Rotem Lurie brings technological capabilities from home. She grew up in Or Yehuda to programmer parents, with her mother being one of the first female programmers in the country — and the first female soldier accepted into the military’s “Talpiot” program. So perhaps it’s not surprising that Rotem is the entrepreneur and CEO of the cybersecurity startup Valkyrie, which is developing a security product for organizational asset permissions.
Immediately upon its establishment, during the war, the company under her leadership signed an initial funding round of millions of dollars. The seed round was led by the venture capital fund Index, joined by Vine Ventures, John Brennan’s new fund, Holy Ventures, and leading angels such as Wiz founder Assaf Rappaport, Axis founders Dor Knafo and Gil Azrielant (Forbes 30 Under 30 alumni).
From Microsoft to Axis
“In high school, I tried to find a balance between my passion for exact sciences and humanities and my natural sociability”, Rotem recounts. “I expanded on computers, mathematics, and cinema – but I spent most of my time in the Scout movement”. In the IDF, she was accepted to “Shahakim”, the prestigious Intelligence Corps track, and continued to four years of service as an officer.
She began her high-tech career at Microsoft as an intern while studying for a degree in philosophy and statistics. “As a young student, most of my work wasn’t glamorous – but I did what was needed, and insisted on getting more and more areas of responsibility”, she says. “Within a few years, I moved to become a full-time employee and advanced in ranks. I reached a point where I was leading entire areas in one of the products myself”.
After four years, she left Microsoft (and abandoned her degree) for a young startup called Axis (which was later acquired by HPE for about 500 million dollars). At Axis, she was the product manager – the only female manager alongside eight men.
“In retrospect, as I progressed in my career, I saw fewer and fewer women around me. In the army and university there were quite a few women, so too as an intern at Microsoft, but as I progressed at Microsoft, and moved to the startup world – not to mention the entrepreneurship world – I see fewer and fewer people who look like me. That is, women.
“I’m lucky that throughout my career I’ve met mentors who always made sure to push me forward, and remind me that I’m measured on my abilities and performance, but I think that had I had more similar role models, the way to believe in myself would have been easier”. Today, Valkyrie, led by Rotem, is careful to promote social principles, recruits its team in an equal ratio of men and women, and is based on an egalitarian organizational culture.
Rotem’s next station was the YL Ventures fund. “There I learned about fundraising and how venture capital funds think – which gave me tools to raise a significant seed round in an impossible period”, she describes. “We established our startup in June, and completed the funding round last December. The most unusual thing about this round, without a shadow of a doubt, was completing it during the war. As soon as the war broke out, we feared that investors would decide they don’t want to invest in the country, but we found supportive investors. We managed to raise a significant round led by one of the largest funds in the world – Index Ventures.”
The past year has been one of the hardest and most complex in the country’s history. What was the impact on you on a personal and professional level?
“Alon, my partner, was called up for reserve duty in the Air Force with the outbreak of the war. The past months have been accompanied by a very large gap between the life I’m living — setting up a company, raising money and employees, flying on business trips — and his IDF ones. Alon and I are a team, and from the stage where I decided to leave my job and start working full force on the startup — he was my support at home and my backing.
“It was very difficult to do this without him. But from the difficulty, we usually discover the truly beautiful things: Or, my business partner, the investors, the first employees – everyone supported, and I felt there was room for my feelings too in this complex period”.
