Gili Raanan

Gili Raanan is a leading cybersecurity investor and entrepreneur who has played a central role in the growth of many of the industry’s most successful companies. He is the founder of Cyberstarts, an early-stage venture capital firm he launched in 2018 to help cybersecurity founders build and scale transformative solutions. His investments include Wiz, Armis, Fireblocks, Island, Cyera, and Upwind, among others.   Gili Raanan’s background in cybersecurity began with his service in Israel’s elite Unit 8200, where he spent a decade and received the Israel Defense Presidential Prize and the Innovation Award. An engineer by training, he is credited with inventing CAPTCHA and co-developing the first web application firewall (WAF) and holds more than 10 U.S. patents in the fields of cybersecurity and enterprise software.   Before launching Cyberstarts, Gili built and sold two software companies to EMC and IBM, and later joined Sequoia Capital as a General Partner, leading the firm’s investments in cybersecurity and infrastructure in Israel for nearly nine years.   Today, Cyberstarts has raised over $720 million across five funds and invested in 28 companies with a combined valuation of $55 billion. Gili currently serves on 10 boards and remains actively involved with early-stage founders. He is based in Mikhmoret, Israel, and is a minority owner of Hapoel Tel Aviv basketball club.