Seven years ago, Ben Bernstein, Dima Stopel, and John Morello sold the company they founded, Twistlock, to Palo Alto Networks in what at the time was the largest sale of an Israeli company to the cybersecurity giant founded by Nir Zuk, for $410 million. On the basis of that exit, four years ago the threesome raised $51 million in a round led by Yoav Leitersdorf’s YL Ventures, with the participation of Wiz co-founders Assaf Rappaport, Ami Luttwak, and Roy Reznik; Talon founders Ofer Ben-Noon and Ohad Bobrov; former CyberArk CEO Udi Mokady; Transmit Security founders Mickey Boodaei and Rakesh K. Loonkar; and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz.
The raise, held in 2022, was described at the time as one of the largest ever seed rounds in Israel. The company, Gutsy, went through shake-ups and changes of focus and strategy, until yesterday the founders decided to inform its 35 employees of its closure and the return of its remaining cash to the investors.
Eighteen months ago, the founders changed the name of the company to Minimus, changed its product focus, and laid off more than ten employees. But as the market failed to respond to the new product, in the past few weeks searched energetically for a buyer for the company or its team. They did not succeed, and so decided to shut down the company and return its remaining $10 million cash to the investors, which also include US venture capital firm Mayfield.
A complex market
What led to the decision to close down the company at an early stage when others would have waited until the cash ran out and have tried to sell their company at any price? Minimus did not amplify its announcement. The CEO, Ben Bernstein, said following the announcement to the employees and customers, "After a strategic process that did not work out, we decided to close Minimus in an orderly fashion. This is not the result we hoped for, but I am proud of the team and of what we built together, and I thank our customers and investors for their faith and collaboration along the way."
Minimus developed a software development environment based on "containers," independent environments for running software containing everything the software needs in order to run, such that it will work in exactly the same way on the software developer’s computer, on the local server, or on the public cloud. The aim was to reduce the exposure of software developers to cyber weaknesses in a code library or in the development servers they use. Instead of scanning pre-written code, as most software developers did, Minimus claimed to provide a clean and secure software environment.
Bernstein and his colleagues operated in a tough market in which one main player, Chainguard, is dominant. Chainguard was founded by former Google employees, and has so far raised nearly $900 million, and was priced at $5.4 billion last year, according to PitchBook.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on August 24, 2026.