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Cloud security startup Wiz turned down a Google takeover. Now, it plans to ride the AI boom to an IPO.

16 December 2024 at 01:02
Raaz Herzberg, CMO at Wiz.
Raaz Herzberg, CMO and VP of product strategy at Wiz.

Ella Barak

  • Cloud security startup Wiz has grown rapidly in just four years, raising $1.9 billion along the way.
  • The AI boom has accelerated cloud adoption, says Raaz Herzberg, the CMO of Wiz.
  • Wiz rejected a $23 billion Google acquisition offer in July and said it plans to IPO instead.

In early 2020, Raaz Herzberg was a product manager at Microsoft Azure when she was offered a position at Wiz, a newly created cloud security startup. Since then, Wiz has turned down a $23 billion takeover offer from Google, expanded into Europe, and reached $500 million in annual recurring revenue.

Its next priority is to double that revenue metric β€” and then become a public company.

Wiz was launched by four cofounders who sold their previous business, Adallom, to Microsoft. It bills itself as a cloud security company that helps companies identify risks in their cloud providers.

"It felt like an opportunity I couldn't possibly pass on," Herzberg, now the chief marketing officer and vice president of product strategy at Wiz, told Business Insider in an interview from the company's new London office. "I started as head of product β€” but we started in the worst time. This was March 2020, when COVID-19 started," she said. "It's easy to remember because everything changed immediately."

It turned out that the pandemic was a boon for business. As more companies shifted to remote work, they increasingly relied on cloud services β€” expanding Wiz's client base. Four years since its launch, the scaleup has raised over $1.9 billion in funding from investing heavyweights such as Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, and Index Ventures.

It now sees huge opportunities to use the AI boom to cement its position in the market before it launches its initial public offering.

AI adoption has supercharged Wiz's business

Cloud computing offers crucial infrastructure underpinning AI applications. As more companies rush to adopt AI, security and privacy have taken center stage.

"The adoption of AI is very similar to what happened with the accelerated use of cloud," Herzberg said. Wiz has found that over 80% of its customers are using AI services β€” which "are, in some ways, like cloud services. Companies don't buy their machines or chips, so they're using these technologies on the cloud," she added.

"Part of the reason we're growing so fast is because we have access to the public cloud, which is growing incredibly fast β€” and AI only pushes that growth further," she said.

Because AI services are often used on public clouds β€” a service offered by third parties rather than an internal network β€” cloud security has become a critical issue.

Wiz's rapid growth has also been bolstered by its arsenal of acquisitions. This year, it scooped up security startups Rafft, Gem, and Dazz in a bid to bulk up its engineering talent and product suite.

"When we acquire companies, we don't sell their product. They rebuild it from scratch in the Wiz infrastructure," Herzberg told BI, noting that the company is still on the hunt for more acquisitions. "We believe in this concept of growing inorganically."

European expansion on the road to IPO

Wiz's global headquarters is in New York, with offices in Virginia, Texas, Colorado, and Israel. In August 2024, Wiz established its European headquarters in London. Its plush office is a short walk from Silicon Roundabout β€” London's scaled-down answer to Silicon Valley.

"The European market has been an ideal fit for our technology because it's more constrained by security, and more privacy aware than the US market," Herzberg told BI. "We estimate we will be able to get 35% of our revenue from Europe."

Wiz works with industry heavyweights on the continent, such as Revolut, Tide, and BMW. In 2024, it says it reached $500 million in ARR β€” but is aiming to reach $1 billion before it IPOs.

Operating independently is a big priority for the company. Earlier this year, Wiz turned down a $23 billion offer from Google, instead opting to prime itself for a public debut.

Herzberg declined to comment about the Google deal but added that Wiz had lofty ambitions to establish itself as a market leader in the cloud security domain.

"We are building a company that I believe can be the biggest cybersecurity company in the world," she said. "And I think at this point we are on that path."

She likened companies buying security services to buying insurance packages, pointing to incumbents in the security industry with a similar model.

"So if I look at the wing of, for example, network security firewalls, it has a clear leader β€” people today buy Palo Alto firewalls. They used to buy checkpoint firewalls. Now the leader is Palo Alto," she said. "Another example would be like the endpoint production server protection, that's a big domain on its own, and then it has a clear leader, like CrowdStrike."

As the public cloud domain balloons, Herzberg believed there needs to be a "leader in place to protect that domain" β€” adding that Wiz had a goal of taking that mantle.

Growth ambitions

A slate of elections this year has pushed the company to prepare for more government-mandated cybersecurity measures, especially in the US. In anticipation of Donald Trump's second term, Wiz has started building on a federal sales strategy.

Still, Herzberg said the scaleup is in "no rush" to go public. It's now looking for a chief finance officer, a requirement for companies that want to IPO.

"With the place we are at in terms of revenue and publicity and everything, it just brings us better candidates than we had as little as a year ago," Herzberg said. "I don't think we necessarily need someone with cloud security experience," she added. "We're hoping to announce that hire soon."

Elsewhere, it's gearing up to release two new products as it cements its presence in Europe with an impending hiring spree.

Still, the team hopes to come full circle to its New York roots by the time it's ready to IPO.

"Which one has the gong?" Herzberg laughed. "New York is where we'd list."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Software startup ServiceTitan valued at $8.97 billion as stock pops 42% in IPO debut on Nasdaq

12 December 2024 at 10:41

Shares of ServiceTitan surged 42% during its U.S. market debut on Thursday, boosting the company’s valuation to $8.97 billionβ€”over $3 billion higher than its targeted valuation of $5.16 billion just a week ago. The stock opened at $101 on Nasdaq, […]

The post Software startup ServiceTitan valued at $8.97 billion as stock pops 42% in IPO debut on Nasdaq first appeared on Tech Startups.

Snyk hits $300M ARR but isn’t rushing to go public

6 December 2024 at 14:38

Several factors indicate that Snyk, most recently valued at $7.4 billion, could IPO soon. But the CEO told us why it might not.

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Klaviyo's CEO shares his secrets for a successful IPO

6 December 2024 at 08:21
A woman interviews Andrew Bialecki onstage against a yellow backdrop.
Andrew Bialecki, the founder and CEO of Klaviyo, and the author.

Underscore VC

  • Klaviyo achieved high growth with minimal cash burn after it IPO'ed in 2023.
  • Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki said to follow a similar path, a company needs to align with investors.
  • This article is part of "Road to IPO," a series exploring the public-offering process from prelaunch to postlaunch.

In Silicon Valley, there's often a perceived dichotomy that startups must choose between chasing high growth or achieving profitability. But Klaviyo has shown that it’s possible to do both, the company's chief executive and founder, Andrew Bialecki, said.

"Businesses will pay you to solve real problems. You should be able to fund this stuff if you're good at building software," Bialecki said at the Underscore VC Core Summit, where Business Insider interviewed him in October.

Klaviyo uses artificial intelligence to help merchants sell more by stepping up their email and text marketing. In September 2023, the Boston-based company went public on the New York Stock Exchange, maneuvering through a logjam of initial public offerings for software startups.

Part of the investor buzz around Klaviyo's IPO was that it was an ideal model to go public. It had been able to scale and grow with very little cash burn, a rare feat even in software. One of Klaviyo's biggest flexes in its investor prospectus was that of the roughly $450 million in venture capital it had raised, it spent only $15 million.

Klaviyo kicked off its roadshow in September.
Part of the investor buzz around Klaviyo's IPO was that it was an ideal model to go public.

Rafael Henrique/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

Bialecki said in the past 10 years, many entrepreneurs have fallen into a cycle that looked something like this: raise cash, build something, and then get acquired by a bigger company. Companies that focused instead on steady, organic growth were often labeled as lifestyle businesses, seen as lacking the ambition or potential for the exponential returns that venture capitalists crave. That didn't sit well with Bialecki.

"You look at Microsoft, Apple, IBM, and Intel, all these tech companies that came up in the 20th century. They all went public, and they were profitable β€” and they were growing really fast. Like, why is it that either-or?" Bialecki said.

Bialecki borderline-bootstrapped the company he started in 2012. It grew to a $1 million revenue run rate before hiring any employees or raising a cent of venture capital.

Even after it started selling equity, with a $1.5 million seed round of funding in 2015, Bialecki and his cofounder, Ed Hallen, raised as little cash as they needed and spent it scrupulously. They focused on getting the product right.

This self-reliant streak allowed the founders to secure capital on their terms without diluting themselves six ways to Sunday. Before the IPO, Bialecki owned a 38.1% equity stake, while Hallen had a 13.9% stake, putting them in the top echelon of founders of software and cloud startups with the largest pre-IPO ownership stakes.

Bialecki advises founders who want to follow a similar path to be disciplined and loud about it. For a company to pursue high growth and profitability, it needs to align withΒ investorsΒ who share the founder's vision and values rather than pressure them into taking additional venture capital just to inflate valuations for their own gain.

"Be clear about what you stand for as a company, and you will get the investors that believe in that," Bialecki said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

What It Means for Investors When Tech Companies Leave the London Stock Exchange

5 December 2024 at 05:07

Argent Biopharma’s move to delist from the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has brought attention to a pattern that has been more widespread in recent years. Companies looking for access to finance and the prestige of being publicly listed have traditionally […]

The post What It Means for Investors When Tech Companies Leave the London Stock Exchange first appeared on Tech Startups.

Software startup ServiceTitan targets $5.16 billion valuation in US IPO

3 December 2024 at 07:08

Late last month, we reported on ServiceTitan after the software startup filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S. Just two weeks later, ServiceTitan is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $5.16 billion in its IPO. […]

The post Software startup ServiceTitan targets $5.16 billion valuation in US IPO first appeared on Tech Startups.

ServiceTitan could be the first of many β€˜dirty’ term-sheet IPOs, VCs believe

26 November 2024 at 13:31

Rather than opening an IPO window, ServiceTitan's IPO could be the first \of something else entirely, VCs warn.

Β© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Indian electric scooter startup OLA Electric to lay off 500 employees, just 3 months after IPO

21 November 2024 at 07:54

In August, OLA Electric made a public debut on the Indian stock market, with shares surging 20% on the first day and valuing the SoftBank-backed electric vehicle (EV) startup at $4.8 billion. However, just three months later, the 7-year-old company […]

The post Indian electric scooter startup OLA Electric to lay off 500 employees, just 3 months after IPO first appeared on Tech Startups.

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