Let's talk about M&A and Founders conviction ?? . This is Assaf Rappaport, and he is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wiz. He recently declined to accept an acquisition offer from Google for his company for $23 billion. It's hard to imagine how startup founders could reject such an offer, but there are 2 key components to why the Wiz board and management team would make such decision. The Japanese ???? SoftBank Investment Advisers invested a significant amount ?? to support the company's strategy to expand to the Asian market. In the last months, Wiz has recruited employees across Asia in Japan, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, and even built a new data center in Sydney, Australia ???? . The company strategy is based on forecasts for an increase in cloud ? spending in Asia, which is about to reach $153.6 billion by 2026, according to IDC. This is the first signal, that probably the company strategy to expand to Asia, with a strategic investor from the region, did not align with the strategy of its potential acquirer Google that came later, as they would need to follow the Google's cloud strategy post acquisition, and probably that was negotiated in the deal (I'm speculating). In another post (link in the comments), I gave a framework to startups on when to take a strategic investment, and one of the key rules was to do it only where there is a fit to the startup strategy and not that the startup need to compromise its strategy and follow the corporate strategy. The other element, is the team's conviction that it can manage a company at scale. After the acquisition at Adallom by Microsoft, Assaf managed the R&D team for MTC Israel - Microsoft Innovation & Technology Center, Microsoft along with his co-founders Yinon C., Roy R. and Ami Luttwak. They have proven to themselves and to their customer and investors, that they are capable and have been successful into managing a corporate business. Board members of Wiz like Emily Heath are also there to support the growth of the company and shaping its governance. So, combining the fact that the market opportunity to expand to the Asian market was larger than the INSANE M&A offer by Google, and the conviction that investors and the team have in their ability to build a leading cyber security giant with a global footprint that could work with all cloud providers from AWS to GCP, it all makes sense now. #MergersAndAcquisitions #cyber #cloudcomputing #exit #startups #investments #venturecapital #deals #technology #innovation