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by alephnerd·7d ago·view on hn ↗
No but for different reasons.

Israeli cybersecurity startups funded by Cyberstarts such as Irregular always call out being Israeli because Cyberstarts' whole marketing shtick is making 8200, Israeli, and Cybersecurity synonymous as it helps close later rounds from larger funds. Wiz is a good example of this - only one of the founders is an 8200 alum, and their hiring was fairly diverse yet 8200 was made front and center in their investor relations story.

But tbf, Ireland and IDA do the same thing by making Ireland, Data centers, and tech FDI in Europe synonymous like that ad campaign they did (I think) 15 years ago which was basically repeating those three words with clips of Trinity College, the Dublin Docklands, and server farms.

Honestly, the whole escape attack story was funny to watch - so many people on HN don't realize most companies try to build a zeitgeist like this before major buying conferences like RSA, Blackhat/Defcon (this past week), and GITEX.

Heck, there are multiple rules around HN SEO engagement that have been tried and tested (eg. Always post around 5am-8am PST to maximize engagement, make a European oriented title from 4am-9am PST to maximize engagement on HN because of the heavy European usage).

And the fact that The Register (who btw are fairly cost effective for publishing submarine articles) ran a bot undetected by HN moderators for years that ended up climbing into the top 20 ranks by karma highlights this.

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This is exactly it. For years Cyberstarts told all founders to talk about 8200 to the point where it seems like someone who only cleans toilets in 8200 will get their A-round. It's a joke.

Also Cyberstarts exits, especially for those working in their startups, have been rather shitty. Clearly they've honed in on squeezing every last penny and screwing over anyone who put in the work. I won't name names but post-BH this week I was talking to a person who is working for a Cyberstarts backed company that just got acquired. They were telling me the company was sold off for less than outstanding debt by $1M so their options were under water, yet the CEO pocketed >$10M. Also they mentioned that employees were only given short term contracts on the buyout and that they had to "find jobs" within 6 months in the acquiring org which led to his next statement that they were still selling the product on the public market but had no intention of continuing to support it after the code they wanted was migrated to a much larger platform (forced sell into this platform is the idea, not unique to the acquirer - this is happening a lot). I've seen and heard about a bunch of these startups backed by Cyberstarts that all have very similar exits and they continue to get more brazen in hosing lower level employees in the sell off. Israeli startups are often toxic anyway, but this has added an entirely new facet of enshittification on the exit.

It's basically an Israeli spin on YC (fit an archetype and raise later rounds based on that).

That said, Gili also likes picking younger and inexperienced founders because Cyberstarts ends up running the company in the background at the early stages, and if one of their PortCos is doing bleh, they just have one of their larger PortCos do a tuck-in acquisition (so many of Wiz's acquisitions were that).

Dazz is a great example of that - multiple companies passed on M&Aing them at the price they quoted so they got tuck-in acquired by Wiz.