Gili Raanan
Founder and General Partner, Cyberstarts. On 1 show, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investorfounder@giliraanan ↗LinkedIn ↗cyberstarts.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Gili Raanan is an Israeli venture capitalist who founded cybersecurity venture firm Cyberstarts following a tenure as a General Partner at Sequoia Capital. He has served as a seed investor in prominent cybersecurity and infrastructure companies, including Wiz, Island, Cyera, and Armis.
1shows
2appearances
66statements
7resolved
4supported
1contradicted
57%fully supported
7said about them ↓ Everything Gili Raanan said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Raanan: Venture market imbalance will lead to catastrophe and wasted capital
“I think it's going to end up with some serious catastrophe for many of the players. The market is not balanced. It means that a lot of that cash that's flowing into the market would be wasted.”
Gili Raanan: Selfishness and greed are good traits for seed investors
“We need to be selfish, and we need to be greedy. Those are good trades for an early stage investor.”
Raanan: The venture capital asset class does not work as a whole
“The venture business as a whole doesn't work. It doesn't work. It shouldn't work. And returns distribution are not divided equally between players.”
Gili Raanan: Over-Capitalizing Founders Is Not a Risk for VCs
“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…”
Raanan: I never discuss gross margins with early-stage startups
“How much I discuss, how often I discuss gross margins with our, with my early stage companies? Never.”
Raanan: TAM and tech differentiators are useless for seed investing
“In the early days I was looking at markets and total addressable market time and technology and differentiators. And I simply realized that all of that is bullshit. You know, it's not important at all.”
Raanan targets founders who overcame severe childhood hardships like divorce and isolation
“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…”
Gili Raanan: AI will not reduce capital needed for big startups soon
“AI, which at least in the next few years would not change that materially. And it takes a lot of money to build large companies.”
Raanan: Hyper-growth startups do not naturally regress to average growth rates
“Whenever a business is getting to a point it's growing super fast, year over year, It becomes part of their DNA. So it would not slow down just because, you know, averages and things like that. The need to be a significant external event to slow them down. So …”
Gili Raanan: Venture capital is the science of exceptions, not linear rules
“The conclusion, again, in my mind, is that we are exercising the science of exceptions. And it's good that we share that, those lessons, but if you just take those lessons and apply them linearly I think that it would be very hard for you.”
Raanan: Within five years, a startup will make Wiz's growth look slow
“I'm, Confident that five years from now, I, I'll be able to show you, I'll be able to demonstrate another team that, you know, showing that actually wheeze was a slog and they can move much faster and they've done whatever it is.”
Raanan: An IPO is a marketing event, not a liquidity event
“Going public is not a financial event. It's a branding event. It's a, it's an occasion where you tell your customers, your partners, your employees, your future employees, I'm here to stay. That's IPO. Cause typically it's not a financial event. It's not a liq…”
Raanan: All Cyberstarts portfolio companies are eventually for sale at the right price
“Eventually, all my companies are for sale at the right price. I'm not a collector. I'm an investor.”
Raanan: Cyberstarts interviews founders about childhood background rather than product or market
“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…”
Gili Raanan: Asking customers about pain points yields useless answers
“You don't ask the, what's your biggest pain point or what's your biggest need? Because again, you get so many BS answers. It's not even funny.”
Gili Raanan: Being first to market in cybersecurity is not an advantage
“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…”
Gili Raanan: 2021-level valuations have returned to private markets
“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.”
Raanan: Startups should make demand generation their first marketing hire
“You asked me a year ago, who would be the first hire at a marketing organization? That would be product marketing. My mind changed. My answer today is demand generation. And that can accelerate, that can make a huge impact on the business early on.”
Raanan: Founders claiming universal customer love are misreading feedback
“Whenever entrepreneurs tell me that customers love what we do. Every customer we spoke with like to get our product, you know, like to get their hands on a product. You probably misunderstood the customer. You probably didn't listen well in a conversation. Tha…”
Gili Raanan says he is not in the business of babysitting founders
“I'm not in the business of babysitting founders.”
Raanan: LPs who distribute venture allocations evenly should be worried
“If I'm a limited partner and I have distributed my venture allocation evenly, I wouldn't sleep well at night.”
Gili Raanan: Early-stage product and market analysis is mostly analyzing smoke
“We know very little when we get into investments. We, you know, we analyze, if we analyze product ideas and markets, mostly we analyze smoke cause, you know, the founders would change their mind In, in just a few weeks, and it would be a different product, dif…”
Gili Raanan: High startup valuations will eventually suppress tech innovation
“My concern is around entry prices and what, and whether that would Limit innovation at some point in time because disappointment would show up.”
The other half of the tape: Gili Raanan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Saam Motamedi 4Shardul Shah 1Harry Stebbings 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 7
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 6 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- Saam Motamedi: Why Series B Won’t Make Money & Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | E1177 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Mamoon Hamid: AI - Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws | E1217 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Shardul Shah: How Index Makes Decisions & Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | E1202 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Gili's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Founder and General Partner, Cyberstarts | 2 | 66 | 57% 4/7 | full record on 20VC → |