YL Ventures is an

American-Israeli , native_name_lang = , image = , caption = , population = 110,000–150,000 , popplace = New York metropolitan area, Los Angeles metropolitan area, Miami metropolitan area, and other large metropolitan are ...

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

firm that specializes in seed stage

cybersecurity Computer security, cybersecurity (cyber security), or information technology security (IT security) is the protection of computer systems and networks from attack by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, the ...

investments Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing is ...

Investment Firm

YL Ventures is a seed-stage venture capital firm led by managing partner Yoav Leitersdorf, who founded the firm with John Quigley in 2007, along with Israel and U.S. partners Ofer Schreiber and

John Brennan John Brennan may refer to: Public officials * Jack Brennan (born 1937), U.S. Marine officer and aide of Richard Nixon * John Brennan (CIA officer) (born 1955), former CIA Director * John P. Brennan (1864–1943), Democratic politician in the U. ...

. The firm has headquarters in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

, and features an advisory board of over 100 venture advisors. A main focus of YL Ventures is to introduce Israeli cybersecurity start-ups to the American market and develop a U.S.

customer base The customer base is a group of customers who repeatedly purchase the goods or services of a business. These customers are a main source of revenue for a company. The customer base may be considered a business's target market, where customer beha ...

Venture Advisory Board

In 2018, YL Ventures established its Venture Advisory Board. In 2021, the Venture Advisory Board includes over 100 global CISOs and cybersecurity executives from Fortune 100 companies such as

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

Intuit Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application Tu ...

Zscaler Zscaler () is a cloud security company, with headquarters in San Jose, California. The company offers cloud migration services. History Zscaler was founded in 2007 by Jay Chaudhry and K. Kailash. In August 2012, Zscaler secured $38 million in f ...

Kraft Heinz The Kraft Heinz Company (KHC), commonly known as Kraft Heinz, is an American multinational food company formed by the merger of Kraft Foods and Heinz co-headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh. Kraft Heinz is the third-largest food and beverage ...

Netflix Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...

Nike Nike often refers to: * Nike (mythology), a Greek goddess who personifies victory * Nike, Inc., a major American producer of athletic shoes, apparel, and sports equipment Nike may also refer to: People * Nike (name), a surname and feminine give ...

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational corporation, multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of ...

Box A box (plural: boxes) is a container used for the storage or transportation of its contents. Most boxes have flat, parallel, rectangular sides. Boxes can be very small (like a matchbox) or very large (like a shipping box for furniture), and can ...

Hewlett Packard Enterprise The Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (HPE) is an American multinational information technology company based in Spring, Texas, United States. HPE was founded on November 1, 2015, in Palo Alto, California, as part of the splitting of the H ...

Markel Corporation Markel Corporation is a holding company for insurance, reinsurance, and investment operations around the world. Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia, and founded in 1930, Markel reports its ongoing underwriting operations in three segments, and ...

, Optiv, GSK, HashiCorp, Atlassian,

Ross Stores Ross Stores, Inc., operating under the brand name Ross Dress for Less, is an American chain of discount department stores headquartered in Dublin, California. It is the largest off-price retailer in the U.S.; as of 2018, Ross operates 1,483 stor ...

Burberry Burberry is a British luxury fashion house established in 1856 by Thomas Burberry headquartered in London, England. It currently designs and distributes ready to wear, including trench coats (for which it is most famous), leather accessories, ...

Campbell Soup Company Campbell Soup Company, trade name, doing business as Campbell's, is an American processed food and snack company. The company is most closely associated with its flagship canned soup products; however, through mergers and acquisitions, it has gro ...

, CyAlliance, Juniper Networks,

GrubHub Grubhub Inc. is an American online and mobile prepared food ordering and delivery platform. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois. Founded in 2004, it is a subsidiary of the Dutch company Just Eat Takeaway since 2021. Grubhub has been criti ...

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

, Nielsen and others. The Venture Advisors assist YL Ventures in vetting investments and provide ideation support to entrepreneurs during the due diligence process before the investment occurs. They also help the firm’s portfolio founders define their product development, product-market fit and go-to-market strategies.

CISO-in-Residence

In 2019, YL Ventures inaugurated the full-time

CISO A chief information security officer (CISO) is a senior-level executive within an organization responsible for establishing and maintaining the enterprise vision, strategy, and program to ensure information assets and technologies are adequately pr ...

-in-Residence role. The CISO-in-Residence works directly with entrepreneurs pre- and post-investment, supporting their ideation processes, highlighting greenfield opportunities, validating their propositions, refining go-to-market strategies, and optimizing their early-stage success in closing paying customers. Roger Hale served as YL Ventures’ first CISO-in-Residence. In 2020, Sounil Yu took the role and in 2021, Ryan Gurney replaced him.

Finances

As of 2020, YL Ventures manages over $300 million across 4 funds, including a $135 million fund raised in 2019 and a $75 million fund raised in 2017.

Exits

References

{{reflist 2007 establishments in California Israeli investors Venture capital firms of Israel 2007 establishments in Israel