Shlomo Touboul

Career

Touboul's career began in earnest with the founding of Shani (or Shany) Computers in 1985. The Israeli company and its California subsidiary were sold to Intel in 1994 for between $15 million and $20 million. This sale marked the first time a United States corporation had come to Israel to purchase a startup. He went on to work for Intel as a manager in their Network Management Business Unit. In 1996, he founded Finjan Software Inc. The company designed and patented antivirus software and anti-spyware software. In 1997, the company received $10 million in investor funding.

In 2000, Touboul left Finjan to start Runway, Israel's first internet incubator, and Runway Telecom Partners, an Israeli telecommunications incubator co-founded with Alcatel. Alcatel invested $14 million in Runway Telecom in 2001. Also in 2001, Finjan encountered financial difficulties and Touboul returned to the company at the request of investor, David Cowan of Bessemer Venture Partners. As CEO of Finjan, Touboul often spoke about the risks of advanced spyware and the security gaps in programs and programming languages like JavaScript. He also invented new technologies including static and dynamic code behavior analysis and behavior based blocking technology. Touboul helped aggressively market Finjan's proactive defense technology and McAfee incorporated that technology into their products. Touboul also pushed for more funding. Finjan secured $8.5 million in funding from an investor group led by Benchmark Capital Israel, Israel Seed Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners. This brought the total amount of funding to $31.5 million over the course of 6 years. Touboul helped Finjan earn an additional $10 million in funding in 2004 from investors including Cisco Systems, Bessemer Venture Partners, Israel Seed Partners, and Benchmark Capital.

Touboul would leave Finjan in July 2005. He started Yoggie Security Systems 3 weeks after his departure from Finjan. This new company designed hardware to solve security issues for individuals using laptops or mobile devices on a public Wi-Fi signal. The hardware also kept security tasks separate from the computer's main CPU, implementing the first security dedicated co-processor for networked based computers and devices. Touboul invented 8 patents for Yoggie. Among the Yoggie products are the Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico and the Gatekeeper Card. Within the first year of its operation, Yoggie received $1.8 million in investment funding from investors in Silicon Valley, Israel, and New York City (including Earlybird Venture Capital). In total, Touboul helped raise around $18 million in funding for Yoggie, and the company was eventually sold to Norway-based Cupp Computing in 2011.

In 2014, Touboul became the CEO of Illusive Networks, a company founded by Ofer Israeli and Israeli incubator, Team8. Illusive Networks received $5 million in Series A funding from Team8 which had a capital investment of $18 million from investors like Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's Innovation Endeavor, Marker LLC, Cisco, Alcatel, Bessemer Venture Partners, and others. The company provides information security by deliberately deceiving hackers and tricking them into collecting and using information that is false. The software provides early detection of attacks and advanced persistent threats. Touboul is the current CEO of the company.

Patents