The design strategy behind the 32 billion valuation of Wiz
Breaking down the clever design strategies behind the fastest-growing software company in history.
Google announced the acquisition of Wiz last week. Wiz became the fastest company ever to hit the $500M ARR milestone. The numbers tell a jaw-dropping story:
→ 2022: $100M ARR in just 18 months (the fastest software growth in history!)
→ 2023: $350M ARR
→ 2024: Smashing through the $500M ARR barrier
This isn't just growth—it's a revolution in what's possible in the software industry.
Let’s break down the design strategies that fuel Wiz’s insane growth.
What is Wiz?
Wiz is a cloud-native security software company. Its role is significant during our age of digital transformation and cloud computing, especially after COVID-19
Here is a summary of the Wiz Design Playbook:
Follow market forces
Redefine UX from the status quo
Sell before design
Target quick wins from user research
Design for scalability from Day 1
Unique branding strategy for B2B
Clever visual merchandising
A lean team ships faster
Design with storytelling in mind
Tiny product-led growth
Content design with the whole team
Adapt strategies for rapid growth
Follow the market forces
Wiz started out doing a different product, but they realized–the whole world needed a cloud-native protection platform:
Post-COVID, cloud adoption saw historic growth as enterprises moved to AWS, Azure, and GCP at an unprecedented rate.
This created complex multi-cloud environments that were difficult to secure with traditional tools.
Several high-profile security incidents in 2020-2021 exposed critical gaps in cloud security
VC funding in cloud security skyrocketed. Companies like Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, and Lacework were raising billions
Wiz saw the pivot and executed it tirelessly.
If Wiz’s growth seems dizzying, it’s because we’re riding unprecedented tailwinds. - Assaf Rappaport, Co-Founder at Wiz
Traditional security tools rely on installing agents on cloud workloads, which can be resource-intensive and slow down operations. Wiz, however, uses an agentless approach, scanning cloud environments via APIs and infrastructure metadata. This makes it faster and easier to deploy and provides full-stack visibility instantly.
🔨 Main Takeaway: If you follow strong market forces, it is easier to design a rocket ship. Ask yourself, where is the market heading toward?
Thank you– Assaf Rappaport,Yinon Costica, Ami Luttwak, Roy Katz, Andrew Chen, Marty Neumeier, Francis, Don Norman, Jake Knapp, and Bill Buxton.. Your public ideas and insights have contributed significantly to this article.
Reinvent the UX in security software with a graph architecture
Wiz's graph design is pioneering in cloud security because it fundamentally changes how security insights are gathered and analyzed. Here’s why:
Full Visibility Without Agents: Unlike traditional tools, Wiz scans cloud environments via APIs—no agents needed—for instant, full-stack visibility without slowing operations.
Visualization of the Cloud Environment: Wiz maps the entire cloud—identities, workloads, configs, networks—revealing toxic risk combinations and hidden attack paths missed by others
A User Interface that focuses on signal, not noise: It understands relationships between risks, helping teams focus on real threats.
🔨 Main Takeaway: You do not need to be a first mover, you can compete in a crowded market with an innovative product experience.
Sell before they design – with smart questioning
To save themselves from the common pitfalls of building things nobody wants. Wiz sells the product design with Slides first. They asked the customers before spending hundreds of hours building.
This is not a new strategy. LinkedIn, Dropbox, and PayPal also did it. Here is how Wiz did it differently:
Wiz sales team has this tactical question format:
“If we built an agentless cloud security tool that worked in minutes, would you buy it?” This made the conversation collaborative, not just a sales pitch.They developed a powerful question set to avoid false positives from Customer Research:
First of all, I asked the customers what they thought of the idea. I didn’t hear anyone say it was a bad idea. Then we asked - suppose we had a product like this today, where would we install it? What team would we work with? We suddenly realized that everyone who said it was an amazing product didn’t understand anything about it. - Yinon Costica
Also, Wiz used Fear of Missing Out when selling their ideas, telling their customers other companies already want the solutions. This strategy locks in customer commitment fast.
They master the paradox of the extraordinary product teams. They are sure of their mission, but open to pivots.
“You need to be very sure of yourself, but very open to ideas” - Ami Luttwak, Co-founder of Wiz
🔨 Main Takeaway: Turn your product design process into a collaborative exercise with your clients. Make your product desirable with FOMO.
Focus on quick wins from Customer Research
Wiz team advises staying very close to customers and never building in the dark. They also encourage quick wins from customer research to build rapport right away.
We were able to get 100+ findings from Wiz within 2 days of deployment, compared to an individual needing 6 months to deliver that type of information. The time to value and saving at least one headcount is a huge ROI for us - Heath Anderson VP, Information Security & IT LogicGate
The Problem is if I have one hour, what should I fix right now? - Wiz’s Founder Ami Luttwak
Design for scale from Day 1
Wiz's leadership brings substantial startup experience to the table. Their previous venture, Adallom, was purchased by Microsoft in 2015—marking Microsoft's largest security acquisition at that time. Their tenure at Microsoft provided valuable lessons about building scalable products, which led them to eliminate 70 percent of their planned features. According to Luttwak, "You don't build a feature if you can't scale to a hundred million users."
This experience shaped Wiz's design philosophy—they committed to only implementing features that could scale effectively from inception. Companies face a significant risk when customers become attached to products that cannot handle growing demand. Despite customer requests for specific features, if scalability isn't possible, implementation becomes impractical. Luttwak emphasizes this principle, stating: "In everything that you do, you have to think about scale from the beginning."
🔨 Main Takeaway:
Eliminated 70% of planned features to ensure scalability
Only implemented features that could scale from day one
Avoided features that customers wanted but couldn't scale
Wiz’s unique branding strategy for B2B
The security software world of branding is a world of fear and intimidation. Customers are constantly reminded of the danger of the internet and the cloud. Wiz did a master move in its branding strategy.
It chooses to zig when other zag.
"When everybody zigs, zag." Marty Neumeier - Brand Consultant for Apple, Google
Wiz went in the opposite direction. The team chose to do a brand filled with magic and positivity. They threw away all the B2B branding conventions of being prim and proper.
And choose to lead with humor at many touch points. And oh Wiz is creative about it: From a humorous essay about their sock merch, a funny podcast to cover cloud security, an Olympic Game, to ugly Christmas sweaters.
Wiz go extra and have fun with it.
🔨 Main Takeaway: In a world full of noise, be different, be bold, and even be funny.
Clever visual merchandising
It is very common for startups to produce swags. Wiz copied what works and tuned them up a notch further. Their competitor, Cloudflare was the first to bring merch socks to a security conference. But it was Wiz who made these socks a magical experience and even won an award for it. People collect them like a fanatic. And bring their brand everywhere to the community of security experts.
Wiz did something remarkable with their field marketing, too. Their booth design is a talking point at RSA, the most important cybersecurity conference. The booth design constantly earns them free media and makes the whole internet talk about them.
For example, for one year Wiz introduced Wiz Mart at RSA. A booth design that looked like a supermarket with items named after humorous spins on security concepts. They featured many snack items that conference attendees would buy like tea, snacks to household items like bug spray and glass cleaners. The names are hilarious and educational about their products. The scheme was so successful that they created an online store to keep selling these items.
Their Head of Brand launched an ultimate masterclass in designing for field marketing here.
🔨 Main takeaway: Ask yourself - “How could you push further than a logo? What kind of experience do you want the customer to feel? How do people walk away and still talk about you?
Design with the stories in mind
Storytelling is gaining huge traction in the startup world right now. It has applications in fund-raising, sales, and even product design.
The Wiz team designs with the stories of the customers in mind.
Many CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers) complained about the complexity of traditional cloud security tools—too many alerts, false positives, and slow investigations.
Wiz turned these pain points into actionable user stories, focusing on simplifying security visibility and reducing alert fatigue.
Wiz added storytelling elements like a nightmare to communicate technical vulnerabilities
Wiz constantly explores stories between defenders and builders to help them collaborate. Also, the extraordinary thing is even their technical team has a deep proficiency of user stories. This is different from many teams where user experiences and stories a silo-ed expertise.
🔨 Main takeaway: What is the current reality for customers? What stories are they telling themselves? What kind of products can you develop to ensure a happy ending for those real-world stories? How do you communicate your solutions with storytelling devices? (plots, illustrations, words)
Tiny product-led growth
Wiz, the cybersecurity unicorn, has launched several mini-products to support its growth and drive top-of-funnel awareness. These include:
PEACH – A free, open-source security testing framework.
Cloud Threat Landscape - A comprehensive threat intelligence database detailing cloud security incidents, threat actors, tools, and techniques, powered by Wiz Research
Cloud Security Job Board - a job board where you can find cloud security jobs easily
This incremental growth strategy is also advocated by Andrew Chen, Growth Expert and Partner at A16Z
"Experimentation is encouraged—as long as it’s scoped to a city or two at a time, or as a 1% test."
🔨 Main takeaway: What do the clients need? What can I ship in a weekend to drive growth?
Content design as a team
If you read Wiz’s blog, you will find something remarkable. Most of their blogs are written by a group of team members with diverse experience in product, engineering, and design.
This is different from lots of tech companies that use content strategists to write their blogs.
At Wiz, leaders and team members alike are deeply involved in all aspects of the business. This hands-on approach means that employees are not just executing tasks but are also encouraged to share their insights and experiences. Such a culture naturally leads to a wealth of content for the company blog, as employees document and share their firsthand experiences.
This collaborative approach to content design builds authority and converts much better.
Focus on a lean design team
I was shocked to learn how small their design team is, especially their product design team. So, I made a chart to compare Wiz and companies with similar valuations.
There are a lot of talks about the power of small teams right now. A famous advocate for small teams is Jason Fried. He talked about the cons of big teams:
Big teams not only slow down, they expand the surface area of discontent. Talk to any large team, and you can feel the heat of frustration radiating outward. A similar heat radiates down from management — frustrated by the lack of progress. - Jason Fried, Founder at Basecamp
Hire 10x Members: They hired the early members from their network of friends and co-workers. Everybody was high-achievers who acted like founders from Day 1.
Embrace teamwork A team of unique abilities who support each other in being a generalist. A brand designer can do copywriting. A graphic designer can also do motion design.
Empower everybody to design: They supercharge the power of the whole design team by publishing their brand brushes online. This explains how the team can meet the demands of an insane growth trajectory.
99.99% in-house approach. Wiz rarely works with agencies except for special events. Their team ships fast and does not wait for months from agency rosters.
Adopt a design process that adapts to rapid growth
They have to build a plane when flying. Here is their building philosophy:
Ditch the linear process: the approach advocated by design giants like Don Norman, Jake Knapp, and Bill Buxton. They ditched the perfect portfolio approach and focused on ideation and parallel execution.
Develop timeless branding concepts. The Wiz team is bold in creating concepts to illustrate their offering. Some are not obvious initially, like using a magic wand to convey speed. But their clever, consistent use of the wand with the motion design makes the concept stick.
Sophisticated branding, but minimalistic UI. This contrast in style helps them stand out in a crowded market of thousand competitors,
Inject mini-magic into the product design. Even though the UI is minimal, overall. The design and product teams introduce a set of custom avatars with magic themes to bring fun to the user onboarding process.
Bonus Strategies
Embrace radical honesty: Honesty empowers the team, makes them move faster, and helps them away from grave mistakes.
"I don't really understand where this is going and how big a market this really is. I don't understand the problem we’re trying to solve, and if I don't understand, maybe some customers don't understand either. That shook us up. - Raaz Herzberg, CMO & VP Product Strategy
This quote is remarkable because Raaz said it as a junior employee. The Senior Founding Team listened to her and reduced the complexity of their communication.
Yinon, a Wiz Co-founder is famous for saying I do not know 100x per day to request their staff to explain technical concepts better.
Never fear what they do not know: The team possessed fearless confidence in execution. The founders are ex-elite military forces. They are famous for being relentless and do not take no for an answer. Even their investor, Doug Leone of Sequoia Capital was surprised at how persistent the team can be at their goals.
More links
How to reinvent your product growth strategy for the tech downturn
An early interview with their VP of Product on their overnight success - 20 years in the making.
🔥 Hot Remote Design Jobs Picked by Sandra
If you have any insights, feedback, or stories on design and startup, please tweet at me.
Warmest,
Sandra
Awesome.
I learned a lot.
Keep it Up
This was a great read.