Q1 & Q2 Highlights: Latest Investments, New Research, AI Mania, Pricing, and More
It’s officially a scorching hot summer in NYC 🔥 While the broader software market still faces headwinds, at Work-Bench, Seed-stage investing is busier than ever.
This year, we continued to grow our portfolio and fuel their growth:
We led a number of Seed rounds across FinOps orchestration, healthcare staffing, govtech workflow automation, and others that we’re excited to share soon
Patient engagement platform Courier Health raised a $16.5M Series A led by Norwest Venture Partners
Authorization platform AuthZed raised a $12M Series A led by General Catalyst
We continue to meet with exceptional founders at the earliest stages of their journey across AI/ML, Cybersecurity, Developer Tools and Infrastructure, and Application Layer Tech — if you know any founders or operators marinating on a potential idea, please send them our way.
A few observations on the world today:
🤖 AI Mania: AI deals are starting to come down to reality, but still command a premium in the market as many founders and early-stage companies try to attach AI to any use case in hopes that it differentiates them from the broader pack. To discern what truly drives value vs. what's becoming commoditized, we continue to speak to Fortune 500 executives to understand their top priorities and budget allocations.
💰 Pricing: While one could argue that a flight to quality has driven up Seed pricing, the resulting question becomes: what is the upper limit that the market can sustain given that Series A volume and valuations are down so much? To drive home this point, 1Q24 Carta data shows that Seed deal count is down 44% with flat valuations compared to two years prior. Meanwhile, Series A deal count is down 49% with valuations down 9% compared to two years prior. We’ve maintained our discipline around Seed round sizing and are spending time with founders thoughtful on this front in order to build long-term, successful businesses.
On the community front, we brought together the best and brightest in enterprise SaaS and Infra in NYC:
We had an epic day at our NYC Enterprise Operators Retreat with 150+ operators from NYC’s top enterprise startups for a full day of tactical knowledge drops and summer fun.
We hosted over 30 Dinners, Happy Hours, and Meetups across Sales, Growth, Product, Engineering, Product Marketing, and Fundraising as well as sector deep dives like Infra, AI, Security, and more.
We hosted multiple Enterprise Masterclasses on tactical topics for Seed founders including How to Price Your Product, 10 Quick Wins to Grow Pipeline, and more.
And as always, we wrote about the areas of research we’re most excited about for potential future investment and what we’re seeing in the market:
Priyanka’s “Data Source” Substack for perspectives on data manipulation and data analytics tools in Python, Composable data management systems, Apache Arrow and DataFusion, the future of cloud networking, and the development across frontend & backend with WebAssembly.
Danny’s “More Intelligent” Substack for perspectives on business process automation, the LLM adoption curve, and the state of FSI compliance.
Jess’ “Just Enterprise SaaS” Substack for perspectives on Series A decks and signals from exceptional founders.
Jon’s 🌶️ Twitter takes on building an enterprise GTM motion, negotiating term sheets, and raising appropriate Seed rounds.
As we look into 2H2024, we invite you to keep tabs on what’s top of mind for us for potential future Seed investment and reach out if you're actively raising or a pre-founder ideating on a category we're spending time in.
Stay cool out there!
- Jessica Lin
📚 More Tactical Content
Pre-Product Market Fit: What It Means to Ideate & Validate an Enterprise-Ready Product
VC Perspectives on Today’s Startup Landscape & Advice To Win
How To Build a Hand of “Defensible Cards” To Set Your GTM Apart
Enterprise Startup Founder Survival Guide with The Founder of BetterCloud
🔦 Next NYC Spotlights
We’ve been interviewing operators for our Next NYC Network for their top tactics on building out scalable orgs:
Jo Engreitz, Head of Product Growth at Hex on Determining Your Flavor of PLG
Sanjay Pavdal, Group PM at Vanta on A PM’s Journey UpMarket
Ryan Libster, Head of Enterprise Sales at Persona on Building a World Class Sales Team
Ryan Narod, Head of Marketing at Mutiny on Marketing for Marketers
Eleanor Dorfman, Head of Sales at Retool on Selling an Open-Ended Product
🗞️ In The News
Evaluating AI Model Performance
Arthur • AI And the Future of Work • June 28, 2024
Top 3 Ways to Uplevel Your Finance Tech Stack in 2024
Leapfin • SSON • June 12, 2024
CNBC Disruptor 50
Spring Health • CNBC • May 14, 2024
‘A Total Game Changer’: VCs See AI’s Future Beyond Text After GPT-4o Launch
Work-Bench • Pitchbook • May 13, 2024
Tech Leaders Crave ‘Peace of Mind’ with AI In The Cloud
Cockroach Labs • Fortune • May 1, 2024
Explainable AI: Insights
Arthur • NVIDIA Blog • May 1, 2024
So You Landed Your Dream Internship. Here’s How To Turn It Into a Full-Time Role
RippleMatch • Fast Company • April 24, 2024
A Question of Identity: Talking with Socure’s Johnny Ayers
Socure • McKinsey & Co. • April 17, 2024
This Chief AI Officer Says The Job is More of a Temporary Gig
Dialpad • Tech Brew • March 20, 2024
Payment Networks and Providers Leverage Data, AI in Battle vs First-Party Fraud
Socure • PYMNTS.com • March 19, 2024
Using Evidence for Third-Party Risk Management
VISO Trust • CISO Series • March 18, 2024
Adam Wenchel & John Dickerson, Arthur | AWS Startup Showcase S3 E1
Arthur • SiliconANGLE • March 9, 2024
Bourbon & Better Software With Robert Ross, Founder FireHydrant
FireHydrant • Changelog • March 8, 2024
Socure and Trustly Partner on Pay-by-Bank Solution with Streamlined Onboarding
Socure • PYMNTS.com • February 29, 2024
Tamr Appoints Anthony Deighton as New CEO
Tamr • Enterprise Talk • February 29, 2024
Automation is transforming accounting: How to be prepared in 2024
Leapfin • Accounting Today • February 29, 2024
Three Steps To Building An Effective Digital Identity Ecosystem
Socure • Federal Times • February 26, 2024
Q&A: Cockroach Labs' Spencer Kimball on Distributing SQL
Cockroach Labs • The New Stack • February 16, 2024
Chutes & Ladders—Spring Health Hires New COO
Spring Health • Fierce Healthcare • February 16, 2024
Which Private Cloud Tech Companies Are Closest To IPO?
Cockroach Labs • Forbes • February 8, 2024
AI Monitoring Startup Arthur Adds Support For AI-Powered Recommendation Systems
Arthur • SiliconANGLE • January 23, 2024
The NYC Venture Capital Firm News Digest: 1/23/2024
Work-Bench • Alley Watch • January 23, 2024
Fortune Term Sheet
Work-Bench • Fortune • January 11, 2024
Axios Pro Rata
Work-Bench • Axios • January 11, 2024
How Arthur AI is Making LLMs Trustworthy
Arthur • Generative Now • January 11, 2024
Digital ID Verification Firm Socure Bolsters Executive Team with Three New Hires
Socure • FinTech Futures • January 5, 2024
Venture Capital’s 2024 Rising Stars
Work-Bench • Venture Capital Journal • January 1, 2024