I had the most wonderful night hosting a platform din with some of the best VCs in NYC! Nothing more fun than talking shop & laughing a lot… the best! 🥳
@anniesko_@anneablum@gilbirnboim@kcolburn2011 + Alice + Ashton
I was negotiating a Term Sheet with a founder, and just before wrapping up, he says “I have something that may be awkward to ask…”
I had no idea where the conversation was about to go, so I braced myself for what he was going to say.
Before sharing his ask, some context: He’s been working on this startup for 4.5 years (this is a Seed II round) and previously worked on his last startup for 4 years without a big exit. He has a baby at home and his partner watches the baby so that he can focus on his startup.
His ask was whether he could sell some secondary to be able to get a nanny a few times a week to help with the load at home and also get some time where neither he nor his partner was busy.
My immediate answer was of course. This isn’t some egregious secondary to cash out millions from his early stage business. It’s to bolster his Seed stage founder salary with a quality of life improvement.
What bothers me is how many other founders may have been too nervous to ask. When a founder is raising it’s often tough to be vulnerable about something like this.
In fact, the opposite should be true.
As VCs, we need our founders fully locked into their businesses without worrying about putting food on their table, paying rent, caring for a child or elderly parent, etc.
Everyone’s situation is different and there’s no blanket answer for how to handle things aside from talking through things openly and without judgement. In fact, once a potential founder with several children realized that launching a startup was too risky given their own personal situation and Seed salary benchmarks we provided.
Hopefully more convos like this between investors and founders won't be nerve-wracking for the founder or seen as taboo by the investor.
The function of "VC Platform" can really mean anything under the☀️
For us, it's focusing on ENTERPRISE GTM TACTICS & amplifying that knowledge through our 2 flywheels:
📕Content
🤓Community
Read more about our Head of Platform @kcolburn2011 👇
https://t.co/lLzmtLB669
Thank you to everyone who joined our #Womenterprise End of Year Drinks last night!
Seeing so many women connect, collaborate & support one another was truly inspiring 💪
We have a lot more to come in 2024 - stay tuned! 🎉
This week marks @Work_Bench's 10th anniversary 🥳🥂
To celebrate, @jerseejess & I have been reflecting on the decade, digging through our favorite memories, and reminiscing on this wild journey
To kick off the week, here's photos from 10 moments over our past 10 years 📸
So epic to see our #Womenterprise23 Summit & 9 incredible speakers up in lights on the @Nasdaq Tower this week🤩
Thank you @Nasdaq for making this a reality & helping amplify that women in enterprise software are a force here in NYC💪🔥
Couldn't agree more with this! As Head of Content at @Work_Bench my job is NOT to ghost write the blog for my investment team...its to provide the strategy, structure & overall guidance to help them write their own beautiful pieces🖊️
We’re kicking off research for our updated #Womenenterprise Report💁♀️💪
🚨We have a favor to ask our community🚨
If you are or know any enterprise female founders, please tag them or email us, so we can add them to our comprehensive database
women [at] work-bench [dot] com