 | |
| Industry | Venture Capital Firm |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founders | Yoav Leitersdorf John Quigley |
| Headquarters | San Francisco and Tel Aviv |
| Website | www |
YL Ventures is an American-Israeli venture capital firm that specializes in seed stage cybersecurity investments. [1]
YL Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm. The company’s managing partner Yoav Leitersdorf [2] who founded the firm with John Quigley in 2007, along with Israel and U.S. partners Ofer Schreiber and John Brennan. [1] [3] Current partners also include Sharon Seeman and Michael Cortez. [4] The firm has headquarters in San Francisco and Tel Aviv. [5] [6] A main focus of YL Ventures is to introduce Israeli cybersecurity start-ups to the American market and develop a U.S. customer base. [1] [7]
In 2018, YL Ventures established its Venture Advisory Board. As of 2021, the Venture Advisory Board had included northward of 100 global CISOs and cybersecurity executives from Fortune 100 companies, that assist YL Ventures in vetting investments and provide ideation support before the investment occurs. [6]
In 2019, YL Ventures inaugurated a CISO-in-Residence role. [8] Roger Hale served as YL Ventures’ first CISO-in-Residence. [9] In 2020, Sounil Yu took the role [10] and in 2021, Ryan Gurney replaced him. [11] The CISO-in-Residence for 2022 is Frank Kim. [12] YL Ventures was ranked 8th out of over 250 venture capital firms in PitchBook’s 2022 Global Manager Performance Score League Tables. [13]
As of 2020, YL Ventures manages over $300 million across 4 funds, [14] including a $135 million fund raised in 2019 [15] and a $75 million fund raised in 2017. [16] By 2023 this had increased to $800 million across 5 funds. [17]
| Company | Field | Description | Exit Year | Exit Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Enso Security | Application Security Posture Management | 2023 | Acquired by Snyk [18] | |
| Spera | Identity Security Posture Management | Identity threat prevention, detection, and response | 2023 | Acquired by Okta for $100M [19] |
| Medigate | Healthcare IoT Security | Dedicated Healthcare IoT Security Platform | 2021 | Acquired by Claroty for $400M [20] |
| Build Security | Authorization Policy Management | Identity & access management platform | 2021 | Acquired by Elastic for an undisclosed amount [21] |
| Axonius | Unified Visibility & Control Of Endpoint Devices | Cybersecurity asset management platform | 2021 | Acquired by ICONIQ Growth, Alkeon Capital, DTCP, and Harmony Partners for $270M [15] |
| Twistlock | Virtual Container Security | Enterprise platform for cloud native workloads | 2019 | Acquired by Palo Alto Networks for $410M [22] |
| Upstream Commerce | Online Retail Intelligence | Retail pricing optimization and intelligence | 2018 | Acquired by Walmart (Flipkart) for an undisclosed amount [23] |
| Hexadite | Cybersecurity Orchestration and Automation | Automated incident response solution | 2017 | Acquired by Microsoft for $100M [24] |
| Seculert | Cloud-based Malware Protection | Attack detection and analytics platform | 2017 | Acquired by Radware for an undisclosed amount [25] |
| Firelayers | Cloud Access Security Broker | IT protection for cloud applications | 2016 | Acquired by Proofpoint for $55M [26] |
| BlazeMeter | Performance Testing | JMeter and performance testing platform for DevOps | 2016 | Acquired by CA Technologies for $90M [27] |
| Clicktale | Web Analytics | Customers experience analytics platform | 2013 | Acquired by Amadeus Capital |
| AcceloWeb | Web Acceleration | Pioneer and leader in browsing experience optimization | 2011 | Acquired by Limelight Networks for an undisclosed amount [28] |
Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/AI, and security. Index Venture partners appear frequently on Forbes’ Midas List of the top tech investors in Europe and Israel.
CyberArk Software Ltd. is an Israeli publicly traded information security company offering identity management. The company's technology is utilized primarily in the financial services, energy, retail, healthcare and government markets. CyberArk is headquartered in Petach-Tikva. The company also has offices throughout the Americas, EMEA, Asia Pacific and Japan.
Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP) is an international venture capital firm founded in 1993. The fund specializes in investments in startup companies, focusing on digital media, enterprise software, semiconductors, data storage and cyber security, having raised close to $1.4 billion USD across nine funds. JVP is headquartered in Margalit Startup City Jerusalem with offices in Be'er Sheva, New York City and Paris.
Genesis Partners is an Israeli venture capital firm, founded in 1996 by Eddy Shalev and Eyal Kishon.
Gili Raanan is an Israeli venture capitalist and one of the inventors of CAPTCHA, the WAF and many other inventions in the fields of Cybersecurity. Raanan started Sanctum in 1997, and rolled out the first Web application firewall AppShield and the first Web application penetration testing software AppScan. He later started NLayers which was acquired by EMC Corporation where he worked on the science of Application discovery and understanding. He was an investor and a General Partner at Sequoia Capital, the Founder of Cyberstarts, and is the first investor and board member at Wiz (company), Adallom, Armis Security, Onavo, Moovit, and Innovid (NYSE:CTV).
Pitango VC, established in 1993, is Israel's largest venture capital fund with over $2.8 billion under management. Pitango VC invests through three dedicated funds, Pitango First, Pitango HealthTech, and Pitango Growth. Pitango invests in startups around the world, in domains such as Vertical SaaS, Digital Health, Deep Tech, FinTech & InsureTech, Devops, Generative AI, Web3, and FoodTech.
Sierra Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in San Mateo, California. It targets startups in sectors including enterprise tech, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and healthcare. Sierra Ventures’ CXO Advisory Board, which is composed of more than seventy-five Fortune 1000 CIOs, CTOs, CMOs, and CISOs, has advised portfolio companies since 2006.
Solebit is a privately held cybersecurity company, with main offices located in the United States and Israel.
Fusion VC is a venture capital firm and an accelerator for Israeli startups in the United States. It was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in the United States with offices in Israel.
Checkmarx is an enterprise application security company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States.
Equitybee is an online platform for helping startup employees exercise their stock options and receive pre-IPO shares from privately held companies. It provides education about acquiring earned stock options and funding for acquiring the shares to startup employees. It was co-founded in 2017 by Oren Barzilai, Oded Golan, and Mody Radashkovich, and is based in Palo Alto, California, United States.
Wiz, Inc. is a cloud security startup headquartered in New York City. The company was founded in January 2020 by Assaf Rappaport, Yinon Costica, Roy Reznik, and Ami Luttwak, all of whom previously founded Adallom. Rappaport is CEO, Costica is VP of Product, Reznik is VP of Engineering, and Luttwak is CTO. The company's platform analyzes computing infrastructure hosted in Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Kubernetes for combinations of risk factors that could allow malicious actors to gain control of cloud resources and/or exfiltrate valuable data.
Flint Capital is an American-Israeli venture capital firm focused on startups in health technology, cybersecurity, consumer technology, and SaaS. Founded in 2013, the firm is headquartered in Boston, United States. Flint Capital's managing partners are Dmitry Smirnov, Sergey Gribov, and Andrew Gershfeld.
AI21 Labs is an Israeli company specializing in Natural Language Processing (NLP), which develops AI systems that can understand and generate natural language.
Talon Cyber Security is an Israel-based provider of cybersecurity technologies with headquarters in Tel Aviv. It develops a secure browser engineered to provide enterprise-grade security across all devices, irrespective of location, device type, or operating system.
Hailo Technologies is an Israeli AI technology company specializing in designing and manufacturing AI processors and AI accelerator used in autonomous vehicles, security cameras, autonomous mobile robots, etc.
Greenfield Partners is a growth equity firm based in New York and Tel Aviv that invests in early growth stage technology and tech-enabled companies.
Centrical is a New York-based company specializing in frontline employee engagement and performance experience services. Centrical is headquartered in New York City, NY, with offices in Israel and the United Kingdom. It serves multinational corporations and mid-sized enterprises in technology, financial services, healthcare, travel and hospitality, and retail.
PAPAYA Global is a fintech SaaS company that specializes in global workforce payroll and payments. The company was founded in 2016 by Eynat Guez, Ruben Drong, and Ofer Herman. Eynat Guez is the CEO and has been since the company was established. The company gained unicorn status in 2021. In March 2022, Papaya Global acquired Azimo.
The Vets is an American veterinary services company that specializes in providing at-home veterinary care, primarily for cats and dogs. Founded in Miami in 2020 by Shmuel Chafets and Dori Fussmann, the company works in 19 locations within the USA.