Welcoming Sounil Yu to YL Ventures

Today I’m excited to announce the addition of YL Ventures’ new CISO-in-Residence, Sounil Yu. Sounil, who most recently served as Bank of America’s Chief Security Scientist, will bring a fresh perspective to our mission of funding and supporting the very best cybersecurity founders that Israel has to offer.

Sounil’s unique background is rooted in both practice and theory. Beyond his experience at BoA, Booz Allen Hamilton and KPMG, he is the creator of the Cyber Defense Matrix and the inventor of the DIE Resiliency Framework. He has 22 patents, serves on the FAIR Institute’s Board of Advisors and teaches at George Mason University’s School of Business. We are incredibly excited to harness this experience for the benefit of the Israeli startup community.

When we first started the CISO-in-Residence program, I wrote about how our singular focus enables YL Ventures to operate a bit differently than other investors do. With discipline in geography, stage and sector, we are able to dedicate all of our energy to a very specific part of the venture ecosystem. By bringing someone with a customer’s perspective into our core team, we are again reinforcing our ability to stay current on the needs of cybersecurity practitioners, while guiding startups on how to best address those needs in an increasingly complex environment. The addition of Sounil will allow us to explore our chosen space even more deeply, boosting our capabilities across the board.

I’m particularly excited for Sounil to spend time with entrepreneurs in the Israeli cybersecurity community. He brings with him a deep understanding of how to think about the industry’s fundamental challenges, and he is sure to challenge founders on their assumptions, pushing them to tackle practical problems with long term vision. We are excited to provide Israeli entrepreneurs with direct access to someone so universally respected among his industry peers.

While activities will be done via Zoom for now, when it’s safe to do so, he will be spending a great deal of time on the ground in Tel Aviv, making himself available to the country’s best and brightest. We have always encouraged prospective cybersecurity entrepreneurs, with or without a concrete idea, to collaborate with us at the earliest stages of their ideation, and with Sounil’s unique ability to process cybersecurity problems and solutions, I believe that the next great wave of founders will want to do just that. Whether he is reacting to ideas or helping to generate them from scratch, Sounil is poised to engage with hungry entrepreneurs with big aspirations.

It brings me pride, given the depth and breadth of his experience, that Sounil believes YLV companies are a group worth supporting. Because we only make 2-3 seed investments each year, our portfolio is quite concentrated, and Sounil, having served until now on our Venture Advisory Board, is actually already familiar with most of our teams. Our startup executives – both those just getting started and those scaling aggressively – are already working with Sounil on strategic and tactical initiatives, and we’re especially excited for him to bring the perspective of financial institutions and government organizations, where his experience is particularly relevant. Sounil has a background unlike that of anyone else on the YLV team, and we are thrilled to be able to unleash that viewpoint on our companies.

Sounil, of course, is set to carry on the great work done by our inaugural CISO-in-Residence, Roger Hale, who has joined BigID as their first CISO & CSO (Roger – a personal friend – is still part of the YLV family, as he will continue to serve on our Advisor Board). Roger helped us prove that this model can work, and I have full confidence that Sounil will now help us take it to the next level.

Having already learned a lot from Sounil, I’m excited for our work together. Already, I’ve found myself amazed in hearing Sounil take what seems like a very complex security topic, only to distill it into a few bullet points, crystallizing what previously was an amorphous concept. This precision of thought, combined with a tireless work ethic, genuine humility, and the willingness (need?) to express his strong opinions on any number of security topics, is why I’m so excited that our work has begun.

Welcome to the YL Ventures team, Sounil – we are thrilled to have you on board!