Enterprise Weekly #475: Becoming An Exceptional Founder, Dev Happy Hour, and More
Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm leading Seed rounds. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
Happy Friday!
Every VC firm will tell you that they look for exceptional founders…but what does that actually mean?
In Jess' new Substack (subscribe: #jess: Just Enterprise SaaS), dedicated to all things enterprise SaaS, she shares some of how Work-Bench thinks about assessing founders and the key signals we've seen in the world-class, Seed-stage founders we are so lucky to have backed:
Fast Velocity: This is evidenced by the number of early scrappy experiments you've run and shipped (and the lessons that have come from it) to help validate your idea. One of our founders talked about how they got a free ticket to a highly specific and relevant user conference, where they landed five qualified leads.
Disciplined, Clear Thinker: We know that not every company that’s raising will have a ton of revenue or even a working product, but when a founder ships clean, thoughtful materials (memos, decks, pipeline report, etc.), it demonstrates a strong organizational prowess, ability to communicate, tell a story, articulate a vision, strong command of metrics, and more. Your dataroom says a *lot* about you as a founder.
GTM-Oriented: Ideally founders have talked to 100s of potential users/customers by the time we meet. We love when founders share customer Gong recordings or customer validation notes. This helps us because: 1) we get to hear directly from customers on the depth of their pain points, and 2) we can better understand and assess how early sales conversations are going (and how we might be able to help!).
Creative Grit: Our best conversations are jamming on creative experiments you've tested. One of our founders shared how they used fax (!) to get in front of some of their earliest customers.
There’s no better example of exceptional founders than the team at AuthZed, our Work-Bench portfolio company that just announced their $12M Series A led by General Catalyst 🎉
Our history with co-founders Jake, Joey, and Jimmy goes back to 2013 when they first founded Quay (acquired by CoreOS and then by RedHat). We worked alongside them in our old office (110 Fifth #iykyk) and witnessed firsthand their incredible development velocity and customer centricity. When they were ready for their next adventure, we jumped on the opportunity to work together, leading AuthZed’s Seed round to help build a generational company around a consistent, global authorization system. 🚀 And btw, they’re hiring!
If any of this resonates with you as a Pre-Seed, Seed, or Pre- founder in enterprise/SaaS/infra, we’d love to chat - reach out to us directly here.
Next Friday, the Work-Bench team will be OOO celebrating July 4th. We hope everyone has a great holiday weekend! ☀️😎
🗓️ Join more Work-Bench events:
July 24: Virtual Enterprise Masterclass on 5 Battle-Tested Leadership Tactics of Highly Successful Founders with David Politis, Founder of BetterCloud
📚 Read more news:
Business Insider: A Top VC Predicts The Industry Is Heading For A Massive and Enduring Contraction
Reuters: Amazon Hits $2T In Valuation On AI Fervor, Rate Cut Bets
The Information: In a Surprise, OpenAI Is Selling More of Its AI Models Than Microsoft Is
📚 Read more (th)reads:
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Daytona raises $5M led by Upfront Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • New York, NY
Founder: Ivan Burazin (CEO), Goran Draganic (Chef Architect), Vedran Jukic (CTO)
Proofs raises $2.6M led by Earlybird Digital East Fund
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Pre-Seed • San Francisco, CA
Maxim AI raises $3M led by Elevation Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
FalkorDB raises $3M led by Angular Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Tel Aviv, Israel
Scoop Analytics $8M led by Ridge Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Hona raises $9.5M led by Costanoa Ventures
Future of Work • Series A • Lehi, UT
GPTZero raises $10M led by Footwork
Future of Work • Series A • New York, NY
DeepJudge raises $10.7M led by Coatue
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Seed • Zurich, Switzerland
Aidentified raises $12.5M led by FactSet
Sales / Marketing • Series B • Boston, MA
Autify raises $13M led by Globis Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tool • Series B • San Francisco, CA
PointFive raises $16M led by Index Ventures
Infrastructure / Dev Tool • Seed • New York, NY
Aim Security raises $18M led by Canaan Partners
Risk / Security • Series A • Tel Aviv, Israel
Payabli raises $20M led by QED Investors
Future of Work • Series A • Miami, FL
SurrealDB raises $20M led by FirstMark and Georgian
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Venture • London, UK
Nomad Health raises $22M led by HealthQuest Capital
Future of Work • Venture • New York, NY
Constructor raises $25M led by Sapphire Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Deskpro raises $25M led by Elsewhere Partners
Collaboration / Productivity • Series A • Austin, TX
Norm AI raises $27M led by Coatue
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • New York, NY
Tinybird raises $30M led by Balderton Capital
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • Madrid, Spain
Decagon raises $35M led by Accel, A* and Others
Sales / Marketing • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Finaloop raises $35M led by Lightspeed Venture Partners
Future of Work • Series A • New York, NY
Zencity raises $40M led by StepStone Group
Future of Work • Series C • New York, NY
TechWolf raises $43M led by Felix Capital
Future of Work • Series B • Ghent, Belgium
Prewave raises $67M led by Hedosophia
Future of Work • Series B • Vienna, Austria
Finbourne raises $70M led by Highland Europe and AXA Venture Partners
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • London, UK
Fetcherr raises $90M led by Battery Ventures
Future of Work • Series B • Tel Aviv, Israel
Etched raises $120M led by Primary Venture Partners and Positive Sum Ventures
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series A • San Francisco, CA
Huntress raises $150M led by Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital and Others
Risk / Security • Series D • Columbia, MD
Creatio raises $200M led by Sapphire Ventures
Collaboration / Productivity • Venture • Boston, MA