'stechnology, their customers
could find out where all theirprivacy related information is
and encrypt it.
Keep it away from Google.
You know they can discover.
You know they can discover.
And then, with the cloudconfiguration, you could
discover if Google has access toyour private information stores
(28:05):
, which would be really usefulto have.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And then you can shut it off.
So this is just good news forGoogle and good news for the Wiz
team.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Doesn't seem like a whole lot's going to change for
the customers.
Yeah, you know, not immediatelythere's, no, you don't have to
rush to the door and you knowyou don't have to start talking
to Orca, but you could if youwanted to.
That's one thing about you.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Know if something is super, super easy to deploy, to
the point where you can deployit in a proof of concept mode
during the first call with thesalesperson.
Then it's also super easy toflip and go to somebody else.
It's not as sticky.
So, Richard, you are a victimof your own success.
You have prognosticated on thisshow and you were right.
I think your success rate ispretty high.
So I'm going to dub you theprognosticator of
prognosticators here and ask youa very unfair question who is
the next whiz?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
It's a long way off.
I've already talked aboutSayura right, who's going to be
a good company, but I don'tthink they'll be a whiz at all
and I think it'll be a rise outof the AI world that we're in
now.
But I wouldn't be surprised ifit's none of the 96 vendors in
(29:28):
AI security that I'm tracking.
It'll be somebody else andthey'll come up with something
that just does a better job atsomething really normal and
everyday right something reallynormal and everyday right and
it's going to be amazing when ithappens and they'll get $100
million in funding because it'sAI and security and it'll take
(29:49):
us all by storm.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Chad.
What does this mean forTrustMap and your customers?
The AI, or wiz, wiz oh or isthere an AI, a wink, wink, all
right let's stick to the wiztopic here, um, all right, all
right, my job is to get theinformation out of.
Your job is to keep secrets forour customers.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
this is great news because and again it's we don't
know what six months from now isgoing to look like with inside
of Google right, how are theygoing to deploy it?
Make it available.
Will it be available throughGoogle Cloud customers, for
example?
Enable us to with a checkboxcustomer through our interface,
(30:42):
a checkbox they could activatewith.
Today, they have to enter APIkeys and you know authentication
string, but a checkbox is evenfaster, so that would be amazing
.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
I'm really surprised that AI wasn't a bigger part of
this conversation.
I would think that if there wasgoing to be a $32 billion
acquisition, it would have beenan AI company.
Is Wiz equipped with AI?
I mean, is AI a part of this atall?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, think about Google for a moment.
They're probably not going to,you know, subpar their own AI
investments and they are in thebest position to create an AI
engine with all the data thatthey have at their fingertips,
and they've got far moredevelopers than I'm sure Wiz
could even imagine to have.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
What about the other way around?
Google using its AI technologyand bolting that on to Wizz?
What does that do?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
That could be amazing .
It would be amazing, yeah, Imean write a storybook.
I mean the opportunities areprobably numerous on what you
could do in that scenario.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Wow, yeah, reconfigure my AWS
infrastructure to save me 90% ofthe costs.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Wow, what else?
What else could happen?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Well, anything could happen, I suppose Anything yeah,
it's too early to hypothesizeright now.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Look at, Google is going to have every AWS
customer's cloud configuration.
Take their AI, take Genie 3 or4 or 5, whatever we're up to and
refactor it into a Google clouddeployment.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, the possibilities are endless Like
Gemini Genie and cloud securityare endless.
Like Gemini Genie and cloudsecurity, I mean that would even
have trickle down effects inyour line of business Chad I
mean, even your customers maysee the benefits of that of an
AI-driven whiz bolted on.
(32:54):
So AI bolted on to whiz whizbolted on to TrustMap, that
could do a lot for customers interms of understanding their
security posture, understandingwhere they are and then, of
course, being able to build aroadmap.
And I mean AI plus security.
It's just going to get biggerand bigger and bigger.
(33:14):
But anyway, yeah, go ahead, goahead.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
I was just going to say use cases are endless.
But you know I'm I want to bepragmatic here and cautious
because the deal isn'tcompletely done and gone through
legal yet.
So Right.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Could this?
Could all just be dust in thewind for all we know?
I'll probably.
I hope not, but we could bedoing another show in a week
talking about why did the winsacquisition not go through?
Did the WINS acquisition not gothrough Exactly?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Richard, great seeing you again.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Likewise Chad, Really good.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
All right, richard.
Last thoughts.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, so super exciting for the industry.
Right to have a massiveacquisition like this.
Every acquisition spawns newstartups and inspires investors.
Right, Because it's been a longtime since an investor like
CyberStarts can talk about, youknow, returning the entire value
of the fund in a single deal,which is what they all attempt
(34:10):
to do.
So here's you know, it happenedin cybersecurity and I'm sure
there are a lot of.
There were a lot ofparticipants in investing in Wiz
, so they're all pretty proud ofthemselves today and kudos to
them.
In the first place, because itwas a risk.
It was always a risk, and soI've got high hopes for the
(34:30):
industry having a really goodyear and I look forward to
seeing all those.
Of course, this is I'm speakingin my own self-interest,
because I'm looking forward toseeing all the startups and
being able to track them andhelp people understand them.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
If this is an indicator of something, this
would be an indicator of whatthat other companies should be
paying attention to.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Yeah, yet again, it highlights something that John
Pescatori told me the finalstraw for the cloud,
demonstrating that securitygenerated the cloud generated
all these security opportunities.
Z-scaler is another one, andall of these vendors are that
the next wave is going to be anAI.
We know that's going to happen.
(35:36):
Palo Alto is already assumingit's happened right, and they're
talking about claiming theirshare of the $34 billion AI
security market, which is silly,because the market doesn't
exist yet.
The players are all lined upready to go spending people's
money, but customers aren'tbuying from any of them yet the
same is true for media andcybersecurity.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Talking about cybersecurity is never going to
be the next big thing in media,but it's always a part of the
conversation and always will beso.
With that, richard, thanks forstopping by, as always, good to
see you, and as things evolve, Imight ping you again, because
you are the man.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
All right, thanks, I'm just going to stop it here.
I thought of you, richard, to vendor in the
cybersecurity space.
I wanted to turn to you andthen I thought of Chad.
Chad, you saw this Wizacquisition coming down the line
.
You saw it from a million milesaway.
When was this like that?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
you first had it's like probably third quarter of
23.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Okay, and I remember you saying, okay, these guys are
going to be big, and you werealways talking about whiz, and
you started to integrate whizinto trust map.
And so let's start with Richard.
Right, I'm going to be theidiot here and I can say that
I'm playing the idiot, but thetruth is I am.
I'm depending on you guys toeducate me and educate the
(01:08):
person who is listening to thisin their car or wherever they
are.
So, richard, did you see thiscoming?
Were you surprised by this?
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yeah, I was surprised because last year we went
through this before.
Surprised because last year wewent through this before.
So when I saw the rumors thatit was happening and these
rumors came out yesterday, Isaid, well, they're just playing
the same game, right, Gettingeverybody excited and then
calling it off.
For some reason, Of course, wenever got the backstory of what
happened last year, when Googleand Wiz were dancing and Google
(01:41):
and Wiz were dancing and Googleoffered $23 billion, which was
amazing.
Right, that was twice whattheir current valuation was at
their last amazing funding round, and this is easily the most
meteoric rise for anycybersecurity company ever Maybe
scales with inflation and allthat.
(02:03):
But, come on, it took.
I mean, Check Point did gopublic.
They went from zero to publicin three years, but they were
nowhere as big.
Right, they had $30 million inrevenue their second year, not
$100 million like Wiz did.
So it's just the pace of things.
Right, Wiz had a really simpleto deploy, really simple concept
that customers valuedimmediately.
(02:26):
Right, it was hey, deploy it inminutes and all of a sudden, I
can see everything in the cloud.
So I did extremely well withthat, had the right backing from
CyberStarts from day one,CyberStarts, is known for taking
Israeli startups to that nextlevel quickly.
But I was kind of hoping, youknow, because the team at Wiz,
(02:48):
you know this isn't their firstrodeo.
They've sold companies beforeand you would think that they
would want to be a standalonepublic company someday.
And, you know, join the ranksof Palo Alto and Zscaler and
Fortinet CrowdStrike and justkeep playing in that game and
contributing, and I can't hopethey would be too.
(03:09):
But now they're going to bepart of Google.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Chad, for the person that's listening to this, who
they've never heard of Wiz.
What is Wiz?
What is the concept of Wiz?
Richard just said that theconcept is pretty simple to
grasp.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, I mean it is simple.
I mean, at the base of it, whatthey've done really well is
allow customers to measure theirsecurity, vulnerabilities,
misconfigurations and, you know,things that can lead to real
threats and risks in theorganization for cloud assets.
You know that was their breadand butter when they came out of
(03:46):
the gate.
That's what they did, and Ithink they did a really good job
of kind of pre-warming up theircustomer base before they went
and did public availability,let's call it.
And so they came out with agood base of customers.
They could ratchet up thatrevenue very quickly in the
(04:06):
first year as a result of thatactive customer base and use
that as a launchpad to multiplytheir growth over the next
several years, all the way towhere we got today.
And I think, by the way, whatRichard said what was it a year
ago, richard, roughly, whenGoogle was courting Wizz $23
(04:27):
billion?
Well, look, they got anotheralmost $10, call it $9 billion
more in 12 months, which isincredible amount of value add
in that short of time.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Why is that?
What changed in the last year.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
That made that valuation skyrocket in that way,
Richard what do you think?
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It continued to grow right, and we've all seen the
story before right when whoeverit was Google or Microsoft
offered whatever billions forYahoo and Yahoo turned them down
, and then obviously they shouldhave taken that deal, and so we
all.
One of the outcomes that quitefrequently is seen is they go
(05:06):
public for $5 billion, eventhough they could have sold last
year for $23 billion.
But I think what happened isthat they continued the momentum
.
So if they were worth that muchthen, and they continue to grow
at the rate they've beengrowing, then they're easily
worth however much growth.
That was right, turn ARR intomarket cap, kind of thing.
(05:30):
I watched them and I was amazedthat such a young company could
handle hiring 150 people a monthand just imagine what their HR
processes are in order to beable to grow a team that size.
Now it reminded me of thedot-com boom.
When I first joined PwC, wewere hiring 5,000 people a month
(05:51):
and you know we did that bydistributing every office, of
which there were 1,000 of, hadto hire, you know, 100 people,
kind of thing.
So the processes they built tobe a fast growing company is
pretty phenomenal, and I thinkif Google probably could learn
something from that right.
(06:12):
They're no longer a fastgrowing company like that, so
they may want to be inspired bythat ability to move into new
areas and grow quickly into them.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Is that because of their venture backing?
Who did they have in theircorner that helped them grow
that fast to do those quickhirings and take care of the
operational stuff and themanagement and what, what did?
Who was their, their, theirknight in shining armor?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
I don't know.
I think it's the managementteam that gets all the credit.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
The internal management team.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Internal management, the founders Wow, they get all
the credit.
They set that up and recognizedquickly that it was happening
and set themselves up forsuccess, which is a little
easier to do after you get acouple hundred million in
venture backing, you know.
(07:07):
You can then step back andthink about how you want to
build your company, whereasbootstrap companies have to
think about where the nextdollar is coming from right.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So it turns out that in business, money solves
everything.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
It also creates additional problems.
Though you got to be careful,yeah yeah, like what?
Speaker 1 (07:24):
what kind of problems would it?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Well, you know, for example, if you don't have the,
if you don't execute on funding,you raise a couple hundred
million in funding, or maybe noteven that much, maybe it's 50
million in funding.
You have to be able to deploythat capital in a very smart way
to achieve the results thatthose investors are looking to
achieve in a very specificamount of time, and so that's
(07:48):
the other side of the equationhere.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
All right.
So let's talk about themanagement a little bit, because
somebody is out there trying tobuild a similar company and
they're going to want toreplicate what Wiz did.
Once you see this kind of news,the first thing that people are
going to be thinking how didthey do that and how do I
replicate it?
So was this a fluke, or is thissomething that you think that
(08:12):
managers and teams can learnfrom?
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I personally think it's what Richard said earlier,
it's the founding team, and thekey word there is team, right?
So they had I think was itthree or four, essentially more
than four founding team members.
Okay, well, there you go.
And they didn't just decide tohave an idea and go for it.
(08:40):
They clearly had a verywell-drawn, well drawn out,
strict strategy that they heldeach other accountable for and
they executed very well.
And they there was an interviewI saw I don't remember all the
details of it, or read, I shouldsay I think I read this
interview from one of their cofounders a while back, and
(09:03):
that's essentially what theyhave established is, each person
had a very distinct role inthat founding team and they kept
out of each other's way andthey just, you know, also kept
through that, each otheraccountable for delivering upon
the responsibilities that eachindividual was assigned to
deliver upon Right.
And so they they removed thepossibility of friction, but
(09:26):
they also increased theopportunity for accountability.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
You guys know their backgrounds, the founding
members.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
They sold their previous company, adalarm, to
Microsoft, if I'm pronouncingthat correctly.
So an Israeli startup Onceagain, microsoft buys them.
I forget how much it was for,but it was sizable, If I'm
pronouncing that correctly.
So an Israeli startup onceagain, microsoft buys them.
I forget how much it was for,but it was sizable.
So when they got back togetherthey could think about how are
we going to do this this time?
We want it to be big.
They spent a lot of time asMicrosoft executives as well, so
(10:02):
they saw you know technologycompanies at scale, so they
hadn't yet built anything as bigas they experienced at
Microsoft.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
So that's the secret sauce, maybe that's it's hard to
compete with people who comefrom that environment who are
able to replicate what they'veseen at these bigger companies,
and they just sort of spun it up.
I mean, if you really thinkabout it that way, it's kind of
microsoft versus google here.
Uh, have you seen any othercompanies?
(10:28):
Sort of this is a conspiracytheory.
I'll admit it's a completeconspiracy theory.
But they say hey, why don't youguys go off, do your own thing
and then, when you get bigenough, we'll talk.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Maybe we'll bring you back into the pool.
Yeah, Cisco does that all thetime.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
What's that called?
Is there a name for that, or isthat just kind of a?
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I don't know Corporate nepotism, I don't know
.
It's totally okay to do right,and it happens a lot with
Microsoft as well.
Founders sell to them, stay onfor a year, get their buyout or
whatever that sweetened offer is, and then they move on and do
it all over again.
And I think that is key to, uh,the successes that you had the
(11:14):
senior management with seniorexperience, because at a lot of
startups, if it's your firststartup, if you're out of y
combinator, which means you'regoing to be 19 years old and
you're building something, andeventually, after your A round
or B round, the investors aregoing to replace you with
somebody with gray hair.
Just happens so often.
(11:34):
That's just going to happen,right?
Or Symantec, right, eubanks wasreplaced by a 20-year IBM
executive, john Thompson.
A 20-year IBM executive, johnThompson.
They always bring in the adults, right.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And are the founding members still?
They're still the people whoare running Wiz right Yep.
Okay, so they're very happytoday.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
Head of products.
Head of technology CEO and oneother role.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
I'll add this to what Richard was saying
(12:41):
no-transcript.
Large enterprises that's hownew products get released.
But more often than not, whenyou see a huge success, like in
the case of Wiz, that's notgoing to be because of internal
(13:02):
innovation at a Fortune 500company, as an example.
Yep, and that's the way to bebecause of internal innovation
at a fortune 500 company, as anexample yep, and that's the way
it's been forever.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
In my experience.
The, the large companies yes,they'll have great product teams
and they'll listen to theircustomers and innovate in order
to deliver what the customersask for fantastic.
But as soon as somebody saysthis is all wrong, we are doing
it wrong, we should be doing itthis way.
That's when it has to be afresh founder startup who might
(13:32):
leave Microsoft and mightactually create the company that
he or she thinks would fit intoMicrosoft really, really well,
and then sell it back to themafter they demonstrated hey look
, you can, you know, whateveryou know totally revamp your
word processor and replace therevenue you're going to lose
(13:54):
from the old people using itwith the new kids on the block
that you know.
Which brings me to thecompetition between Google and
Microsoft.
So, unlike Google and Amazon,which you know, both the Google
and Amazon and Microsoft hadhuge computing infrastructure
(14:14):
and they all came at creatingcloud services the same way.
It's like wow, we've justinvested hundreds of millions in
creating this flexible, elasticsystem.
We could rent space on that toeverybody else.
We could get back into whatBoeing Computer Services was in
when I got out of schooltimeshare computing, and but the
(14:37):
difference here is that betweenMicrosoft and Google.
Microsoft created Bing in orderto get a piece of Google's
action right.
They didn't do too well at it,but you know they got into the
advertising business, so Googlehistorically has thought of them
as their main competitor,though in actuality the main
competitor is actually Amazonand Amazon Web Services.
(15:00):
So you got the three of them andI'm wondering if I don't think,
you know, we're going to haveany antitrust issues at all,
because it's giant, massive,almost $2 trillion Google buying
a little tiny cybersecuritycompany.
Not a big deal, but that littletiny cybersecurity company grew
(15:21):
off the back of AWS customers.
Right, because they're cloudand AWS is, you know, 80% of the
cloud, especially for theenterprise, whereas Google might
have an 80%, you know, cloudpresence in universities.
That's not the same thing ashaving the enterprise.
And so now, all of a sudden,the major cloud security
(15:46):
provider for AWS is owned bytheir major competitor, google.
What happens?
And I'm not sure, but AWS couldmess that deal up if they
wanted to.
Speaker 1 (15:59):
Is this a loss?
For Microsoft if they wanted toIs this a loss for Microsoft.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
I, you know Microsoft has been making a.
I think it's more of a poke inthe eye from Google, because
Microsoft has been pretendingthat they're the biggest
cybersecurity vendor by givingaway stuff that nobody in their
right mind would pay for becauseit's less, it's subpar, right.
(16:26):
So here they are claiming nowthey're up to $20 billion in
revenue from cybersecurityproducts, even though you know
they haven't actually everproved that to us.
And Google just making amassive, you know, cutting edge
cybersecurity acquisition right,it's not like Microsoft buying
(16:47):
CrowdStrike.
That would be a big deal, right, Because they would indicate
that they really were concernedabout security on their
endpoints if they did that.
No, they're going to createjust barely good enough
antivirus to put AVG and Avastand Norton LifeLock out of
business unless they combineforces as they did.
(17:07):
So, yeah, I think it's a goodplay, good anti-Microsoft play,
because, don't forget, Googledoes compete with Microsoft.
They want to be the one to havethe Google desktop and Google
workspaces, compared toMicrosoft's Office 365.
They've got an editor that'sfantastic.
They've got a spreadsheet thatI think is better than Excel.
(17:30):
They've got everything you needPowerPoint.
You've got all that and it'sall online.
It's modern, it's actuallyweb-based.
So, yeah, I think that's a goodmove on their part.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Are they what Microsoft would be if they got a
crowd strike Like does thismake Google now a serious player
in cybersecurity?
Do you think of them now as acybersecurity company?
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yeah, yeah, because the Mandiant acquisition didn't
do that right.
Mandiant gave them street credbecause now they got some really
good researchers, but it didn'tgive them the product so much.
But now they've got best ofbreed product.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Is Wiz going to come off of AWS and are they going to
be on Google's cloud, or do youthink Google is going to allow
them to remain on AWS whileproviding the rest of the
service?
I mean, that would be crazy,but how do these things work?
Speaker 3 (18:26):
They have to stay on AWS right, or else they just pay
$32 billion for no revenue.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And if you think about that, it's a
diversification, greatdiversification play for Google.
In a way, they can now getrevenue from AWS customers.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Huh.
So this is good news not onlyfor Google, but this is good
news for AWS, for Amazon as well.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
I don't know.
I don't know because Amazon hasa bunch of security products
and a lot of them and they'vegot a whole marketplace full of
security products.
They have a security conference.
They won't appreciate beingpushed aside for market share,
or mind share at least.
Maybe that's great for theindustry because maybe they'll
(19:11):
start acquiring Trouble withAmazon acquiring because they've
got so many partners.
If they acquire one, they'regoing to piss off the others.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
The tension is so thick you can cut it with a
knife.
It's like thick butter, and I'mexcited to see what happens
next.
So is this a done deal, or isthere any chance that this
acquisition might not go through?
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Ooh, I could see that .
You know we'd have to see thelegal terms.
But yeah, there's alwayscaveats why it won't go through.
If you know, if the stockmarket crashes and Google stock
isn't worth as much as it usedto be, maybe that could kill the
deal there could be lots ofouts.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
So, Chad, when you were looking at Wiz a long time
ago, what was it about Wiz thatmade you feel like they were
going to be big?
And what?
Because you weren't surprisedby this acquisition?
No, what was it that you saw inthem?
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Primarily what I was hearing on the street with
customers, what I mean by that.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
More customers, or customers in general, in the
cybersecurity market.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
Both really yeah.
So we were getting requests forWIS integration and, as I was
talking to former colleagues andalso customer prospects,
talking about what tools theywere using, wiz was definitely
top of mind back then, and so itwas pretty evident that they
(20:50):
were going to go somewhere, andgo somewhere very quickly,
because rarely do you comeacross a product where almost
everybody is acquiring it ortalking about acquiring it.
And, richard, you probably sawthe same thing over the last two
, three years.
Yeah, completely.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Yeah, it was kind of a no-brainer for a while and
people give Orca credit forcoming to market earlier than
Wiz, but Wiz just got thebacking, had the team, all A
players across the board, sothey won.
(21:29):
The other one to watch that'svery similar is Syera.
Who similar thing.
Right, I think they took in$200 million in funding last
year and they're killing itSyera.
Think about it.
If WIS is configurationmanagement, sayera is data
discovery and classification.
(21:50):
But unfortunately for Sayera,over a year ago WIS introduced
their own data securityclassification solution.
So Sayera is a competitor toWIS, but specialist data
security classification solution.
So you know Sayura is acompetitor to Wiz, but
specialist and it is different.
And they are different buyingcenters.
You know the network cloudarchitects by Wiz, the data data
(22:12):
privacy chief digital officersby Sayura.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
What does this mean for customers, for CISOs, CTOs?
Is anything going to change forthem?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
I don't think so, not in the short term anyway,
certainly not.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Maybe things get better.
Maybe more integrations, maybemore unification.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think that depends where a customer's stack is in
the cloud, right.
So if they're in Google, youhave to be very happy with this
announcement.
If you're in AWS, perhapsthere's some uncertainty, which
we already discussed.
But I think you know, before wesee any major direction one way
(22:56):
or the other, first this dealhas to have ink on paper and
closed, and then, two, it'll beinteresting to see where Google
plans to take Wiz Because, asRichard said earlier, the
Mandian thing was reallyinteresting at first, but then
the excitement fizzled out, Ithink fairly quickly, and there
wasn't a lot of announcementfrom Google on what they were
(23:18):
planning to do on a more broadermarket perspective with that
acquisition, whereas Wiz issomething obviously as a product
is very scalable and they offerquite a robust cloud services
already.
So that is going to become avery interesting to watch for
everyone on what Google plans todo and how that could or could
(23:42):
not change the currentrelationship over the next
several years with AWS.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
There's someone who's like a real.
Sorry, Richard, you're going tosay something, Go ahead.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
I was just going to say.
Keep in mind there's noconnection between a company
that makes billions and billionsof profits from selling ads and
anything else.
There's just the businessprocesses are totally different.
The margins are totallydifferent.
There's no better margins thanthey make on selling ads.
So when it comes push to shove,ad revenue is going to come
(24:16):
first, right?
And so Google is anti-privacy,right.
They need to see all your data,so they give away a lot of free
products so they can see yourdata.
And Wiz is a security company.
Those two are going to clash ifthey ever hit the market
together.
And Wiz is a successful,growing security company that
(24:37):
probably invested a lot incustomer support.
So I bet you anything.
A Wiz customer can call a phonenumber and talk to a human.
And have you ever tried to dothat with Google?
Yeah, doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Does it make Google a more secure product, because
they're all in the cloud.
They do a lot of cloud.
Does this make them better, ordo they just see this as an
additional revenue stream?
Speaker 3 (25:04):
So if they could deploy Wiz for their own IT
operations and they've got Idon't know how many tens of
thousands of employees, they'vegot big IT operations, so they
need it Right and they've hadincidents in the past that Wiz
will help them avoid, like whatGoogle Aurora 2010.
(25:31):
Chinese just owned Google,stole all their source code and
compromised all their biggestcustomers.
It was a disaster.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
So this is good news for customers.
There was someone I spoke to ifyou're listening and you can
hear me, I'm sure it was a guestthat I had on the show a long
time ago who is just so antigoogle and they're like, even if
you met.
So everybody knows that Iusually meet guests in google
meets.
First, our shop is a googleshop.
(26:00):
We do everything in Google.
I love Google and it just makesthis person livid and I wish I
could remember who this was.
It's like I can't even picturethe face.
I can't remember the name, butI remember talking to this
person and they were like ifanybody does anything in Google,
you're an idiot, becauseespecially if you're in security
(26:22):
, because if you're claimingthat you're in security, you're
all about security, you're usingGoogle, something's wrong with
your head and they would nottouch it.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You just maybe use a Chrome browser to record this
podcast.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Right, right, because Riverside only use.
Yeah, I can't, I can't.
If I were to not be a Googleshop for security reasons or for
(26:57):
whatever reason, I got to closemy shop and I'm sorry, I'm just
not willing to do that.
But should people like mebreathe a sigh of relief, and
should people like my friend, hewho shall not be named because
I can't remember his name shouldthat person now feel better
about using Google, now thatthey've clearly put cloud
security in the forefront?
Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
There's a huge difference between cloud
security and privacy.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the issue.
I suppose you know what, Nowthat I'm thinking about this,
this could have been Adam Stone.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
That could very well be.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Yeah, that sounds like something that shout out to
Adam Stone.
It could be something that he Imean he's the privacy guru and,
as a matter of fact, I would beinterested in what his take is
on this.
But so you're saying that thisdoes not touch privacy at all,
which, where the concerns peoplemay have around privacy, may
(27:41):
not have been addressed here.
Speaker 3 (27:43):
The data discovery.
So you know, using Wiz'stechnology, their customers
could find out where all theirprivacy related information is
and encrypt it.
Keep it away from Google.
You know they can discover.
You know they can discover.
And then, with the cloudconfiguration, you could
discover if Google has access toyour private information stores
(28:05):
, which would be really usefulto have.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
And then you can shut it off.
So this is just good news forGoogle and good news for the Wiz
team.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Doesn't seem like a whole lot's going to change for
the customers.
Yeah, you know, not immediatelythere's, no, you don't have to
rush to the door and you knowyou don't have to start talking
to Orca, but you could if youwanted to.
That's one thing about you.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Know if something is super, super easy to deploy, to
the point where you can deployit in a proof of concept mode
during the first call with thesalesperson.
Then it's also super easy toflip and go to somebody else.
It's not as sticky.
So, Richard, you are a victimof your own success.
You have prognosticated on thisshow and you were right.
I think your success rate ispretty high.
So I'm going to dub you theprognosticator of
prognosticators here and ask youa very unfair question who is
the next whiz?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
It's a long way off.
I've already talked aboutSayura right, who's going to be
a good company, but I don'tthink they'll be a whiz at all
and I think it'll be a rise outof the AI world that we're in
now.
But I wouldn't be surprised ifit's none of the 96 vendors in
(29:28):
AI security that I'm tracking.
It'll be somebody else andthey'll come up with something
that just does a better job atsomething really normal and
everyday right something reallynormal and everyday right and
it's going to be amazing when ithappens and they'll get $100
million in funding because it'sAI and security and it'll take
(29:49):
us all by storm.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Chad.
What does this mean forTrustMap and your customers?
The AI, or wiz, wiz oh or isthere an AI, a wink, wink, all
right let's stick to the wiztopic here, um, all right, all
right, my job is to get theinformation out of.
Your job is to keep secrets forour customers.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
this is great news because and again it's we don't
know what six months from now isgoing to look like with inside
of Google right, how are theygoing to deploy it?
Make it available.
Will it be available throughGoogle Cloud customers, for
example?
Enable us to with a checkboxcustomer through our interface,
(30:42):
a checkbox they could activatewith.
Today, they have to enter APIkeys and you know authentication
string, but a checkbox is evenfaster, so that would be amazing
.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
I'm really surprised that AI wasn't a bigger part of
this conversation.
I would think that if there wasgoing to be a $32 billion
acquisition, it would have beenan AI company.
Is Wiz equipped with AI?
I mean, is AI a part of this atall?
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Well, think about Google for a moment.
They're probably not going to,you know, subpar their own AI
investments and they are in thebest position to create an AI
engine with all the data thatthey have at their fingertips,
and they've got far moredevelopers than I'm sure Wiz
could even imagine to have.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
What about the other way around?
Google using its AI technologyand bolting that on to Wizz?
What does that do?
Speaker 2 (31:43):
That could be amazing .
It would be amazing, yeah, Imean write a storybook.
I mean the opportunities areprobably numerous on what you
could do in that scenario.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Wow, yeah, reconfigure my AWS
infrastructure to save me 90% ofthe costs.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Wow, what else?
What else could happen?
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Well, anything could happen, I suppose Anything yeah,
it's too early to hypothesizeright now.
Speaker 3 (32:16):
Look at, Google is going to have every AWS
customer's cloud configuration.
Take their AI, take Genie 3 or4 or 5, whatever we're up to and
refactor it into a Google clouddeployment.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Yeah, yeah, the possibilities are endless Like
Gemini Genie and cloud securityare endless.
Like Gemini Genie and cloudsecurity, I mean that would even
have trickle down effects inyour line of business Chad I
mean, even your customers maysee the benefits of that of an
AI-driven whiz bolted on.
(32:54):
So AI bolted on to whiz whizbolted on to TrustMap, that
could do a lot for customers interms of understanding their
security posture, understandingwhere they are and then, of
course, being able to build aroadmap.
And I mean AI plus security.
It's just going to get biggerand bigger and bigger.
(33:14):
But anyway, yeah, go ahead, goahead.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
I was just going to say use cases are endless.
But you know I'm I want to bepragmatic here and cautious
because the deal isn'tcompletely done and gone through
legal yet.
So Right.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
Could this?
Could all just be dust in thewind for all we know?
I'll probably.
I hope not, but we could bedoing another show in a week
talking about why did the winsacquisition not go through?
Did the WINS acquisition not gothrough Exactly?
Speaker 2 (33:40):
Richard, great seeing you again.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Likewise Chad, Really good.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
All right, richard.
Last thoughts.
Speaker 3 (33:48):
Yeah, so super exciting for the industry.
Right to have a massiveacquisition like this.
Every acquisition spawns newstartups and inspires investors.
Right, Because it's been a longtime since an investor like
CyberStarts can talk about, youknow, returning the entire value
of the fund in a single deal,which is what they all attempt
(34:10):
to do.
So here's you know, it happenedin cybersecurity and I'm sure
there are a lot of.
There were a lot ofparticipants in investing in Wiz
, so they're all pretty proud ofthemselves today and kudos to
them.
In the first place, because itwas a risk.
It was always a risk, and soI've got high hopes for the
(34:30):
industry having a really goodyear and I look forward to
seeing all those.
Of course, this is I'm speakingin my own self-interest,
because I'm looking forward toseeing all the startups and
being able to track them andhelp people understand them.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
If this is an indicator of something, this
would be an indicator of whatthat other companies should be
paying attention to.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Yeah, yet again, it highlights something that John
Pescatori told me the finalstraw for the cloud,
demonstrating that securitygenerated the cloud generated
all these security opportunities.
Z-scaler is another one, andall of these vendors are that
the next wave is going to be anAI.
We know that's going to happen.
(35:36):
Palo Alto is already assumingit's happened right, and they're
talking about claiming theirshare of the $34 billion AI
security market, which is silly,because the market doesn't
exist yet.
The players are all lined upready to go spending people's
money, but customers aren'tbuying from any of them yet the
same is true for media andcybersecurity.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Talking about cybersecurity is never going to
be the next big thing in media,but it's always a part of the
conversation and always will beso.
With that, richard, thanks forstopping by, as always, good to
see you, and as things evolve, Imight ping you again, because
you are the man.
I appreciate it.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
All right, thanks, I'm just going to stop it here.
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