Investor Profile: YL Ventures — Thesis, Cheque Size & How to Apply

YL Ventures funding is the phrase that circulates among Israeli cybersecurity founders long before they have a product: the firm that will take a two-person team with a technical insight and build a category-leading company around it. Founded by managing partner Yoav Leitersdorf, YL Ventures is a venture capital firm dedicated exclusively to cybersecurity, operating from Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv with $800M under management across five funds.

Thesis

YL Ventures partners with Israeli cybersecurity founders from inception. The firm’s defining edge is its network of 115+ CISOs and industry executives who actively validate products, open enterprise doors, and shape go-to-market from day one — plus a hands-on U.S. operational team that helps technical founders sell into American enterprises.

Sectors & stage

Cybersecurity only: cloud, application, identity, data, and network security. Investments span seed to Series A, and the firm concentrates each fund in roughly 10–12 companies, so selection is deliberately tight.

Fund size & cheque size

Fund V, closed at $400M (reported by PitchBook), was the largest seed-stage cybersecurity fund ever raised at the time; Fund IV closed at $120M and Fund III at $75M. Typical cheques run from $1M to $7.5M.

Notable portfolio

Seeds in unicorns Axonius and Orca Security; exits include Twistlock (acquired by Palo Alto Networks), Hexadite (Microsoft), Medigate (Claroty), Vulcan Cyber (Tenable), Spera Security (Okta), and Aim Security (Cato Networks). Current holdings include Cycode, Hunters, MIND, Miggo, Native and Hush. PitchBook has ranked the firm among the top 10 best-performing VCs globally for four consecutive years (2022–2025), and TIME named it one of its Top US VCs for 2025.

Partners

Yoav Leitersdorf (managing partner), Ofer Schreiber (senior partner, head of Israel), and U.S. partners including Kirk Manoogian and Sharon Seemann.

Programs & perks

There is no formal accelerator; the “program” is the firm’s operating model itself — CISO advisory access, marketing and business-development support, hiring help, and follow-on capital from a balance sheet that can back winners through later rounds.

How to get funding from YL Ventures

The firm runs no open application portal. Founders reach the team through warm introductions — ideally via someone in the CISO network — or the contact details on the firm’s website. For Indian cybersecurity founders, note YL invests almost exclusively in Israeli-founded teams bridging to the U.S.; study its portfolio deeply before reaching out, and if your usual reading is a list of angel investors in India, this is a very different — thesis-only — animal.