YL Ventures

YL Ventures is a cybersecurity-focused venture capital firm that backs Israeli founders from inception and seed, then helps them build for the US enterprise market. Founded in 2007, the firm is led by Managing Partner Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf, Senior Partner Ofer Schreiber, and Partner Kirk Manoogian. YL Ventures reports $800M under management and operates across Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv.

The firm matters because cybersecurity has become more specialized while enterprise attack surfaces keep expanding across AI, identity, data, cloud infrastructure, applications, and software supply chains. YL Ventures expresses a clear market thesis: technical depth alone is insufficient, so early capital must be paired with customer validation, go-to-market support, and access to experienced security leaders. That model turns a seed investor into part of the company-building machinery.

About YL Ventures

Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf founded YL Ventures in 2007, and his official biography identifies John Quigley as a cofounder and long-time business partner. The current YL Ventures team places Leitersdorf in the Managing Partner role, with Ofer Schreiber leading the Israel office as Senior Partner and Kirk Manoogian serving as Partner. The roster does not list a CEO, so the firm's leadership is best described through those current titles.

YL Ventures is dedicated exclusively to cybersecurity and says it has partnered with Israeli founders from inception for nearly 2 decades. The firm's geographic design connects Israel's concentration of security engineering talent with Silicon Valley's enterprise buyers, senior operators, follow-on investors, and executive network. In practical terms, the firm helps technical teams translate a product insight into a company that can earn trust inside large organizations.

Investment Philosophy

The YL Ventures investment philosophy starts with narrow category conviction. The firm is not spreading capital across every fashionable technology sector. It is betting that cybersecurity rewards investors who can understand technical risk, buyer urgency, market timing, and the difference between a clever feature and a durable control point. Its seed-stage posture gives the team room to shape positioning and customer discovery before a category becomes crowded.

That approach is especially relevant as enterprise AI changes the security map. AI systems create new questions around data loss, non-human identity, agent permissions, software provenance, application behavior, and cloud enforcement. YL Ventures' portfolio suggests that the firm sees those problems as connected parts of a broader shift: security must move closer to where software, identities, data, and automated decisions are created.

Fund Scale and Company-Building Support

In May 2022, YL Ventures announced YLV Fund V, a $400M vehicle that brought total assets under management to $800M. The current firm website continues to report $800M under management. For a seed specialist, that scale creates the capacity to lead early rounds while maintaining operating support across a focused portfolio.

The firm's value-add model covers product validation, customer introductions, go-to-market strategy, marketing, follow-on fundraising, executive recruiting, HR, and operations. YL Ventures reported that more than 40% of customers secured by portfolio companies in their first 2 years came through firm introductions. Its advisory network of CISOs and security executives also gives founders a way to test assumptions against practitioners before those assumptions become expensive product decisions.

Portfolio and Ecosystem Positioning

The current YL Ventures portfolio spans multiple layers of the modern security stack. Orca Security addresses cloud security; MIND works on data loss prevention; Opti focuses on AI-native identity security; Native develops a cloud security control plane; Miggo Security works on AI runtime security; and Minimus targets software supply-chain exposure. Other current names include Hush Security, Novee Security, Valence Security, Hunters, Cycode, and Grip Security.

The firm's track record also includes acquisitions and secondary outcomes that made specialization financially visible. Twistlock was acquired by Palo Alto Networks, Spera Security by Okta, Aim Security by Cato Networks, Medigate by Claroty, and Hexadite by Microsoft. A dated TechCrunch report described a $270M realization from YL Ventures' Axonius stake and $250M from part of its Orca Security position. Those figures should be read as historical outcomes rather than current fund performance.

Leadership and Founder Fit

Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf brings founder experience to the investment model, having built and exited companies before launching YL Ventures. Ofer Schreiber leads investment processes, portfolio management, and the Israel office, while Kirk Manoogian focuses on US evaluation and commercial execution. Together, their roles reflect the firm's two-sided operating model: find technical conviction in Israel, then help convert it into enterprise relevance and durable growth.

The founder fit is therefore narrower than a generic request for ambitious entrepreneurs. YL Ventures is positioned for Israeli cybersecurity teams working on urgent enterprise problems, particularly founders willing to pressure-test technical assumptions with buyers and adapt positioning without diluting the product's core insight. The firm appears to value domain expertise, speed, resilience, and an ability to absorb feedback from a demanding customer base.

Why Founders and Operators Pay Attention

For founders, the attraction is not only capital but compressed access to the people who influence early product-market fit. A strong introduction to a CISO, design partner, executive candidate, or follow-on investor can change the slope of a young security company, but those introductions matter only when paired with careful preparation and honest market feedback. YL Ventures has built its identity around making that loop repeatable.

For operators, the portfolio offers a map of where specialized security demand is forming. Companies working on AI data protection, identity governance, agentic systems, runtime defense, cloud enforcement, and software supply chains are responding to enterprise architectures that changed faster than traditional controls. Anyone considering a role or partnership should explore the YL Ventures portfolio and evaluate current opportunities directly with each company.

What YL Ventures Signals for Venture Capital

YL Ventures represents a broader move toward specialist venture capital in technically demanding markets. General networks and capital still matter, but cybersecurity investors also need practitioner trust, buyer context, recruiting depth, and enough category fluency to recognize whether a threat is structural or merely loud. The firm's model treats specialization as an operating system rather than a marketing adjective.

The bigger signal is that enterprise AI is not replacing the existing security market. It is adding new control points across identity, data, cloud, applications, and software delivery. YL Ventures is betting that founders who define those control points early can build category-leading companies before broader markets agree on the vocabulary. That is a sharp thesis for founders to study and an equally useful portfolio for operators and security leaders to watch.