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Why We’re Scaling Our Venture Advisory Board With 24 Additional Leading Cybersecurity Executives
Talks about Startup, Venture Capital and Cyber
YL
Yoav Leitersdorf
Managing Partner at YL Ventures
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Yoav Leitersdorf is the Managing Partner at YL Ventures, a role that has earned him a spot in the Top 10 VCs worldwide by PitchBook. With a focus on cybersecurity, he has successfully invested in numerous seed-stage startups such as Miggo Security, Gutsy, and Cycode, showcasing his expertise in entrepreneurship and venture capital.
Work Experience
Managing Partner
2007 - Current
YL Ventures (www.YLVentures.com) funds and supports visionary cybersecurity entrepreneurs from seed to scale to help them evolve transformative ideas into market-leading companies. The firm accelerates company growth with tailored support through its powerful network of Chief Information Security Officers, global industry leaders, and a dedicated team of multidisciplinary experts. Based in Silicon Valley, New York and Tel Aviv, YL Ventures manages five funds with $800M in total AUM. The firm has a track record of seeding cybersecurity unicorns such as Axonius and Orca Security, and its portfolio companies have been successfully acquired by high-profile, global industry leaders including Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Okta and Proofpoint. In 2022, YL Ventures ranked 8th out of over 250 venture capital firms in PitchBook’s prestigious Global Manager Performance Score League Tables, and was the only cybersecurity-focused VC to secure a top 10 spot on the list.
YL Ventures funds and supports seed-stage entrepreneurs in the cybersecurity sector.
Seed Investor
2022
Minimus (www.minimus.io) builds images from scratch, directly from upstream project sources, with only the minimal software needed to run the app, dramatically reducing their attack surface. Minimus images are drop-in replacements for the apps organizations are already using and are deployed with single line configuration file changes, providing nearly instant time to value. Minimus eliminates time consuming and low value remediation work for devs, is easy for ops to deploy and manage using their existing tools, and provides security with remarkably clear risk reduction. Minimus raised a $51M seed round from YL Ventures and Mayfield.
Seed Investor
2023
MIND (mind.io) is on a mission to help organizations thrive in a digital world by protecting their most sensitive information. MIND is the first-ever data security platform that puts data loss prevention (DLP) and insider risk management (IRM) programs on autopilot to automatically protect sensitive information, mitigate risk and preserve brand reputation. We enable businesses to mind what really matters—their most sensitive data. Founded and led by cybersecurity leaders and industry veterans, MIND is based out of Seattle, WA.
Seed Investor
2023
Miggo (miggo.io) is the first Application Detection and Response (ADR) platform, on a mission to stop application breaches. 80% of all cyber incidents take place in the application layer, however too many are being slipped by existing tools due to a blind spot to the actual application behavior. By using in-application runtime context, Miggo maps how applications actually operate in runtime, identifies high-risk application flows, pinpoints the weak spots, and provides real-time detection and response capabilities in the application layer.
Seed Investor
2022
Aim Security (www.aim.security) is the industry guide to secure GenAI adoption, equipping security leaders with the ability to drive business productivity while providing the right guardrails and ensuring proactive protection for all use cases across the entire organization, whether enterprise use or production use. Leading CISOs and security practitioners on their secure GenAI journey, Aim empowers enterprises to unlock the full potential of GenAI technology without compromising security.
Seed Investor
2021
Grip Security (www.grip.security), the pioneer in SaaS security, brings the industry’s most comprehensive visibility across an enterprise’s entire SaaS portfolio – known or unknown for SaaS applications, users, and their interactions – with extreme accuracy and deployment in minutes. Armed with deep visibility, Grip’s enforceable endpoint-centric approach secures all SaaS application access regardless of device or location as well as maps data flows to apply security policies – including data loss prevention. Grip works as a standalone platform or complements any CASB deployment with nominal resourcing and no performance degradation so enterprises can get a grip on their SaaS security.
Seed Investor
2019
Cycode (www.cycode.com), the industry’s first source code control, detection and response platform, utilizes its unique Source Path Intelligence engine to seamlessly deliver comprehensive visibility into all of an organization’s source code and automatically detect and respond to anomalies in access, movement and usage. With Cycode, organizations are “Secured to The Source”; their security teams can rapidly and dramatically reduce the risk of source code loss without impacting developer access or productivity.
Seed Investor
2021
Valence (www.valencesecurity.com) is the first Business Application Mesh security company, focused on managing the risks from third-party integrations and securing app-to-app connectivity in the modern business environment. Valence’s platform applies zero trust principles to the Business Application Mesh, a complex network of applications interconnected by APIs and hyperautomation workflows, to deliver comprehensive visibility into the risk surface, reducing unauthorized access and preventing critical data loss. With Valence, organizations get a clear view of the Business Application Mesh and a clear path to control, govern and secure it.
Valence enables organizations to find and fix SaaS risks, with comprehensive SSPM, threat detection, and risk remediation.
Raised $32,000,000.00 from Porsche Ventures, Akamai Technologies, M12 - Microsoft's Venture Fund, YL Ventures, StoneMill Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Michael Fey.
Seed Investor
2019
Orca Security (www.orca.security) is the Cloud Visibility Company. The Orca Cloud Visibility Platform utilizes its unique SideScanning™ technology to seamlessly deliver comprehensive full-stack visibility into all of your entire cloud infrastructure and assets in a fraction of the time and cost of alternative approaches. Orca gives IT security teams the power to enable “Security at the Speed of the Cloud.”
Seed Investor
2018
Hunters.AI (www.hunters.ai) is the industry’s first Autonomous Hunting solution. Hunters combines its unique Attack Intelligence, Hunting AI and Continuous Automation with the enterprise’s existing security data to transform enterprise threat hunting from hunt and hope to hunting that works. Hunters.AI generates and delivers actionable visualized attack stories allowing organizations to more quickly and effectively identify, understand and respond to attacks.
Education
MBA
2001 - 2003
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