Over the last five years, the dominance of the Israeli cybersecurity ecosystem has become impossible to…
Lara B. — Building Cyberr
Over the last five years, the dominance of the Israeli cybersecurity ecosystem has become impossible to ignore.
Wiz remains the most talked-about exit in recent memory. CyberArk, Armis (newly acquired by ServiceNow) - all trace their roots back to Israel. Non-Israeli innovators still land major wins (Veza to ServiceNow, Protect AI to Palo Alto), but the sheer density of unicorns coming out of Israel is staggering.
The only place that can rival it is the Bay Area. I say "rival" because the two ecosystems look similar - but they work very differently.
In the US, very few cyber-focused VCs get hands-on at the early stage. In Israel, a good number do - Cyberstarts, Glilot, YL, Team8 - and they do real work to help startups win.
Why does that matter so much? Because early-stage cyber is a cold start challenge. Most startups sell to enterprises, and investors who open doors into their CISO networks are solving the hardest problem these companies have.
And it compounds. Israeli VCs fund companies customers are happy to buy from → more CISOs enter their orbit → easier to attract the next founders and early adopters → cycle continues.
The founders feed the same loop. Shlomo Kramer, after co-founding Check Point, has angeled tens (hundreds?) of startups. Now Assaf Rappaport is doing the same. And it's not just the stars - every successful founder helps others.
Everyone is everyone's angel investor, everyone's customer, everyone's design partner, everyone's loudest champion.
US founders don't operate this way - maybe because many run public companies and can't angel-invest freely, maybe because they're less immersed in the ecosystem of aspiring founders. Whatever the reason, it's just a fact.
The result: GTM talent still sits in the US, but engineers with real experience building cyber products zero-to-one are getting harder to find outside Israel. CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, Zscaler, Okta - all expanding their presence there.
That's not luck. That's a flywheel.
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