As longtime investors in New York City, we’re thrilled to see how much the city continues to grow in terms of talent and density of enterprise software companies.
Work-Bench
It is with tremendous excitement that we share the newest addition to our Work-Bench team: David Politis, as CEO-in-Residence. Please join us in welcoming David to the Work-Bench team!
At Work-Bench, our dedication to community is at the heart and soul of everything we do as enterprise software investors.
As enterprise Seed investors in NYC, we keep a pulse on all of the new founders and startups entering the ecosystem (and track them in our Enterprise Weekly Newsletter).
Kira is the Head of Platform at Work-Bench. Originally hired as Head of Content, Kira was promoted to Head of Platform in 2022 with an expanded scope of responsibilities across content and community. Prior to that, she led VC accounts out of SparkPR’s NYC office.
We are thrilled to kick off the new year with exciting news! Work-Bench is proud to announce the promotion of Kelley Mak to General Partner, along with Priyanka Somrah and Daniel Chesley to Principal.
Danny is an Investor at Work-Bench where he focuses on AI/ML, developer tools, and enterprise applications. He authors the More Intelligent Newsletter, where he shares the latest thematic research and technology trends he’s digging into.
If there’s one word we’ll hear continue to echo throughout 2024, it's efficiency.
We chatted with Priyanka to get the inside scoop on how she leans into technical deals, her journey to VC (it stretches all the way from Africa!) and what she’s most excited about in her day to day.
Given “business development” is such a trendy buzzword in the VC industry these days, we wanted to hear how Kelley differentiates and leverages a customer engagement strategy beyond transactional BD for better pre- and post-investment support at Work-Bench.
Early career hiring is a pain point that most of us have felt first hand (or will feel) at some point in our lifetime.
This post was originally published on More Intelligent on November 7th, 2023, my monthly newsletter covering thematic research and the technology trends I’m digging into. Subscribe here.
Daniel Chesley
Over the past year, we’ve seen the hype cycle of Generative AI takeover. For many founders, Large Language Models (LLMs) have removed the barrier to experimenting with ML workflows, making it easier than ever to hack together a prototype and get started.
We chatted with Robert Ross on how his background uniquely positions the company to win, his leadership style throughout the growth phases of the startup, and what’s next.
With Y Combinator Demo Day upon us, ‘tis the season of $2M on $20M cap SAFEs. While many investors have been vocal against such raises, YC Partners generally stand by them and even YC founder Paul Graham is vocal with his defense.
Jonathan Lehr
As an enterprise software VC firm, our mission has always been to find, fund, and support game-changing enterprise software founders, at the earliest stage.
There is a great line about exceptional founders that resonates with who we invest in at Work-Bench: “This person has thought about this problem more than anyone else.”
Jessica Lin
Inspired by the Developer Tooling and Infrastructure boom in NYC this past decade and our continued search for the next generation of startups in the space, we hosted what we called “Infrasummer,” a summer blitz of themed events and content.
In honor of 10 years of Work-Bench, we thought it’d be a good time to reflect on this past decade with 10 lessons learned. Hopefully some of these lessons can be helpful to you, whether you are a founder, operator, or fund manager.
Jessica Lin and Jonathan Lehr
AuthZed is a true story of the Work-Bench community coming full circle.
Given our obsession with enterprise go-to-market, we know how critical it is for businesses to have a successful customer success organization – that’s why we invested in Catalyst.
In 2016, April Koh set out to change the face of mental healthcare by launching Spring Health.
In 2019, we invested in Arthur as the first production AI monitoring platform to detect and protect enterprises against modeling issues and biases.
Chronosphere is a cloud-native observability platform designed for devops teams operating in a cloud native world.
Merge is a Unified API that transforms how B2B companies implement customer-facing integrations.
The genesis for our March NY Enterprise Tech Meetup Enterprise Seed VC panel was to answer “It’s been a wild year in tech..how can I survive (and thrive) in 2023?” Little did we know that less than one week before the event, Silicon Valley Bank would collapse and the tech ecosystem would catapult into DEFCON 5.
As enterprise Seed investors in NYC, we keep a pulse on all of the new founders and startups entering the ecosystem (and track them weekly in our Enterprise Weekly Newsletter).
Priyanka Somrah
Last year we talked about how the industry was overinflated thanks to megarounds and unprecedented valuations, alluding to a future correction. That correction hit hard in 2022 and its ripple effects will continue to make waves through the entire year to come.
2022 was a whirlwind. The worsening market downturn certainly weighed on everyone’s mind and to navigate these times, we doubled down on what we know best - our two flywheels of community and corporate engagement.
We are excited to share the news that Daniel Chesley has joined Work-Bench’s investing team as an Associate!
In our search for a Senior Associate, our #1 priority is to find someone as obsessed with enterprise software as we are.
As enterprise software investors at Work-Bench, community is deep in our DNA. For the past 9+ years, we have been building a center of gravity for all things enterprise in New York City.
Kira Colburn
The recent public and private market fluctuations are giving everyone whiplash.
Community has been rooted in the Work-Bench DNA from day 1 and for years that meant in-person events in NYC.
It happened in the blink of an eye — the NY Enterprise Tech Meetup (NYETM) has turned 10 years old.
As enterprise Seed investors here in NYC, we keep a pulse on all of the new founders and startups entering the ecosystem.
NYC Enterprise: #CantStopWontStop
Like much of the country, New York City has experienced its share of battle scars in 2020 from the pandemic, causing a lot of questions around whether or not NYC’s startup ecosystem will survive.
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