Gili Raanan

Gili Raanan (born 1969) is an Israeli venture capitalist and one of the inventors of CAPTCHA, the WAF and many other inventions in the fields of Cybersecurity. Raanan started Sanctum in 1997, and rolled out the first Web application firewall AppShield and the first Web application penetration testing software AppScan. He later started NLayers which was acquired by EMC Corporation where he worked on the science of Application discovery and understanding. He was an investor and a General Partner at Sequoia Capital, the Founder of Cyberstarts, and is the first investor and board member at Wiz (company), Adallom, Armis Security, Onavo, Moovit, and Innovid (NYSE:CTV).

Biography
Gili Raanan was born in Kfar Saba, Israel. He served in Unit 8200 for ten years. He earned a Bachelor of Computer Science In 2002 from the Tel Aviv University, he received a Master of Business Administration degree from the Recanati School of the Tel Aviv University.

Business career
Raanan started Sanctum in 1997, and invented the first Web application firewall AppShield and the first Web application penetration testing software AppScan.

As part of the research on Application Security Raanan co-invented CAPTCHA, as described in the patent application "The invention is based on applying human advantage in applying sensory and cognitive skills to solving simple problems that prove to be extremely hard for computer software. Such skills include, but are not limited to, processing of sensory information such as identification of objects and letters within a noisy graphical environment". Raanan later started NLayers in 2003 which was acquired by EMC Corporation pioneering the science of Application discovery and understanding.

Venture capitalist
In 2009 Raanan joined Sequoia Capital in Israel as a General Partner. Raanan was a board member at Adallom, Onavo and Snaptu. In 2018 Raanan founded Cyberstarts, which is an early stage VC focused on Cybersecurity. Raanan is a seed investor in a number of Cybersecurity companies such as Fireblocks, Wiz, Noname, Island.io, Armis and Adallom. These companies tend to be staffed with Unit 8200 veterans. In 2023 and 2024 Raanan was ranked at the Forbes Seed Midas list and at the Forbes Midas list of Europe.

In June 2024 the Israeli business news outlet Calcalist published an investigation into Cyberstarts' business practices, writing that "points worth tens of thousands of dollars are awarded to CISOs of organizations for deepening relationships with the fund's portfolio companies, aiding their growth" and "mutual oral understanding is that the progress in accumulating points also involves purchases." Raanan and the fund responded by saying that "No CISO received compensation for purchasing products."

Philanthropy
In 2010 Raanan was one of the early contributors to SpaceIL's Beresheet, Israel’s privately funded, engineered and launched mission to the Moon’s surface.