Cyberstarts raises $200 million to double down on its Seed companies
Cyberstarts raises $200 million to double down on its Seed companies
The new Opportunity Fund will focus on follow-on investments in the cybersecurity-focused VC’s portfolio companies that are raising Series A and Series B
Israeli venture capital firm Cyberstarts announced on Monday that it is launching a new fund that will focus on follow-on investments in its portfolio companies that are raising Series A and Series B rounds. The first fund in the new line of business, named the Opportunity Fund, is a $200 million fund which recently closed and was oversubscribed by existing and new investors.
With the creation of the new Opportunity Fund, Cyberstarts Fund II has been resized into a $60 million fund and will now focus exclusively on investments in the seed stages.
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Cyberstarts Gili Raanan (left) and Lior Simon. Photo: Yossi Zeliger
(צילום: יוסי זליגר)
Cyberstarts is managed by Gili Raanan and Lior Simon, and the small team also includes Jason Clark, the chair of the CISO advisory board, and Curtis Simpson, who heads the product-market fit activities with portfolio companies.
Over the past three and a half years, Cyberstarts managed to form one of the world’s most successful venture businesses, partnering with a few of the most important companies in the cybersecurity market at the time of their incorporation.
Cyberstarts I is a $54 million fund focused solely on Seed deals (with marginal participation in follow-on rounds) and Cyberstarts II was a $100 million fund aimed at investments in Seed and subsequent A rounds.
Cyberstarts seed investments include Fireblocks, Wiz, Transmit, Noname Security, Island, Axis Security, Bionic, Dazz, Legit Security, and several still in stealth mode. It recently shared that its 13 portfolio companies raised a total of $1.3 billion in 2021, with a combined valuation of $20 billion, from firms including Sequoia, Greylock, Lightspeed, Index, Insight, and many more.
Cyberstarts I fund has turned out to be one of the world's best funds in terms of performance, averaging 300% annual return to investors.
“Most of the entrepreneurs we have partnered with, manage to hit the ground and grow into significant businesses over a short period of time,” said Gili Raanan, founder of Cyberstarts. “The Opportunity Fund is another assurance for them and a new generation of entrepreneurs, we can and will support them with a constant flow of cash as they grow their businesses.”
The investors behind Cyberstarts include some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world in the field of cybersecurity, including Shlomo Kramer of Cato Networks, Imperva, and Check Point, Marius Nacht of Check Point, Nir Zuk from Palo Alto, Udi Mokady from CyberArk, Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh Loonkar from Transmit, Roy Zisapel from Radware, Yevgeny Dibrov and Nadir Izrael from Armis, Assaf Rappaport from Adallom and Wiz, Demisto entrepreneurs, and more.
