Cybersecurity Investment Criteria: What Glilot Looks For

AI is driving an extraordinary rise in opportunities right now. Our deal flow has never been richer. In the last quarter alone, we closed 4 new investments. We are very picky about new investments, so for us, that is a very high number. Given that, I thought I would share more clarity on what we look for in a new investment.

Since we founded Glilot Capital in 2011, one thing has become very clear: the founders are in the center of everything we do, it doesn’t matter how much work we put into helping portfolio companies, we are not the ones to determine if a company will succeed or not, it’s all about the founders. This is why the identity of the founders is the most important part of any investment. We can talk about markets, technologies and returns, but in the end, every successful company we’ve backed was built by people who combined vision, discipline and persistence. Our job as investors is to be great partners to those people, focused, committed and hands‑on, from the first check to the last major decision.

We invest in cybersecurity and enterprise software from seed through growth, but our filter always starts with the entrepreneurs. When I look at a new cyber deal, I do not run through a mechanical checklist. I ask a few simple questions: who are these founders, why are they building this, and do we see a path to build something truly meaningful.

What We Look For

When evaluating a cybersecurity deal, the first thing we look for is a founding team that can build a huge business fast. The best founders we’ve backed lead from the front, stay close to the details, and are ready to do the hard work themselves, not just delegate. They usually bring a deep understanding of the problem space, often from intelligence units, security roles or building products at leading vendors, and they know how to translate that experience into a clear product and business.

We care a lot about persistence. Markets change, funding cycles come and go, and nothing moves in a straight line. Founders who stick it out through challenges, keep their heads, and continue to think creatively are the ones who ultimately build lasting companies. When we see that combination of character, experience and clarity, it matters more than any single feature in the product.

Of course, we also look at the market and technology. We focus on problems that represent large categories, not just nice features, and we pay attention to timing, whether a problem is becoming urgent for customers, not just interesting. On the technology side, we prefer depth over wrappers: architectures, detection methods or data advantages that are difficult to copy and can support real scale. These are the same fundamentals we apply across every cybersecurity deal we evaluate.

But even in these dimensions, we look at them through the lens of the founders. We ask whether this particular team is the right one to build in this specific market with this kind of technology, and whether they can attract the people and customers they will need along the way.

Why We Sometimes Say No

Saying no is as important as saying yes. Over the years, we’ve learned that when something feels fundamentally misaligned, it is better for both sides to pass early. Usually, that misalignment shows up around the founders and the story they are building.

Sometimes we meet teams targeting crowded spaces without a clear, sharp reason for why their company should lead the category. Sometimes the vision and the market size do not match, or the team is incomplete for the kind of company they want to build. For example, strong technology without a true business leader, or the opposite. And sometimes the difficulty is simply that the founder cannot explain the problem and solution in a way that is clear and convincing.

These are not theoretical criteria; they come from many years of working with entrepreneurs through good and bad cycles. When we decide to say no, we try to be direct and transparent, because honest feedback can still be useful for the founder’s next step, whether with us or with another investor.

What Happens When We Say Yes

When we decide to invest, we do not think in portfolio terms; we think in terms of this specific company and this specific partnership. We built Glilot to be a focused, value‑added fund, not a factory that jumps from one trend to another. That means deep involvement: helping with strategy, opening doors through our network of CISOs and executives, supporting hiring and go‑to‑market, and staying close through every major inflection point.

One of the things I am most proud of today is seeing founders come back to work with us on their second or third company. For us, that is the clearest sign that the way we choose deals, and the way we show up after we invest is working. In the end, our investment criteria in cyber deals can be summarized very simply: we look for great founders with real problems to solve, and we commit to being the kind of partner those founders deserve.

If you’re building in cybersecurity or enterprise software and think Glilot Capital could be the right seed partner, we’d love to hear from you, reach out to our team.