Highlights From Our 2023 Womenterprise Summit
Yesterday, we returned with our iconic Womenterprise Summit - the only conference exclusively dedicated to celebrating women in enterprise software! 🎉
”When we launched our first Womenterprise Summit in 2018, we were the first and the few. Today proved that we are the many and multiplying.”
Ten years ago, we at Work-Bench realized there was no community specifically dedicated to supporting women in enterprise tech. So we set out to build it ourselves. In today’s especially challenging market, it’s more important than ever for women to come together, support one another to stay the course, and most importantly, have FUN doing it.
We brought together over 250 female founders, operators, executives, and investors from pre- and post-IPO companies, fast-growth startups, and Fortune 500 companies under one roof to learn, connect, inspire, and share their top playbooks and experiences in scaling an enterprise company.
The impact of the event has already extended far beyond the Summit walls with such overwhelmingly positive feedback. See our own recap here and highlights below.
As we continue our mission to grow our Womenterprise community, we’d love your help! Please reach out if you are or know any great female founders or operators looking to:
Brainstorm ideas as they look to start a new company
Fundraise a Pre-Seed or Seed round
Connect and learn from peers across enterprise software
Get hired into a new role
We started the day off with a bang! 💥 From seeing our conference up in lights on the Nasdaq Tower to an all-woman brass band kicking off our show:
1️⃣ Erica Schultz (President of Field Operations at Confluent) and Claire Hughes Johnson (Corporate Officer & Advisor at Stripe) kicked us off talking about the “stories that shaped them.” TL;DR: Bring your full self to work. They talked about how coping with personal tragedies taught them to led with empathy, how leaning into uncomfortable situations was their biggest driver of professional growth, and more.
2️⃣ Monica Ugwi (VP, Head of Product at RudderStack) and Camilla Velasquez (Former SVP of Product at Justworks) talked about the needed pivots to transform a startup from early to mid to late stage. TL;DR: “Don’t chase deals, chase markets” and “embrace killing products to make room for innovation.”
3️⃣ Amy Borsetti (Head of Revenue & GM of Americas at Asana) taught us how to manifest our futures. TL;DR: When evaluating a new role or future opportunity, make a matrix of your priorities and values, then pursue only what meets your chosen standards.
4️⃣ And finally, our own Jessica Lin sat down with our portfolio company (her first investment at Work-Bench!) Spring Health. CEO & Co-Founder April Koh revealed the hidden challenges and triumphs of scaling a company and becoming the youngest woman to lead a unicorn. TL;DR: Prove yourself wrong. Despite a lot of odds against her, April continued to persist on her journey as a founder.
Thank you so much to our speakers and attendees for making this such an incredible gathering of women in enterprise software. Let’s continue to grow this special community! 💪
Thanks to our sponsors for their support in making this Summit happen!
Work-Bench is an enterprise venture capital firm based in NYC. We lead Seed rounds in enterprise software startups throughout the country and are laser focused on supporting early-stage startups on all things go-to-market and have built a dynamic enterprise tech community in NYC and beyond.
Bank of America provides banking at the speed of tech. From disruptors and fast-growing innovators looking to gain momentum, to more established players seeking growth strategies, Bank of America's Transformative Technology Group helps you move to the next step of your lifecycle.
If you’re interested in sponsoring or partnering on an upcoming Womenterprise initiative, please reach out!