Gili Raanan

Gili Raanan began his cybersecurity career in Unit 8200, the elite signals-intelligence arm of the Israel Defense Forces, where he served roughly ten years. He won the Israeli Intelligence Forces Innovation Award in 1992 and the Israel Defense Presidential Prize in 1996. An engineer by training, he is widely credited as the inventor of the CAPTCHA and a contributor to the first web application firewall (WAF), and he holds around ten U.S. patents in security and application management. He earned a degree in computer science and an MBA from the Recanati School at Tel Aviv University (2002).

As a founder, Raanan built two enterprise software companies. Sanctum (founded 1997) created AppShield (an early web application firewall) and AppScan (application security testing), and was acquired by IBM. nLayers (founded ~2003), an application-discovery pioneer, was acquired by EMC. These operating experiences shaped his founder-first investing approach.

In 2009 Raanan joined Sequoia Capital Israel as a General Partner, leading the firm's cybersecurity, internet, mobile and technology investing in Israel for nearly nine years. During this period he led Sequoia's first financing of Adallom (later acquired by Microsoft for ~$340M) — a deal that proved formative, since the Adallom founding team would later create Wiz.

In 2018 he left Sequoia to found Cyberstarts, a seed-stage fund focused exclusively on cybersecurity. Cyberstarts has since raised more than $720M across five funds and built a portfolio whose combined valuation has been cited at ~$55B, anchored by Wiz — of which Cyberstarts was the first investor. Beyond venture, Raanan has expanded into sports ownership, taking a minority stake in Hapoel Tel Aviv (basketball), and in 2026 he was honored as one of the torchbearers at Israel's Independence Day ceremony.

• Invests at the earliest stage — seed and frequently pre-company — betting on founders before a product exists.
• Cybersecurity only: cloud security, identity, data protection, and adjacent enterprise/fintech infrastructure.
• Backs proven operator-founders, often from Unit 8200 and the Israeli cyber ecosystem, who can build for U.S. enterprise buyers.
• Heavy emphasis on founder grit and adversity: *"My underdog mentality has encouraged me to hunt for adversity. I believe adversity – and the ability to overcome it – is the greatest signal of a successful founder."*
• Runs the proprietary "Sunrise" program, connecting portfolio companies (sometimes before incorporation) with CISOs of the world's largest organizations to validate real customer "pain points" — Raanan asks CISOs for at least two meetings: one on pain points, one on the proposed solution. (The CISO compensation element of Sunrise was scrapped in 2024 amid ethics criticism.)
• Believes the Wiz outcome is repeatable: *"Wiz's sale to Google shattered the glass ceiling, and it's not a one-off."*