This is meta, but I really hate the way this post is written. It's full of the "startup cool" aesthetic, which I'm really averse to.
The main elements of the aesthetic that I can pinpoint are things like everything being a superlative ("security leaders" instead of just "people who work in security", "legendary investors" instead of just "experienced/well-known investors"), the bullet format, heavy use of buzzwords when more everyday words would do, etc.
It comes off as trying to elicit a fake "let's all get hyped up and build unicorn moonshots wooo" feeling.
IMO it’s mostly luck. Right place, right time, right connections. Look at the founders in the US, many of them are from already privileged backgrounds. True rags to riches stories like that of Jack Ma are rare.
It's got all the hallmarks of a piece written by AI. Lots of purple prose, adjectives where they add no information, bullet lists, etc. All this sits alongside banal content like "[Wiz] Use colors and designs to signal reliability in a high-stakes industry."
It may have been lightly edited & enriched by a human, but most of this article was written by an AI.
Startup valuation is based mostly on sentiment in the current age so if you're not breathlessly hyping up your shitty product you're almost literally leaving money on the table.
for AI companies, sure. for non-AI, the microscope is brought out.
for this specific company, there is specific value to Google, that is included in the valuation. this isn't unfair at all; lots of startups are acquired for strategic value, not intrinsic value.
I've always understood the bullet format to simply be good for readability, e.g. as presented here https://www.nngroup.com/articles/presenting-bulleted-lists/ (though I remember learning that idea from the same site about a decade earlier)
The main elements of the aesthetic that I can pinpoint are things like everything being a superlative ("security leaders" instead of just "people who work in security", "legendary investors" instead of just "experienced/well-known investors"), the bullet format, heavy use of buzzwords when more everyday words would do, etc.
It comes off as trying to elicit a fake "let's all get hyped up and build unicorn moonshots wooo" feeling.