Interesting Data Gigs # 24: Jump On The Bandwagon called Wiz Security

The fastest SaaS company to reach Centaur status: from $0 to $100 Million in Annual Recurring Revenue in just 18 months

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Hello Data geek.

Today, I wanted to share with this amazing company called Wiz Security, which in 2022 was officially the fastest SaaS company to reach Centaur status.

And you should be wondering yourself: WTF is the Centaur status?

Let me explain: many people love the term Unicorn (I don’t love it) in order to refer a company that reaches $1 Billion USD in valuation.

But to be honest with you: I don’t like the term because a $1 Billion valuation means nothing, at least from my perspective. And many entrepreneurs and investors have pursued this for years as the only thing that mattered.

For me: a very cool thing will be always related to profitability. That’s it.

But in the case of the Centaur, I have to make an exception.

At Bessemer, we believe a new milestone (and mythical creature) is the true mark of an exceptional SaaS startup.

The Centaur is a business that reaches $100 million of annual recurring revenue (ARR)—a rare breed of cloud business, part of an elite subset of the growing unicorn herd. At $100 million ARR, Centaur businesses have product-market fit, scalable go-to-market strategy, and a growing customer base.

This is an impressive number: reaching $100 Million in ARR is not easy task for any company.

And if you reached this number in just 18 months, is even more impressive.

Wiz Security did it.

The last record was from Deel, who reached this golden number in just 20 months, which is impressive as well:

BTW: just a quick note: in January 2023, Deel announced that they reached $295 Million in ARR, according to a recent conversation between Alex Bouaziz (co-founder and CEO of Deel) and Harry Stebbings of The Twenty Minute VC.

You should listen/watch this interview:

But let’s continue with Wiz. I don’t want to do this post very long.

I want to go straight to the point: Just apply for a role inside the company.

Seriously: any role; because it’s not about the role itself or the responsibilities; it’s more about the chance to build something remarkable from the ground up with the team at Wiz Security.

But, what Wiz is building that is making so much money? Let’s see

To put it in simple terms: Wiz has created an agentless way to review, monitor and fix Cloud resources. It’s actually more sophisticated than that, but I like the simplicity of these words.

Agentless means that Wiz doesn’t install any software or anything in the resources, but it uses the same APIs from the services in all major Cloud providers (another big selling point for them):

Wiz deployment leverages a single cloud role to scan your entire cloud environment: PaaS, Virtual Machines, Containers, Serverless functions, Buckets, Data volumes and Databases.

This translate that they scan a lot of resources at speed of light literally. 230 Billion files are scanned daily to be exact.

Like I said: they are present in every major cloud provider: Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud and VMware vSphere as well.

This is why the industry put Wiz Security inside a segment called Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), which goes beyond the Cloud security posture management (CSPM).

According to this article from Microsoft: Cloud security posture management (CSPM) is the process of monitoring cloud-based systems and infrastructures for risks and misconfigurations.

And in the case of Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), Josh Dreyfuss, a former member of Wiz (now at AmorCode, Inc) wrote this:

CNAPP stands for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform. The term was coined by Gartner, who recognized the expanding needs that go into securing applications in the cloud. Broadly speaking, CNAPP solutions aim to address workload and configuration security by scanning them in development and protecting them at runtime.

Earlier, we said that CNAPP is a step forward in cloud security. The reason for that is that CNAPP serves as a convergence of multiple technologies, combining the capabilities of existing cloud security solutions, primarily CSPM and CWPP, and also including elements of Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), API discovery and protection, serverless security, and more.

This means that Wiz’s offerings are going beyond CSPM.

Its product provides a comprehensive analysis engine that integrates:

  • Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

  • Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM)

  • Cloud Workload Protection (CWPP) + vulnerability management

  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) scanning

  • Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM)

  • Data security posture management (DSPM)

But even more impressive is this incredible feature called the Wiz Security Graph.

This is very unique to Wiz and basically means that Wiz connects the dots among all your cloud resources, and make deeper analsysis of them or its combination, and immediately visualizes the different or possible pathways to a data breach:

I’ve never seen something like this before, and from my perspective this is one of the key reasons why companies are buying its services in masses.

There are more compelling reasons why you should join Wiz

  • The founders of the company have been together for a long time when they created a company called Adallom, a cloud security broker which later was acquired by Microsoft for $320 Million in 2015. This means that they have “walked the talk” and this is always welcome.

  • They are growing very fast, and have a very good amount of capital: $600 Million according to Crunchbase’s data

  • They need people to scale this venture to new roofs

  • They are seriously building an unique suite of products here at speed of light. This team moves very fast, and that’s alwsys welcome.

My favorite open role at Wiz? Product Analyst Lead

We are looking for someone to lead a team of Product Analysts, grow with us, and become one of our greatest Wizards. The Product Analyst team is a vital part of Wiz's new Data Security Posture Management (DSPM).

In this role, you'll help implement, research, and build various data classification capabilities, create playbooks, and write unique customer-facing content, from descriptions to remediations.

This is a key role for the company because this person will help to grow this new segment called Data Security Posture Management (DSPM).

I won’t give any idea here: again JUST APPLY NOW.

That’s all from my side, my friend.

Time to join to this rocketship.

Looking for a role today? Join our Interesting Data Gigs Talent Collective

It’s the perfect time to be part of The Interesting Data Gigs Talent Network, where you will find excellent Software Engineering roles from companies like Binance, Cameo, Luminary, Rocket Money (formerly known as Truebill), and more incredible organizations.

Let’s change the game together: Instead of people applying to companies, companies will pitch to you, so don’t wait any other moment and join today.

And if your company is looking for a very selected pool of candidates focused on Data Engineering, you can join as well to the Talent Collective.

Interesting resources of the week

Zach Wilson is launching a new venture called EcZachly Inc 

The Mega Layoffs List from Reno Perry

Reno Perry, the founder of Wiseful just launched a new service for companies actively hiring. They did something remarkable: they got all the big layoffs lists out there and combine them all in a single mega list.

As a company you can access to that list here https://www.wiseful.co/layoffs

Final words

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Marcos out.

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