Cyberstarts

“Eventually we sold the business to Akamai for half a billion dollars or so”

“You know, it's a five billion dollar company today in valuation, selling, growing, growing very, very fast in a market that it actually, they define the market.”

“I'm not in a business of babysitting founders. And for me, this is like babysitting the founder. If we trust them to build, in my case, an important cybersecurity company that's critical to all the major banks in the US, and you put in their hands the safety o…”

“How much I discuss, how often I discuss gross margins with our, with my early stage companies? Never.”

“At CyberStats, we created a vehicle we call it employee liquidity fund, which is focused not just on a, not on one-off type of secondary deals, but creating a program, a recurring program with a portfolio company where we provide liquidity to their employees e…”

“We've done our first type of secondary program with Sierra, where I think that we are buying probably not mentioned the exact number, but it's a many, many millions of dollars of few hundred employees of Sierra.”

“Look, it's not a secret that, you know, we at Cyberstarts we have sold secondary shares at companies like Weez early on. By the way, I regret, I sold every single share at Weez. I regret it because, you know, if I sold it right now, I would make I would, Show …”

“Maybe once or twice over the past eight years, but there are deals that I'm telling myself, okay, I should have done it.”

“My view on that is that I would let each team member play on the relative strengths. And would not require them to focus on improving their weaknesses, but actually play more, more often and stronger on the relative advantages. Cause on the weaknesses at the b…”

“I invested in nine teams out of a fund of fifty million dollars in 2018. You know, a few million dollars each company. And then three years later, the world found out that those nine teams are valued over twenty five billion dollars, turning those fifty millio…”

“Our portfolio company Companies are making up more than 50% of the worldwide market cap for private cyber security companies.”

“We never get into a company in, in series A or series B. We would invest in series A or in series B of our own portfolio companies, but, you know, we never make new investments other than seed investments.”

“An important company is not necessarily measured by revenues or ARR or valuation. It's about, it's measured by how much the market, how much practitioners depend on you. Do they consider you as a vendor, one of their trusted partners? And there are many compan…”

“What we do, what I do is founders are the first meeting post investment. So check, you know, was written, money was wired. It's in their bank, and now we are sitting and we are starting what we call Sunrise process. And Sunrise is our brand for a product marke…”

“He started his own fund called Cyber Starts, which we seeded. And early on, meaning like Sequoia invested in his fund, which we don't do very often.”

“He promises teams of fresh graduates, graduates from tech units, not only investment support in the startup, but initial revenues of two million a year. This is usually their first year of revenue, which is intended to boost them above their competitors and he…”

“When I started CiderStarts in 2018, I decided that I would not even ask them about market or technology or product, you know, so I meet with a team, a new team, which I don't know, and we spend an hour, you know, speaking about their childhood and their mother…”

“So I'm looking for the individual who, whose parents went through ugly divorces. I'm looking for the individual who lived in a closet for a while. I'm looking for the individual who was a socially isolated child. I'm looking for people who went through real di…”

“That's one of the reasons cyber starts. We don't have offices. And I take meetings in my backyard, which is conveniently located. 15 minutes ride from Tel Aviv in a suburb.”

“That's the average for a cyber starts company. Hundred million dollars in the next three years on engineering.”

“We typically run about sixties or seventies conversations like that. In the first three months since inception. And then we come back and have a second set of 60 to 70 conversations with our solution thesis.”

“You take all the hypothetical objections you might face as a company in the next three or four years and bring it to present.”

“If you look at the current Cyberstarts portfolio, we are at you know, overall, I believe at 21 companies. Four are still running Sunrise, so who knows, but out of the 17 who went through Sunrise and raised Series A, seven are unicorns one is a decacorn, and th…”

“The last seed fund, you know, I think it took me like 90 seconds to raise the fund, you know, nine WhatsApp messages and it was done.”

“What we are not doing well. Coming up with ideas. Running thesis on markets.”

“We are not good at matchmaking between founders.”

“Most of our deals at the seed stage look the same. We don't try to twist their arm and get one or two points more just to For the sake of making a little bit more.”

“Enterprise software companies, cyber security included. I found out that you need at least five or six million dollars just to get Team, product built, and a small go to market team to win few deals. That's what it typically take to build an enterprise softwar…”

“I think that cyber security is, is a market where being first to market is not necessarily an advantage. Sometimes it's better to be number two, number three to market. And come in with more knowledge, more context, and simply, you know, deliver a better produ…”

“Our companies need to raise a lot of money. It means that valuations should be high because no founder would like to get 50% dilution just to get the cash they need.”

“20, 20, 21 is back for the past four or five weeks. We are definitely in in at least in private markets when we are in a new Bull run, you know, valuations are high, skyrocketing.”

“Our own portfolio at CyberStarts, our companies are in the process of raising probably more than one and a half billions dollars in, in, in the next few weeks.”

“Our seed funds are sixty million dollars in size and we write first and last check. To new teams. No follow-on investments out of the seed funds.”

“We have half a billion dollars, five hundred million dollars opportunity fund that where we invest in follow-on rounds in, in our own portfolio companies.”

“So far we invested in all series A and series BFR companies.”