Dor Knafo

Background

Dor Knafo is a General Partner at Cyberstarts, the cybersecurity-focused venture capital firm founded by Gili Raanan in 2018 ¹. He joined Cyberstarts in 2025, transitioning from founder to investor ².

Before joining Cyberstarts, Knafo co-founded and served as CEO of Axis Security, a cloud-native zero-trust network access (ZTNA) platform, alongside co-founder and CTO Gil Azrielant ³. Axis Security was one of Cyberstarts’ earliest seed investments ¹. Founded in 2018, Axis raised over $100 million across three rounds — a $17 million Series A led by Ten Eleven Ventures in March 2020 ³, a $32 million Series B led by Canaan Partners in September 2020 ⁴, and a $50 million Series C led by Spark Capital in March 2021 ⁵. Axis was acquired by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) in March 2023 for a reported $500 million, though HPE stated that figure was inaccurate without providing an alternative ⁶.

Prior to co-founding Axis, Knafo was a senior security researcher at Fireglass, a web isolation company later acquired by Symantec ³. He also presented at Black Hat Asia 2017 and the O’Reilly Security Conference 2016 alongside Fireglass founder Dan Amiga ⁷⁸. Knafo served for five years in Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Forces as a senior software engineer for advanced cybersecurity ³. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from IDC Herzliya (now Reichman University), graduating cum laude ³.

Stated Thesis

Knafo has publicly stated that he brings “a deep conviction that the most impactful cybersecurity companies are built by technical founders who can make the complex feel inevitable” ¹. He describes himself as “especially drawn to entrepreneurs who not only understand the architecture of modern cyber threats but can clearly articulate the precise problem their technology is solving” ¹.

On his Cyberstarts profile, he is quoted as saying: “My decisions usually start with instinct. The good ones end there too” ¹.

As a founder, Knafo was an advocate for zero-trust security and replacing legacy VPN and remote access technologies, stating: “The time is now to replace legacy access technologies such as VPNs, virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and inline cloud access security broker (CASB) services using a single zero trust cloud platform” ³.

Inferred Thesis

Knafo is a very new investor, having joined Cyberstarts in 2025. Only one investment — Spirit — has been publicly confirmed as personally led by him. This limits the ability to infer individual investment patterns distinct from the broader Cyberstarts portfolio.

What can be inferred from his single known investment and background:

• Sector focus: Exclusively cybersecurity, consistent with Cyberstarts’ firm-wide mandate ⁹.
• Stage: Pre-product/pre-revenue seed stage. Spirit had only 10 employees and was at the “concept formulation stage” when it raised $50 million ⁹.
• Founder profile preference: Unit 8200 and Talpiot program alumni. Spirit’s three founders are all graduates of the IDF Talpiot program with senior command and research roles in Unit 8200 ⁹ — mirroring Knafo’s own military background.
• Valuation comfort: Spirit’s $400 million valuation on a $50 million raise at the concept stage suggests willingness to pay high premiums for exceptional founding teams ⁹.
• Co-investment pattern: Co-led with Sequoia Capital on the Spirit deal ⁹, consistent with Cyberstarts’ established relationship with Sequoia (Gili Raanan previously founded companies backed by Sequoia) ¹⁰.

Sample size caveat: Based on 1 verified personal investment. This section will be updated as Knafo’s investment track record grows.

Portfolio

Investments personally attributed to Dor Knafo at Cyberstarts:

Note: Only 1 of Cyberstarts’ 24+ portfolio companies has been publicly attributed to Knafo’s personal sponsorship. As a GP at Cyberstarts since 2025, he likely participates in other firm investments, but specific attribution is not publicly available. The broader Cyberstarts portfolio includes Wiz, Fireblocks, Island, Cyera, Upwind, Vega, Gambit, Blockaid, Legit, Linx, Oasis, Onyx Security, Surf AI, Transmit Security, Trustmi, Zafran, and others ¹¹.

In Their Own Words

“We developed Axis Security to enable a world where connectivity to every business resource, from anywhere, could always be simple, safe and reliable.” — Dor Knafo, on the HPE acquisition announcement, March 2023 ⁶

“When the pandemic hit, the impact of work-from-anywhere was immediate and profound, and organizations trying to scale legacy access technologies really struggled. Axis was well positioned and within months we were enabling secure remote access for hundreds of thousands of users and millions of connections.” — Dor Knafo, NoCamels, March 2021 ⁵

“We’re solving one of the most complex security challenges IT faces right now in rapidly onboarding remote workers and third parties simply and securely.” — Dor Knafo, NoCamels, September 2020 ⁴

“It’s an honor to join Gili Raanan and the Cyberstarts team. Cyberstarts was one of Axis[’s] earliest supporters and I can’t wait to bring my perspective to the investing side. Let’s get to work!” — Dor Knafo, LinkedIn, 2025 ²

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials specifically about Dor Knafo as an investor were found. He joined Cyberstarts in 2025 and has only one publicly attributed investment (Spirit, February 2026), so founder feedback on his investor role has not yet accumulated.

Gili Raanan, founder of Cyberstarts and Knafo’s early backer at Axis Security, praised the Axis founding team: “Dor and Gil’s strong vision combined with their decision to blend top Israeli engineering talent with sales and marketing executives from Check Point, Tanium, Juniper, and McAfee set them up for success” ⁴.

Sources