Summer 2016

This summer I interned for Work-Bench, an enterprise venture capital firm based in New York City. Work-Bench co-invests in early go-to-market enterprise startups alongside institutional leads, with a primary focus on Series A and B investment rounds. W-B leverages their deep corporate network as a way to identify trends, pick the winners, and secure customers for their portfolio companies.

More about my time at Work-Bench

My weekly tasks were to contribute a portion of the Enterprise Weekly newsletter. I was also responsible for the recent fundings and acquisitions, and the company of the week description. I performed CRM administration; which included adding companies to deal sheet, filling out existing company details based on public data sources (quarter by quarter), and moving sourcing documents to RelateIQ. In addition, I updated the corporate contact list by mining business development emails and inputting the essential information into Salesforce, as well as organize and populate any missing information.

BD/VC Meetings

Work-Bench hosts several executive briefings a quarter, in which they bring in an executive from a Fortune 500 corporation, normally the Chief Information, Technology, and Security Officers. Work-Bench gathers relevant enterprise technology companies in their network to present during the half-day workshop. Prior to these executive briefings, I was responsible for scheduling the thirty minute startup presentations, preparing company background research to both the corporate officer(s) and Work-Bench’s head of business development, and taking notes as to what the corporate officer(s)’s questions were, and any insight they could provide. These executive briefings were some of the most valuable experiences during my time at Work-Bench. I was fortunate enough to gain real insight as to the direction these Fortune 500 companies are heading in.

I attended at least one startup introductory meeting per week and one corporate relationship meeting per week. I prepared research, took notes and drafted follow up emails for each of these meetings.
I attended several meetup events over my time with the company, representing Work-Bench during which I practiced our elevator pitch and relayed the story of how the company came to be what it is today. The most hallowed meetup group was the New York Enterprise Technology Meetup. The goal for the NYETM is to promote New York early stage enterprise technology companies by supporting entrepreneurs and educating companies on how to work with enterprise customers. The NYETM was specifically designed for entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses to network and learn from one another.

Sourcing Deals

Throughout the internship, I scraped companies from the recent fundings, POVs, deal sheet that match our investment themes who could be a potential investment, and drafted reach out emails.
As a business development project, I researched “social” corporate executives from industry event panels and LinkedIn, and compiled a list of social corporates for later use by Work-Bench.

Point of View Research Support

Throughout my time at Work-Bench, I researched the following corporate sectors: advertising, media & entertainment, telecom, CPG, retail, utilities, oil & gas, healthcare/pharmaceuticals. During this process, I gathered relevant news articles and analyst reports around the area of focus, and subsequently summarized them. I would also identify entrepreneurs, academics, VCs, equity analysts, investment bankers who are experts within these industries and draft interview request emails.

Summer 2015

I spent the summer of 2015 at Highway 1, a hardware accelerator based in San Francisco, California. Highway 1 is owned and operated by PCH International, a technology hardware manufacturing company. PCH’s operation is in Shenzen, China, considered the mecca of the Chinese technology industry. As a part of the investment team at Highway 1, we reviewed prospective investment opportunities in both consumer and enterprise markets.

I assisted portfolio companies with market research, go-to-market strategy, funding, customer acquisition and experience. For a long term project, I created a spreadsheet to track portfolio company fundings. I processed each application to the program from the F6S and AngelList online application. We received over 350 applications for 10-12 spots. Our member companies received $50,000 for a 5% equity stake.

Learn more about Compression Kinetics

When I came across the application for Compression Kinetics, I was captivated from the very beginning. They were creating a medical device that was to be worn around each calf, and will compress and expand, helping push blood from your legs to your heart. This device helps increase the user’s blood circulation exponentially.

I contributed to the seed round of a startup called Compression Kinetics. I met the Compression Kinetics team during my time at Highway 1. I made the decision to invest in their idea because they had a scalable product, with many different enterprise and consumer verticals.

Summer 2014

In the summer of 2014, I interned at Focus Ventures, a late-stage, enterprise software-focused venture fund in Palo Alto, California. During my time at Focus, I created a prospective company investment database for due-diligence purposes. I met with enterprise startups and provided input about market size and segment. I also developed an investment analysis on prospective deals. My internship at Focus Ventures was a pivotal point in my career development because it solidified my interest in joining technology upon graduation.

Summer 2013

I first developed my deal tracking skills in the summer of 2013 at JMP Securities in San Francisco, California. I created and edited hundreds of company profiles of both private and public technology firms. While the companies I worked with at JMP were in the public market, I learned that a strong company is not based solely off of high revenue and good margins. What you really want to look for include strong customers, leadership, market size, and long-term defensibility.