<p>Shardul Shah, Partner at Index Ventures, was one of the first checks into Wiz — the Israeli cybersecurity company Google acquired for $32 billion. It wasn&#39;t luck. It was a decade-long relationship with the founders, a willingness to wire money on conviction alone, and a philosophy that treats risk calculus as a fool&#39;s errand.In this conversation, Eric sits down with Shardul to unpack how the Wiz deal actually came together, what Google really bought for $32 billion, and why mid-sized acquisitions almost always fail. They get into how Index thinks about doubling down across funds, why Shardul refuses to invest in a founder he&#39;s only met over Zoom, and what he saw in the Wiz founders a decade before anyone else was paying attention.They also talk about what&#39;s next — the categories Shardul is hunting, the founders he&#39;s already betting on, and why he thinks everything that happened with Wiz should stretch every entrepreneur&#39;s sense of what&#39;s possible.Eric Newcomer covers the inner workings of startups and venture capital. Subscribe for interviews with the people building and funding the next generation of tech. </p>