It is with tremendous excitement that we share the newest addition to our Work-Bench team: David Politis, as CEO-in-Residence.

David brings over 20 years of founder and operating experience with three startups acquisitions under his belt, including Vocalocity (SaaS-based communications provider acquired by Vonage), Cloud Sherpas (cloud computing advisory acquired by Accenture), and most notably as founder and former CEO of BetterCloud, a SaaS Management platform which was acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2022.

We first met David in 2013 when BetterCloud was a Seed-stage startup demoing at our NY Enterprise Tech Meetup. After that meetup, David scaled BetterCloud into a leading company in the NYC tech scene, growing it to hundreds of employees and securing funding from top-tier VCs. But with the high highs, come the low lows. He’s also navigated macro downturns, company pivots, and existential moments of impending failure (that he detailed with honesty and humility in his Startup Founder Survival Guide).

When David was contemplating what to do next, we caught up over some Japanese whiskey (a favorite choice of ours over the years) and pounced on the opportunity to leverage his rare open calendar and formalize his involvement with Work-Bench!

In this official role, David will work alongside our Work-Bench team to support our early-stage founders and teams in the trenches – from being a guiding light as founders navigate the dark forest of pre-product market fit to building the engine for a high-velocity and repeatable sales engine. 

David is no stranger to supporting early-stage enterprise founders. He has the rare combination of experience and empathy to earn founders’ respect and trust in his advice. Beyond that, David upholds everything we believe in at Work-Bench: an unmatched passion for enterprise software, being long on NYC, a rare down to earth, open, and humble attitude, boundless energy in sharing lessons learned, and a belief that creativity is what breaks the mold. 

Over recent years, he’s already proven to be a tremendous asset as he’s partnered with us on NY Enterprise Meetups, NYC Enterprise Operators Retreat, masterclasses, and dinners.

If you’ve stopped by our office on a Thursday this year, you’ve seen David grinding – whiteboarding with a founder on their go-to-market (GTM) strategy, talking through a VP of Sales hire, or just being honest about the ups and downs of the founder journey. It’s with this lens that we are excited to team up to better serve not only our Work-Bench portfolio company founders, but also the broader NYC enterprise community, which continues to grow in leaps and bounds. 

This partnership has been a decade in the making, and the timing couldn’t be more perfect.

Please join us in welcoming David to the Work-Bench team! And buckle up for an epic Fall.