Entrepreneur and investor Yuval Ariav closes $50 million debut fund Symbol

New venture capital fund Symbol has announced the closure of its $50 million debut fund for first-check, $0.5-$3.5 million investments. Symbol focuses on ‘pre consensus’ entrepreneurs and startups - meaning entrepreneurs with an unconventional track record or startups operating in fields considered to be hard for VCs to invest in at early stages.

The fund started operating after an initial closing in late 2021 and has since made 10 pre-Seed and Seed investments, including in Sightful, Breeze, Nilus, CardinalOps, Jiga, and Squire. Despite the global financial climate, five companies in the Symbol portfolio have already raised another funding round. Two of the companies are alumni of Y Combinator.

Symbol team.

Symbol’s founder and Managing Partner is Yuval Ariav. He began his career with 10 years of service in the Israeli Military Intelligence, where he received the Israel Defense Prize.

Ariav then became an entrepreneur and was part of the founding team of Onavo (acquired by Meta in 2013 for $200 million) and co-founder and first CTO of the fintech scale-up Fundbox. After leaving Fundbox, Ariav joined LionBird as a General Partner. At LionBird, Ariav led first-check investments in companies such as Fundguard and Assure Allies.

As an angel investor, Ariav participated in the first funding round of chip-software unicorn Next Silicon, where he serves as a board member, and in the Seed round of procurement automation startup Approve, which was acquired by Tipalti two years after inception yielding an over 2.5x return on investment.

“I was a founder of a company that was well outside of the VC consensus, and it was extremely challenging to raise funds for our first round,” Ariav said, referring to his experience with Fundbox. “This sparked a decade-long interest in great ideas that similarly don’t tick all the VC boxes.

"As a first check VC, we want to meet entrepreneurs as early as possible, assist with validating the ideas they are exploring, and with finding the right co-founders,” he explained. “We look at companies across a variety of sectors and Go to Markets (consumer, SMB, and enterprise tech), and tend to stay away from crowded areas like cyber. We are looking for everything that’s outside the spotlight - problems that are considered too hard to crack, market segments that are underserved by the tech solutions, or often viewed as too complex or niche.

"Coming from an elite intelligence unit I know it’s easier to invest in founders with clear signals - they come from a top intelligence unit or worked at a company that has a certain brand,” noted Ariav. “We are definitely looking for these founders, but we also want to meet other founders, regardless of where they served in the army or how conventional their track record is. For example, we invested in a 24-year-old first-timer who didn’t have any of the obvious credentials, but deeply impressed us with his ability to quickly achieve proficiency in domains that were completely new to him.”