Follow the Heat
The company's pressure point moves stage by stage; staff it as it moves.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 85%
A mental model for where a startup's most acute bottleneck (its 'heat') sits as it matures, and a rule for deploying your best people there. Use it when deciding where to focus energy and talent as the company crosses stages.
Origin
Herzberg described feeling the 'heat' physically move through Wiz: from the product kitchen (finding something people want), to engineering (build it), to sales (go sell it), to marketing (nobody's heard of us, give me pipeline). When her CEO moved her from product to CMO, she realized the pattern is that leadership puts the best people where the company needs the most help.
Core principles
- 01Every stage has one dominant bottleneck where the heat concentrates.
- 02The heat migrates predictably: product-market fit, then build, then sales, then brand/pipeline.
- 03Assign your strongest operators to wherever the current heat is, regardless of their prior title.
How to run it
- 1
Locate the current heat
Identify the stage-defining bottleneck: is the blocker finding demand, building the product, closing deals, or generating awareness/pipeline?
- 2
Recognize the handoff
As one bottleneck resolves (e.g., PMF found, sales team selling), expect the heat to move to the next function and watch for the new binding constraint.
Pro tip When salespeople start saying 'give me more pipeline, nobody's heard of us,' the heat has moved to marketing.
- 3
Move your best people to the heat
Reassign top talent to the hottest function even across disciplines, as Wiz moved a proven product leader into the CMO seat.
Watch out Don't leave your strongest people optimizing an already-solved area while the real constraint goes understaffed.
In the wild
Two and a half years in, Wiz had PMF and a functioning sales team, but prospects kept saying 'I wish we'd heard of Wiz, we just signed with a competitor.' The heat had moved to marketing, so the CEO moved Herzberg, a top product leader, into the CMO role.
→ Best operator placed on the awareness/brand bottleneck; Wiz built a standout brand in cloud security.
Common mistakes
Staffing by title, not by heat
Keeping people locked to their function while the binding constraint sits elsewhere. The pattern is to put the best people where the most help is needed.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and execs allocating scarce top talent across a fast-scaling startup.
Not ideal for
Stable, mature orgs where every function is adequately resourced and constraints aren't shifting.
From the transcript
“in the early early days when we just started whiz I remember I felt like the heat was in the product kitchen”
“the heat starts moving to Marketing in my opinion where it's like okay we have a product Market fit sales people can sell it but…”
From the episode
Building Wiz: the fastest-growing startup in history
Raaz Herzberg (CMO and VP Product Strategy)