VC Perspectives

Fundraising Milestones To Cross the Seed to Series A Chasm in Application Software

At Work-Bench, we are laser focused on investing in the top enterprise software startups at the earliest stage and working with them to grow into the category defining companies of tomorrow.

Daniel Chesley

Feb 3, 2025

Join Our Growing Team as a Researcher

We are searching for an endlessly curious mind who lives and breathes enterprise technology. Someone who looks at a new developer tool and immediately wants to understand how it fits into the broader ecosystem.

Work-Bench

Dec 4, 2024

Join Our Growing Team as our Head of Growth

At Work-Bench, we think about the idea of “sourcing” differently than other funds. Our DNA is very much in community - and we believe and have seen firsthand that if we grow and support NYC enterprise ecosystem, then great things will happen.

Work-Bench

Dec 4, 2024

16 Mid- to Late-Stage Enterprise Software Startups Growing in New York City

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

Sep 11, 2024

Announcing Work-Bench’s CEO-in-Residence: David Politis

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!

Work-Bench

Aug 7, 2024

Why NYC Enterprise Software Is Stronger Than Ever: 2024 NYC Enterprise Operators Retreat Recap

At Work-Bench, our dedication to community is at the heart and soul of everything we do as enterprise software investors.

Work-Bench

Jun 12, 2024

11 NYC Enterprise Pre-Seed Startups to Watch in 2024

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).

Work-Bench

Jan 24, 2024

Work-Bench Spotlight: Kira Colburn on WTF is “Platform?”

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.

Work-Bench

Jan 23, 2024

Work-Bench Promotions: Kelley Mak, Priyanka Somrah & Daniel Chesley

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.

Work-Bench

Jan 10, 2024

Work-Bench Spotlight: Daniel Chesley On Finding an Edge as a New Investor

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.

Work-Bench

Jan 8, 2024

2024 Predictions: Where Enterprise Software Is Headed in the New Year

If there’s one word we’ll hear continue to echo throughout 2024, it's efficiency.

Work-Bench

Jan 2, 2024

Work-Bench Spotlight: Priyanka Somrah On Learning The Technical Side of Investing

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.

Work-Bench

Dec 14, 2023

Work-Bench Spotlight: Kelley Mak on Building Customer Trust

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.

Work-Bench

Dec 6, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: RippleMatch’s Andrew Myers on Redefining Hiring

Early career hiring is a pain point that most of us have felt first hand (or will feel) at some point in our lifetime.

Work-Bench

Nov 14, 2023

The Impact of OpenAI's DevDay

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

Nov 7, 2023

Generative AI’s Path to Enterprise Adoption

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.

Daniel Chesley

Oct 12, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: FireHydrant Co-Founder & CEO Robert Ross on Incident Management

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.

Work-Bench

Sep 26, 2023

Seed Investor Models: Incentives & Biases Exposed

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

Sep 19, 2023

An Ode To Operators: Introducing Work-Bench's Next NYC Network

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.

Work-Bench

Sep 12, 2023

The Key to Leveraging Founders’ Deep Domain Expertise

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

Aug 18, 2023

#Infrasummer: Highlights From Our Best Summer Yet

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.

Work-Bench

Aug 16, 2023

10 Lessons from 10 Years of Work-Bench

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

Jul 13, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: AuthZed Co-Founder & CEO Jake Moshenko on Building for Developers

AuthZed is a true story of the Work-Bench community coming full circle.

Work-Bench

Jul 11, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: Catalyst Co-Founder & CEO Edward Chiu on Finding Your Use Case

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.

Work-Bench

Jul 5, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: Spring Health Co-Founder & CEO April Koh on Executing a Mission Driven Approach

In 2016, April Koh set out to change the face of mental healthcare by launching Spring Health.

Work-Bench

Jun 27, 2023

Work-Bench Founder Spotlight: Arthur Co-Founder & CEO Adam Wenchel on the Next Gen of AI In the Enterprise

In 2019, we invested in Arthur as the first production AI monitoring platform to detect and protect enterprises against modeling issues and biases.

Work-Bench

Jun 13, 2023

Merge: Scaling Product & Teams with CTO Gil Feig

Merge is a Unified API that transforms how B2B companies implement customer-facing integrations.

Daniel Chesley

May 17, 2023

Chronosphere: Founding Story with CEO Martin Mao

Chronosphere is a cloud-native observability platform designed for devops teams operating in a cloud native world.

Daniel Chesley

May 17, 2023

Today's Enterprise Seed VC Landscape

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.

Work-Bench

Mar 22, 2023

17 NYC Enterprise Seed Startups to Watch in 2023

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

Jan 6, 2023

2023: A Look Into The Enterprise Software Crystal Ball

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.

Work-Bench

Dec 16, 2022

2022: How NYC Enterprise Software Survived A Year Of Turbulence

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.

Work-Bench

Dec 15, 2022

We’re Hiring a Senior Associate!

In our search for a Senior Associate, our #1 priority is to find someone as obsessed with enterprise software as we are.

Work-Bench

Jul 26, 2022

#LFGNYC2022! 125 NYC Enterprise Operators, 10 Tactical Talks, 1 Epic Day

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

Jul 12, 2022

A Quick State of the Enterprise Funding Market

The recent public and private market fluctuations are giving everyone whiplash.

Jonathan Lehr

May 13, 2022

Work-Bench 2022 Community & Events Roadmap

Community has been rooted in the Work-Bench DNA from day 1 and for years that meant in-person events in NYC.

Work-Bench

Mar 9, 2022

The NY Enterprise Tech Meetup Turns 10!

It happened in the blink of an eye — the NY Enterprise Tech Meetup (NYETM) has turned 10 years old.

Jonathan Lehr

Feb 2, 2022

22 NYC Enterprise Seed Startups to Watch in 2022

As enterprise Seed investors here in NYC, we keep a pulse on all of the new founders and startups entering the ecosystem.

Jessica Lin

Jan 13, 2022

Announcing our $100M Work-Bench Fund 3

NYC Enterprise: #CantStopWontStop

Work-Bench

Aug 4, 2021

16 NYC Enterprise Seed Startups to Watch in 2021

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.

Jessica Lin