Work-Bench

Last night, we hosted our first-ever Live Podcast Recording x NY Enterprise Tech Meetup with a behind-the-scenes, real talk look at how Ramp and Figma have become such product powerhouses and generational companies. Our GP Jessica Lin moderated a panel with Geoff Charles (Ramp's VP of Product) and Mihika Kapoor (Figma’s Product Lead), who shared some 🌶️ takes on their product journey: 📅 Forget roadmaps beyond 6 months. Long-term roadmaps are rarely accurate, so avoid planning for an unpredictable future. 📜 Don’t spend hours crafting the perfect strategy document…no one will read it. Instead focus on how you can visually present your idea – a mock up / demo / etc. goes a much longer way. 🔥 Push through the “nos.” Mihika’s tenacity in making Figma Slides a reality, despite countless “nos” from the founders, was a great lesson on the lengths needed to justify a product into existence. 🔍 There’s nothing wrong with being a features factory if needed. But be intentional about impact and have a strong POV on how these features will drive change and impact. ⏱ Velocity is everything. Geoff gave an example of getting off a customer call one night and having the team build a new feature by morning. This speed is what sets you apart from sleepy incumbents. 🤝 Become BFFs with your top sales reps. They're often most in tune with customer needs and can be your pulse on customer resonance and invaluable allies. We've got clips off all of Geoff and Mihika's greatest takeaways coming soon! Follow Work-Bench on LinkedIn to see them first! We’re beyond pumped to see the NYC enterprise and SaaS community come out strong and huge thank you to Ramp for hosting us at their beautiful office. If you’re a Pre-Seed or Seed founder building across AI/ML, cybersecurity, infra/dev tools, or SaaS - we’d love to meet you!

Are you a first time enterprise software founder looking to fundraise? Today, Rho's Justin Wolz published his podcast episode with our General Partner Jonathan Lehr and this one is for you👇 He covers the various VC models out there (ie. YC, high-volume funds, multi-stage funds, concentrated funds) invest at the Seed stage in today's market and what each can offer founders beyond capital. Definitely worth a listen. Full episode linked in the comments.

💡 If you could ask Geoff Charles (VP of Product at Ramp) and Mihika Kapoor (Product Lead at Figma) anything about their product strategy…what would it be? 🤔 Next week, we’re hosting a live podcast recording with these two incredible product leaders, and we want to know what burning questions you have! We'll dive deep into tactical insights on how to push your product to the next level with velocity, collaboration, and experimentation—so please share your questions below ⬇️

We’re all about helping startups master the journey from 0 to 1, and one way we do that is through our tactical Masterclass series 🚀 Up next: Creating a Predictable Top-Of-Funnel Engine 🚂 🔍 The problem: Many teams put all their energy into moving prospects down the funnel, only to come up for air and find their top-of-funnel pipeline has dried up. 💡 The solution: An always-on, predictable top-of-funnel engine ensures you're never scrambling to find new prospects. Join us as Robin Izsak-Tseng, a growth marketing leader previously at G2 and BetterCloud, dives into 5 battle-tested (and inexpensive) campaigns to build a sustainable and predictable top-of-funnel engine. 👉 Whether you’re an early-stage founder or a marketing leader, this session is packed with insights to fuel your funnel and drive sustainable growth. RSVP link in comments.

🚀 There are 2 critical aspects of sales many teams forget about: 1️⃣ Top-of-funnel marketing engine 2️⃣ Post-sales support To help teams master both, we’re hosting not just one, but TWO masterclasses—each laser-focused on these crucial areas. 🌪 Creating an Always On, Predictable Top-Of-Funnel Engine Tues. Oct 29th at 1PM ET Robin Izsak-Tseng, a growth marketing leader previously at G2 and BetterCloud will deep dive into 5 battle-tested (and inexpensive) campaigns to build a sustainable and predictable top-of-funnel engine. 🛠 “I Signed a Customer...Now What?”: How To Structure a Post-Sales Process Wed. Nov 6th at 1PM ET Kiran Narsu, our trusted Work-Bench Sales Advisor, will walk through his framework for building a rock-solid post-sales model from implementation to onboarding to training to product adoption and beyond to renewal/expansion. See sign up links in the comments.

Come join a very special NY Enterprise Tech Meetup! What's special❓👇 🛠 We have the NYC product leaders behind two of the fastest growing and widely adopted products in their space - Ramp & Figma 🎙 We'll be doing a LIVE podcast recording and you get to be part of it 😎 It's our last Meetup of the year, which we always strive to make extra fun Our panelists: 🔥 Geoff Charles, VP of Product at Ramp -- he played a pivotal role in the development and release of 60+ products and features in 2023 alone. 🔥 Mihika Kapoor, Product Lead at Figma -- she was recently voted the #1 PM to work with by Lenny Rachitsky’s product community and is known as Figma’s go-to person leading 0-to-1 products, including FigJam and Figma Slides. 🔥 Moderated by Jessica Lin, General Partner at Work-Bench 🛠️ We’ll be digging into: ▶ What a product sprint looks like ▶ Frameworks to navigate immediate product needs & the long-term roadmap ▶ How to navigate setbacks or loss of momentum with a product launch ▶ How to get buy-in from leadership ▶ How to create a culture of high-velocity, collaboration and experimentation

"You’re probably the most knowledgeable investor I’ve met about the space" Literally not about me lol and why I can shout this from the roof 📣 Nothing makes Jonathan Lehr and I prouder than hearing this from founders when they speak with our killer team of Daniel Chesley, Priyanka Somrah, and Kelley Mak. We definitely do not know everything here at Work-Bench...but the areas of SaaS/infra/enterprise software we do know, we know a LOT about 🧠 🤔 Deep AI infrastructure that can coordinate task execution across distributed computing? ⏩ check out Priyanka's tweet thread at Ray Summit this week (in comments) 🤔 Building workflow tools on top of proprietary data sets and thinking through discovery, redaction, DLP? ⏩ check out Danny's Substack on his learnings as a PM in this space (comments) As you consider the world of Seed investors out there - I hope you find yourself a partner who knows what they know (and who are deeply passionate about it and can nerd tf out about it alongside you) and also who are self-aware enough to know what they do NOT know. We are meeting with pre-seed founders and even pre-founder operators everyday here at Work-Bench to talk out loud about how they see the world - and for us to share what we're seeing too. These aren't "pitches" - but are talk out loud sessions with our team to whiteboard, jam, and help shape and package and mold what you're thinking about building in SaaS + infra. If this is you -> DM me! 👋

Thank you so much to the amazing crowd of SaaS founders and operators who came out to our NYC SaaS Happy Hour in Williamsburg last night! 🍻 We had such awesome energy in the room from great folks from companies like Airtable, dbt, Greenhouse, Rippling, Spotify, Figma, Baseten, Slack, Cockroach Labs, and more…NYC is thriving 🚀🚀 Lastly, huge thank you to our co-hosts - we love partnering with so many of the new pre-seed firms here in NYC doing great work 💪 Benchstrength (John Monagle Ken Chenault Jr), Comma Capital (David Ongchoco Adarsh Bhatt), Darkmode Ventures (Raphael Danilo), Formation (Leeor Mushin Solly Garber), Kearny Jackson (Sriram K. Sunil Chhaya), Nebular (Finn Murphy), Opal Ventures (Owen Willis), Vermilion Cliffs Ventures (Ashley Smith). If you’re an enterprise/SaaS/Infra founder or operator looking to get plugged into the NYC community, sign up for our newsletter in the comments for future events.

🗓️💥 We’re hosting a NYC SaaS Happy Hour next Wednesday, September 25th at 6PM in Williamsburg and have a few spots left! 💥🗓️ We're bringing together our awesome community of founders and operators from Hebbia, Baseten, Figma, Airtable, Retool, dbt, Webflow, Merge, Ashby, and more for drinks and a fun night of connecting.   We’re also teaming up with an all-star lineup of NYC Pre-Seed investors, including Benchstrength, Comma Capital, Darkmode Ventures, Formation, Kearny Jackson, Nebular, Opal Ventures, and Vermilion Cliffs Ventures. Fall is buzzing in NYC and it's going to be a great night. 🍻 🎉 https://lnkd.in/dtE8TUJQ

We’re often asked: “What are the top enterprise companies growing in NYC?”  As longtime investors in NYC, we’re thrilled to see the density of enterprise software companies continue to grow! In recent years, NYC has been giving San Francisco a run for its money, surpassing the number of early-stage deals done locally, and companies are recognizing NYC’s top notch tech talent and choosing to grow here 🚀🗽 So we put together a (non-exhaustive) list of 16 mid- to late-stage enterprise software companies hiring and scaling teams in NYC. If you're looking for your next job or just wondering who the next gen of NYC enterprise software is, check 'em out: Baseten Cohere Fireworks AI Harvey Hebbia Hex Hightouch Merge Middesk MotherDuck Perplexity Persona Pinecone Runway Retool Writer