Shardul Shah on Wiz Acquisition Closing and Index Ventures' Journey

Summary

Shah describes meeting Wiz co-founder Assaf Rappaport over a decade ago — joining a meeting where Assaf was 30 minutes late — and signing a term sheet 72 hours later. He followed the founding team through their first company, Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft, then backed Wiz at the seed stage alongside Gilly Renan and Doug Leone. Index led the Series A two weeks after Wiz launched with just two customers (one introduced by Index), then led the Series B two months later. Shah notes that early ARR wasn't the signal — it was qualitative: a voice message from a confectionary company CISO that 'sounded like a country song' created belief in the product. Index ultimately built the largest ownership position in Wiz of any outside investor. Shah frames the investment discipline as 'conviction is the currency of progress,' crediting Aiden Shafran of Flatiron for the phrase. On the combined Google/Wiz entity: Shah says Wiz sits at the center of three tailwinds — cloud spend, security spend, and AI spend — and that Google's resources extend rather than constrain Wiz's mission.