Work-Bench

Join our next NY Enterprise Tech Meetup on March 18th with two of NYC's top fintech engineering leaders from Ramp and Socure. 🔥 Our panelists: - Nik Koblov, Head of Engineering at Ramp - Arun Kumar, CTO of Socure - Kelley Mak, GP Partner at Work-Bench We'll dive deep into how Ramp and Socure built engineering platforms that serve massive customers, all while navigating the rise of AI, compliance requirements, and the challenges of growing engineering teams that balance speed, innovation, risk, and technical debt. Some topics we'll get into: 🛠️ Building a hypergrowth engineering machine 🤓 Unconventional strategies to attract and close top engineering talent 🤖 Examples of where AI is delivering ROI vs. where it's still hype 🎂 How to bake security and compliance into a velocity model 💰 Tactics for translating technical complexity into business outcomes RSVP in comments.

Excited to announce the 3rd speaker joining our NYC Pre-Seed GTM Summit lineup: 🔥 Dan Lorenc, Founder & CEO of Chainguard 🔥 ➡️ About Dan: Dan has been at the forefront of software supply chain security, building Chainguard into a category-defining company helping enterprises secure their software from source to production. Before that, he was an SWE at Google for close to a decade, where he worked on dev infrastructure, tooling, and OSS — helping start and maintain many popular open source projects like Minikube, Skaffold, Distroless, Tekton, Sigstore, and SLSA. ➡️ His Talk: Dan will share the real talk and lessons learned as a technical founder on all things GTM, scaling Chainguard from 0 to Series C -- from scaling a developer-first motion to what it takes to bring products to market to navigating enterprise adoption, and more. If you’re building in enterprise SaaS or Infra, don't miss this summit! 🗓️ Wed, March 12th 📍 IRL in NYC  🔗 Registration link below!

We’re hosting 3 upcoming events curated for enterprise, SaaS, and Infra founders at the earliest stage 🤓 whether you're navigating technical GTM or looking for candid founder-to-founder advice, check them out: 🔹 Feb 27 | BYOC & Bagels 🥯☁️ A technical GTM hangout with Priyanka Somrah, diving into 'Bring Your Own Cloud' (BYOC) deployments. If you’re scaling enterprise infra, join us! https://lu.ma/BYOC 🔹 March 11 | Ask Me Anything for AI Founders / Future Founders 💡🔥 An informal Q&A with Diego Oppenheimer, co-founder of Algorithmia (acq. by DataRobot), around all things building in AI including, validating an initial startup idea, finding a cofounder, closing an enterprise customer, and more. https://lu.ma/AIfounderAMA 🔹 March 12 | NYC Pre-Seed GTM Summit 🚀 💰 A half-day summit designed to give the exact sales and marketing playbooks needed to land customers and scale fast with topics including: -Hard Lessons of GTM as a Technical Founder with Chainguard's Dan Lorenc -Sales That Close Deals led by Kiran Narsu -Marketing That Builds Demand led by Rippling's Ryan Narod https://lu.ma/gtmsummit A look at some of our past events 👇 or IYKYK 😉

Enterprise sales is brutal when you’re just starting out. No brand recognition, no case studies...just you, cold emails, and an early product. But what if you had the exact outbound templates, discovery call questions, sales deck secrets, and B2B marketing channels priorities that actually work? That’s exactly what we’re covering at our upcoming Pre-Seed Enterprise Sales & Marketing Summit in NYC on March 12th: 📌 Sales That Close Deals – Led by Kiran Narsu 📌 Marketing That Builds Demand – Led by Rippling's Ryan Narod No fluff. No theory. Just battle-tested tactics. Spots are limited—apply now (Luma in comments)!

📣 Calling All Pre-Seed Enterprise, SaaS, & Infra Founders in NYC! Struggling to get your early go-to-market and sales in motion? We’ve got you. Join us in NYC for a packed half-day summit designed to arm you with the exact sales and marketing playbooks you need to land customers and scale fast. 🤝 Sales That Close Deals Cut through the noise and turn outreach into revenue. This session will break down: ▪️Outbound messages that get replies ▪️Discovery call questions that uncover real pain points ▪️Sales deck secrets that get enterprise buyers to lean in 📌 Led by Work-Bench sales advisor Kiran Narsu 🎯 Marketing That Builds Demand How do you get to prospects with limited brand awareness and budget? Walk away knowing: ▪️Automated GTM plays you should be doing (and not doing) ▪️4 essential B2B marketing channels and which to prioritize ▪️Must knows when bringing on your 1st BDR 📌 Led by Ryan Narod, VP of Corporate & Integrated Marketing at Rippling 🚀 Why This Summit Is Different ✔ No fluff. No theory. Just battle-tested tactics. ✔ A room of Pre-Seed enterprise founders. Because connections matter. ✔ Expert-led sessions from operators who’ve been in your shoes. Apply now to join - luma in the comments & spots are limited!

"𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬𝐫𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐢 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐩 𝐃𝐍𝐀 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐍𝐘𝐂’𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧" I had a fun interview with CTech by Calcalist about working with Israeli founders in NYC. At Work-Bench we have a deep bench of portfolio companies with Israeli founders, and we're always looking to grow that list! We covered several topics including: - Why invest in an Israeli company in New York? What advantages do such companies have? How is the New York market different from the Israeli market? - How do Israeli entrepreneurs/startups differ from their local counterparts? - How do you assess the risk involved in investing in Israeli companies in the current situation? - Two suggestions for Israeli entrepreneurs on what to do in New York: - And more... Check out a link to the full story in the comments and thanks Guy Franklin and Israeli Mapped in NY for the opportunity. cc CloudQuery, Runhouse, SeeMetrics, OpenOps, autokitteh

One of the most common questions I get asked by early-stage application founders is, “what’s the magic number I need to successfully raise a Series A?” $1M ARR has always been the unofficial benchmark for early-stage startups to raise a Series A, but with shifting market dynamics…things are changing. To help founders better understand the metrics expected ahead of a Series A fundraise, I surveyed 30 investors from top Seed, Series A, and Multistage funds to get their take on what it takes to raise a Series A in 2025. Here’s what they said: • ARR for a STANDARD Series A fundraise = $1M - $1.5M • ARR for an EXCEPTIONAL Series A fundraise = $2M - $3M • YoY growth for a STANDARD Series A fundraise = 3x • YoY growth for an EXCEPTIONAL Series A fundraise = anywhere from 4x-10x Especially living in the AI boom, fast growth alone isn’t enough and investors are digging into business fundamentals like: • Margin Profiles: Margins are expected to improve over time as inference costs decrease • Revenue Durability: AI startups must move beyond niche use cases to find stickier, more durable workflows that can command higher ACVs • Customer Concentration: Investors are willing to accept some risk here if deals can command those sticky, high ACVs • Retention: Customer health and renewals are increasingly more important in an AI-native world • AI Narrative: Clear differentiation vs. incumbents & scale up startups is essential 😎 TLDR: The bar for raising a Series A is only getting harder — these expectations show how Series A investors are looking for fast growing, efficient companies that can retain customers at scale. For all of my findings (including some caveats and expanded notes), find my full post in the comments. And as always, if you’re building in AI/ML/Data, Infrastructure, Security, or Enterprise Applications, feel free to reach out.

We're excited to lift the covers on AI-native appsec company, DryRun Security! We led the Pre-Seed and doubled down on the Seed round led by LiveOak Ventures, alongside Cannage Capital, for a total of $8.7M raised. 🔓 The problem: As application security reaches a new level of scale, organizations are seeing two compounding issues: development velocity has outpaced security tools and architecture complexity has exploded. The result is that security teams spend endless hours writing and maintaining complex rules to catch potential threats, only to generate hundreds of alerts that overwhelm developers. ‼️ Security tools need to think like security teams, considering not just the code itself, but how it fits into the broader application. ⚒️ The solution: Founded by two longtime appsec leaders James Wickett and Ken Johnson, DryRun Security helps application security teams cut through thousands of code changes to find critical vulnerabilities by combining contextual analysis with natural language security policies. The platform seamlessly integrates into existing GitHub workflows, enabling teams to: ➡️ Identify unknown risks before they enter production ➡️ Enforce security policies without slowing down development ➡️ Get precise, contextual feedback directly in developer workflows ➡️ Eliminate the complexity of traditional rule-writing With strong validation from customers like PlanetArt, BrightHR, and Gusto, we're thrilled to support James, Ken, and the entire DryRun Security team as they build the next generation of AI-native application security tools. 💪

As the center of gravity for enterprise tech in NYC since 2013 with community deep in our DNA, we're seeing tons of new people move to NYC every day, creating a bigger need than ever for a community to connect, empower, and inspire the next generation of founders. That’s why we’re excited that our teammate Daniel Chesley launched cofounders.nyc, a platform and community specifically dedicated to help you find the right cofounder and early team. Why cofounders.nyc? ➡️ Not just another online cofounder: An in-person community for technologists to connect, learn, and build something new. 🗽 NYC-Focused: Your next cofounder is just a subway ride away. 🤝 Curated Matches: A community of NYC’s top operators across exited founders, engineers, sellers, and more, so you can connect with people whose strengths complement your own. 🍻 Events: Regularly host events - the first is a Cofounder & Founding Engineer event on February 4th – RSVP in comments!. How It Works: 1. Create your profile 2. Browse profiles and discover matches 3. Connect and collaborate 4. Launch your dream with the right cofounder NYC, let’s make it happen! 🚀

We're thrilled to announce that Work-Bench has led Prequel.dev's $3.3M Seed round, with participation from Runtime Ventures, Operator Partners, and founders of category-defining infra companies 🎉 🚀 The problem 🤕 As applications grow more complex, DevOps and SRE teams face mounting challenges: managing diverse technology stacks with limited expertise, working across siloed teams, dealing with overwhelming telemetry data, relying on customers rather than proactive detection, and struggling with time-consuming manual instrumentation. The team 🤓 Co-founders Lyndon K. Brown and Tony Meehan have decades of experience in security detection and response and leading engineering teams at Elastic, Endgame, and the NSA. But what truly sets them apart, is their genuine drive to make life easier for DevOps and SRE teams — a mission that resonates deeply with us at Work-Bench. The solution ⚒️ Prequel is a problem detection and management platform featuring an out-of-the-box detection library, a problem detection community (detect.sh), and the industry’s first reliability research team. Prequel helps DevOps teams quickly identify and resolve infrastructure issues across open-source software, misconfigurations, and developer-introduced bugs. The platform is already used by leading technology companies in FinTech, Infrastructure, and SaaS, dramatically reducing incident detection and resolution times. Huge thanks to Rebecca Szkutak for covering them in TechCrunch. Find the article in the comments!