 | |
| 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] |
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