Ryan Gurney joins YL Ventures as CISO-in-Residence

Former Chief Security Officer at Looker (Google) brings customer-centric and early adopter-perspective to support YL Ventures portfolio companies’ expansion

Image courtesy of YL Ventures

June 16, 2021

Ryan Gurney joins YL Ventures as its new full-time CISO (Chief Information Security Officer)-in-Residence. Gurney will leverage his unique experience of holding leading security roles in both startups and global enterprises to provide Israeli cybersecurity entrepreneurs with unparalleled guidance on achieving product market fit and customer success.

Prior to joining YL Ventures, Gurney was the former Chief Security Officer (CSO) at Looker, a business intelligence software and big data analytics platform acquired by Google for $2.6B, now part of the Google Cloud Platform. Prior to the acquisition, Gurney served as Looker’s CSO, leading security and compliance and helping Google and Looker integrate and centralize key security processes post-acquisition. Previously, Gurney led all security functions at Zendesk in his role as VP of Information Security, where he played a key role in the company’s successful IPO. Additionally, he held security leadership roles at Engine Yard, eBay and PwC.

After several years of serving on YL Ventures’ Venture Advisory Board among 100 global CISOs and cybersecurity executives from Fortune 100 and high-growth companies, Gurney is now looking to take a more active role in fostering the success of early-stage startups as full-time CISO-in-Residence. He will work directly with entrepreneurs pre- and post-investment, supporting their ideation processes, highlighting greenfield market opportunities, validating their value propositions, refining go-to-market strategies and optimizing their early-stage success in closing paying customers.

“I’m eager to gain more exposure to the business side of investing, interact with sharp, motivated entrepreneurs in this space and share my successes and failures in managing a company's security posture,” said Gurney. “I am most excited to bring my insight into what buyers look for in a security product and vendor relationship, as well as help founders tackle CISO and security management pain points,” he added.

“Ryan has 15 years of experience as a security practitioner working in a variety of security disciplines. He has built security programs from scratch, scaled startups, built out product security features and coached and mentored tomorrow’s security leaders,” said John Brennan, partner at YL Ventures. “Ryan’s past positions enable him to share a broad set of experiences and bring a unique perspective to early-stage entrepreneurs. We look forward to seeing what innovation and fresh view Ryan will bring to this unique role," added Brennan.

Past YL Ventures CISOs-in Residence include Sounil Yu, former Chief Security Scientist at Bank of America who exited to a full-time CISO role at JupiterOne and Roger Hale, former VP & CISO of Informatica, who exited to become CSO at BigID. Both Roger and Sounil continue in their roles as Venture Advisors at YL Ventures.

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