YL Ventures, a San Francisco, CA and Tel Aviv, Israel-based venture capital firm specializing in seed-stage investing in Israeli cybersecurity startups, closed its fourth fund, at $120m.
YLV IV, which was oversubscribed, by a combination of current investors and select new ones, brings the total capital under management to $260m.
Like previous funds, the new vehicle aims to build a portfolio of top-tier seed stage cybersecurity companies out of Israel, generally investing in only 2-3 teams each year and targeting a total of 10 companies.
The firm usually leads seed rounds with multimillion checks, while continuing to invest throughout follow-on rounds, which are typically led by top U.S. investors.
The firm is led by Managing Partner Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf, YL Ventures is focused on supporting early stage companies’ U.S. go-to-market initiatives across a number of functions post-investment even by leveraging its network of industry experts, who includes several Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and U.S.-based technology companies, which are prospective customers and acquirers of its portfolio businesses.
Its venture advisory board includes over 50 cybersecurity luminaries such as: Andy Ellis, (CSO, Akamai); Adam Ely (Deputy CISO, Walmart); Brooks Evans (Director of Security, Netflix); Rob Guertsen (Deputy ISO, Nike); Roger Hale (CISO, Informatica); Stacey Halota (VP Information Security & Privacy, Graham Holdings Company); David Hannigan (Head of Security, Spotify); George Kurtz (CEO & Founder, CrowdStrike); Kurt Lieber (CISO, Aetna); Sherry Ryan (CISO, Juniper Networks).
So far, YLV has invested in 16 companies to date, 8 of which have been acquired. The current portfolio includes Karamba Security (embedded security for connected systems); Axonius (cybersecurity asset management); Medigate (cybersecurity for medical devices); Vulcan Cyber (continuous vulnerability remediation); Hunters.ai (AI-powered autonomous threat hunting) and the most recent one, Orca Security (full-stack cloud security visibility), founded by the former CTO of Check Point Software.
Prominent exits include Twistlock (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Hexadite (acquired by Microsoft), BlazeMeter (acquired by CA), and FireLayers (acquired by Proofpoint).
Leitersdorf is supported by Partner John Brennan (U.S.), Partner & Head of Israeli Office Ofer Schreiber, who leads the Tel Aviv office together with VP marketing Sharon Seemann.
FinSMEs
10/07/2019