Q3 Highlights: State of NYC Enterprise Seed, Fall of Events, and More
How are we staring down Q4 of 2023 already?
This year has been incredibly challenging for almost everyone in tech. I know for so many, the good fight is still on. At Work-Bench, when times are tough, we double down on our community to provide support.
In light of this, we want to extend an enormous thank you to all those who have been a part of our Work-Bench enterprise software community in NYC over the past decade and who have helped to lift the tide in our ecosystem. 🥹👇
In today’s market, we encourage Seed-stage enterprise software founders to be more thoughtful than ever about which VCs they bring into their camp. In a recent TechCrunch article, Jon Lehr argues how the benefits of receiving hands-on resources from concentrated Seed firms (like Work-Bench) often outweigh the shorter-sighted approach of accepting overly-high valuations from firms who offer limited resources to accelerate their startups’ growth trajectory.
To further recap our quarter, check out a few more notable updates:
We made 3️⃣ stealth Seed-stage investments that we’re excited to announce later this year.
We hosted over 2️⃣5️⃣ events across Sales, Marketing, Product, Finance, Engineering, and AI, bringing together both suits and hoodies.
We launched our Next NYC Network bringing together NYC’s top functional leaders spanning Sales, Marketing, Product, Customer Success, Engineering, and more, to collaborate with our portfolio companies and broader enterprise community on best GTM tactics.
We were excited to see NYC surpassed SF in Seed activity.
We continue to look for investments across AI/ML, Developer Tools and Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and Enterprise Applications.
We surpassed 2️⃣5️⃣,0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ subscribers for our Enterprise Weekly Newsletter.
Wishing everyone the best of luck in finishing a strong Q4 ahead. And as always, if you know any enterprise founders or future founders thinking about building something new, we would love to connect — please send them our way.
🗓️ Upcoming Events
November 9th: #Womenterprise End of Year Drinks hosted alongside Bank of America
November 14th: NY Enterprise Tech Meetup with David Politis, Founder of BetterCloud on his “Founder Survival Guide: 50+ Rules to Live By...Lessons Learned the Hard Way”
🔦 Founder Spotlights
We featured lessons learned from the journeys of a number of our founders, including:
Spring Health’s April Koh on Executing a Mission Driven Approach
Arthur’s Adam Wenchel on The Next Gen of AI In the Enterprise
📚 Our Recent Tactical Content
We also revamped our Playbooks page to include ALL of the tactical enterprise GTM guides we’ve written over the years. Check them out:
📚 Our Recent Technical Research
🗞️ In The News
New York Is A Tech Startup Hotbed After Almost A Decade-Long Run Of IPOs
Catalyst • CNBC • September 22, 2023
Socure Names Aaron Barfoot CFO Ahead Of Potential IPO
Socure • Bloomberg • September 21, 2023
What Is “Title Inflation” At Work And Can It Harm Your Career?
RippleMatch • Silicon Canals • September 7, 2023
Exposed: A Closer Look At Seed Investors' Biases And Incentives
Work-Bench • TechCrunch • September 7, 2023
Building A Diverse, Equitable And Inclusive Culture For Gen-Z
RippleMatch • Forbes • September 5, 2023
The CEO Of A $2.2B Tech Startup—Who’s Sold Companies To Yahoo and Google—Shares The Common Mistake He’s Avoided
Dialpad • CNBC • September 1, 2023
Work-Bench GP Jonathan Lehr on Realigning Funding Rounds
Work-Bench • Wall Street Journal • September 1, 2023
Scaling to $5B With Cockroach Labs’ CEO Spencer Kimball’s Formula For Sustained Growth And Resilience
Cockroach Labs • SaaStr • August 23, 2023
Startup's Tool Aims To Help Companies Decide Which AI Is Right For Them
Arthur • Axios • August 17, 2023
**Arthur also seen in CNBC, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, Fortune & Bloomberg
Cockroach Labs Chief Targets LLMs with Vector Encoding
Cockroach Labs • The New Stack • August 17, 2023
Dialpad Launches Generative AI Trained On 5 Years Of Proprietary Conversational Data
Dialpad • VentureBeat • August 15, 2023
A Zoom Call, Fake Names and an A.I. Presentation Gone Awry
Arthur • New York Times • August 7, 2023
Tech Goes Back To Work—But Not The Office
Arthur & Work-Bench • Crain’s New York Business • August 3, 2023
Tech Spending Has Remained Surprisingly Stable in 2023
Work-Bench • TechCrunch • July 17, 2023
Why Our Databases Are Changing
Cockroach Labs • Forbes • July 6, 2023