NYC’s B2B seed fund for founders with enterprise ambitions

Work-Bench is New York’s B2B software seed fund, backing the founders building the next generation of applied AI and infrastructure software.

We lead pre-seed and seed rounds in conviction-driven founders, often before the rest of the market sees what they see.

We started Work-Bench in 2013 with a belief that New York would become one of the best places in the world to build enterprise companies. More than a decade later, that belief has become reality - and we think the best is still ahead 🗽

We're NYC-based and NYC-biased, and backing founders anywhere who want to win customers here.

One thing hasn’t changed: a great product isn’t enough. The companies that win understand their customers better than anyone else - and turn that understanding into distribution.

We believe GTM is your moat: great products get you in the game, but customer understanding and distribution are what let you win it.

From Day 1, we work alongside founders to build it: finding the first customers, sharpening the motion, hiring the team, and scaling from seed through exit - and beyond.

we're Proud to have partnered with enduring software companies - and to back the next generation

—

cockroach labs | Series F | Greenoaks, Altimeter, Benchmark

—

dialpad | Series F | Andreessen Horowitz, GV, ICONIQ

—

spring health | Series E | Generation Investment Management, Kinnevik, Northzone

—

socure | Series E | Accel, T. Rowe Price, Scale Venture Partners

—

goodfire | Series B | B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners

—

courier health | Series B | Oak HC/FT, Work-Bench, Cascade Seed Fund

—

govwell | Series A | Insight Partners, Work-Bench, Bienville Capital

WE HELP YOU WITH ALL OF YOUR B2B SEED FIRSTS

—

we lead seed rounds and write the first institutional check

—

we help founders navigate procurement, security reviews, soc 2, pocs, msas, and more

—

we open doors into our community of fortune 500 buyers, operators, and design partners

—

we share battle-tested playbooks for discovery calls, outbound sequences, and pricing discovery

—

we connect and help close the best engineering, product, sales, and growth candidates in NYC

who we are obsessed with meeting

—

technical founders building with customer empathy

—

repeat founders coming back for round two

—

operators who've sat inside large companies and not seen so much opportunity

—

builders with strong perspective about where the future is headed

hang with us

a community and network designed to help NYCs top builders, operators, and execs find co-founders and early team members.

our recurring meetup series where we bring together the best operators from AI-native companies in NYC for drinks.

recurring small-group dinner series where those with the desire to build can meet other aspiring founders.

get in touch

—

pitches, intros, and hellos: hello@work-bench.com