YL Ventures, which backs SaaS companies such as ClickTale and Seculert, has announced the raise of $27.5 million in its second fund (YLV II). The VC firm says the fund was oversubscribed, and increased its hard cap by 10 percent to accommodate interest. Managing partner Yoav Andrew Leitersdorf declined to disclose any previous funding information.
Founded in 2007, YL Ventures focuses on early-stage Israeli startups with SaaS models and proprietary technology. Other areas of interest for the firm’s second fund include cloud computing, big data, cyber security, mobile technology and related fields. Investments usually range from $1 million to $2 million for seed-stage startups, with capital reserved for later rounds.
“SaaS is a relatively new business model, and few investors have true domain expertise in it. The belief at YL Ventures is that SaaS is the perfect model for selling software to enterprises while maintaining capital efficiency,” Leitersdorf tells TechCrunch.
YL Ventures’ interest in the Israeli market is due to an increase in Israeli startup acquisitions in the past few years, such as Google acquiring Waze and Facebook acquiring Face.com. YLV II is aiming to invest in eight portfolio in three years. Previous investments also include AcceloWeb, which was acquired by Limelight Networks in 2011, Upstream Commerce, 6Scan and BlazeMeter.