#jonathanlehr

Role

As a VC Associate you will research enterprise markets and identify disruptive trends ripe for investment. Within those trends you’ll find companies that are rising stars. You’ll develop relationships with extraordinary founders, with the Work-Bench Ventures investment portfolio and community, and with peers in venture. 

We’ll sit together in company pitch meetings and evaluate their businesses. You’ll conduct due diligence and competitive analyses on companies, and we’ll review the opportunities together. You will manage all deal flow and have the ability to own specific areas from start to finish. Your voice will be heard during partnership meetings and you’ll be expected to provide insights and feedback as we meet new companies.

Since Work-Bench is a startup itself, you’ll have an entrepreneurial and collaborative spirit and be excited about rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty.

Hiring Process

VC is a relationship driven business. Therefore, as your first test, please get a warm introduction to me or someone else on my team, and share your resume and answers to the following questions (your answers for all four questions must be 1-2 pages max).

Why enterprise technology?

What’s an interesting enterprise sector for investment? Name a particular company in the sector and why they’d make a worthwhile investment for Work-Bench Ventures. [Note: Work-Bench Ventures co-invests between $250K-$1M in Series A and Series B rounds]

Why do you want to work in VC, and what have you done that demonstrates your passion for technology and entrepreneurship?

Please share your web presence with us (Facebook, Linkedin, Tumblr, Twitter, etc.). Whether your a developer with a Github profile or a designer with a Behance profile, we would love to get a sense of what drives you. Share something that you feel embodies who you are, and please don't spend anytime cleaning it up for us - we want to see the real you.

Requirements

Demonstrated passion for technology and entrepreneurship

Enthusiastic about talking to entrepreneurs and have the written and oral communication skills to connect effectively

Qualitative and quantitative thinker who can research emerging market opportunities and source new companies

Ambition, perseverance, and resourcefulness like a startup founder

Track record of taking initiative

1-4 years work experience

Legally qualified to work in the US, and able to begin work immediately

Pluses

Your work experience relates to enterprise technology (e.g. worked at Box or VMware)

Outstanding academic record with significant leadership experience / extracurricular achievements

Computer science / technical background

What You Get

VC experience with significant responsibility and involvement in the full investment cycle

Build network of entrepreneurs and co-investors

Startup camaraderie and spirit

Leading role in the future of enterprise technology building, buying, and bridging

Work Hard, Laugh Hard, Play Hard

Come to work in our sunny loft in Union Square, New York

About Work-Bench

1. Google’s security posture

In the first panel session of the day, Ben Fried (CIO of Google) discussed the company’s infrastructure and explained that “if you follow the trend of end users choosing software instead of IT, connecting to the internet becomes more important than to your own datacenters.” As he continued down this train of thought, he explained that “we live in a world of zero trust now” and that the notion of a private enterprise network within a datacenter no longer applies to today’s infrastructure in a public cloud and SaaS tools world.

2. Hearing the former CTO of the CIA compare Security to an Oreo

Gus Hunt, the former CTO of the CIA, gave a “tasty” analogy of where security stands today and how we’re missing the most important piece of the puzzle. He explained that enterprises have firewalls, have implemented usernames and passwords, and keep layering things on to create a hard outer shell of protection, like the top and bottom layers of an Oreo cookie. But meanwhile, no one is focusing on the “creamy center,” which is the enterprise’s data. Most existing solutions today don’t protect enterprise data, so if a company gets breached (which is commonplace today), then the crown jewels will go missing. Future solutions need to protect company data, wherever it ends up.

3. Shift from “keeping bad things out” to understanding and accepting risk

Towards the end of the day, a panel featuring 10 security executives featured heated debate of the best practices for CISOs. This is a sign of the times we’re in today where there is no clear “correct” answer on how enterprises should proceed when it comes to data security. While this dynamic is a bit ominous, it also presents many opportunities for new approaches to be taken in the industry. Historically, the industry’s point of view and budget allocations were oriented towards total prevention of malware and breaches. Now, however, attitudes have shifted, and CISOs understand that you can’t have 100% protection. The panelists all agreed that today’s approach is to understand threats and be able to quickly respond to them.  

4. On today’s pace of innovation

The current pace of innovation is too fast for CISOs to react. For instance, they can’t say no to mobile phones. If you try to protect these devices, you’ll spend time and money to get that issue solved, only to find that once you’ve run that process there will be a new device to protect. As a result, the new key becomes knowing who would attack an organization and why, rather than constantly trying to keep up with new end points. Additionally, the half-life of new security methods keeps decreasing. One panelist cited sandboxing as an example—it was formerly a great threat prevention tool that quickly was rendered essentially useless because hackers have figured out how to bypass it.  

5. Cloud and mobile are here to stay

Cisco’s CSO John Stewart remarked that “most of my users don't care about risk—they care about getting their jobs done." Other CSOs and CISOs echoed this sentiment and agreed that business value and ease of use of software often trumps security concerns these days. The design and usability paradigm is becoming so important in the enterprise that Duncan Angove, President of Infor, explained that they decided to in-source design (vs. the industry norm of outsourcing it) to boost usage of their ERP software.  

2. ‘Land and Expand’ by targeting progressive business units

Land a small use case with a progressive business unit, and get a contract put together. Once you’re established, then you can expand beyond that team into the broader organization with less obstacles in your way.

3. A customer logo can be more important than revenue

In your early days when you’re proving yourself, if a large name customer is pushing hard for price concessions, ask to use their logo on your customer page. This gives you credibility as you sell to other potential customers, and will lead to more revenue in the long run than the discount on that particular deal. Be sure to ask for a certain number of reference calls annually too. To have them do 5 reference calls in a year is a great exchange for a discount, and it will be highly impactful when you’re closing new business.

4. Determine ideal profile of your buyer, and go after warm

Establish the profile of an ideal buyer of your product, and then leverage relationships you have to get in warm. Too many people get spammed with cold emails, so try relationships from partners, customer references, or advisory boards.

You can setup a User Council because it validates your business model. If you’re rolling out a security offering and you have 10 people who can provide feedback on what would be viable and what features they want to see, it can help shape the product. These people will make intros into their networks to help you. For a User Council it is best to target mid-level people because they benefit from adding the experience to their resume and LinkedIn, which is often in-line with their desire to grow their careers.

5. Arm your sales people

Make it easy for your sales team to demo. This especially works nicely if they can make custom branded demos on the fly with ease, which is much simpler to do in the SaaS world than for on-premises software. Customer testimonial videos work nicely too, and some people even commission TCO / Payback model studies to establish value to customers and put real numbers behind their sales talk.

As you grow your sales organization, you want to have a repeatable sales process. Be sure that the infrastructure is scalable, and setup a CRM which can grow with you so that you can capture early tribal knowledge and then bring new hires up to speed quickly and easily.

6. Be wary of resellers & OEM relationships if you sell a SaaS product

A SaaS product for a reseller isn't as lucrative financially as perpetual license software, and as such sometimes you won’t get their full attention. It is often tempting to work with a reseller for a variety of reasons, but realize that you also lose control, your message may get diluted, and you’re giving up a portion of your profit.

While OEM partners are often a quick way to drive early revenue, they will often seek to white-label your offering which dilutes your brand value and can create revenue concentration concerns for future financing rounds.

Want more information? Email [email protected] to get a copy of Tom’s full presentation.

What is your favorite quote? I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction. I got married in May, and besides getting my wife into Seinfeld (which is my favorite show ever), we have a show that we watch together and love: The Mindy Project. This GIF does a great job summarizing just how nerdy I am:

If you could bring any person, dead or alive, into the space, who would it be? Lebron James... hey, you said anyone right? As a diehard Heat fan since I was a kid (and no, I’m not a bandwagon fan like unfortunately many fellow Miamians are), I’d love the opportunity to hang out with him.

Role

As a VC Associate you will research enterprise markets and identify disruptive trends ripe for investment. Within those trends you’ll find companies that are rising stars. You’ll develop relationships with extraordinary founders. We’ll sit together in company pitch meetings and evaluate their businesses. You’ll conduct due diligence and competitive analyses on companies, and we’ll review the opportunities together. Your voice will be heard during partnership meetings and you’ll be expected to provide insights and feedback as we meet new companies.

Since Work-Bench is a startup itself, you’ll have an entrepreneurial spirit and at times collaborate on projects across other areas, such as, but not limited to Business Development, Design, Media, and Operations.

This position is a two-year role intended for someone with less than two years of work experience.

Hiring Process

While thinking about filling this position, I read how top firms have approached hiring for pre-MBA roles. In my research I came across a terrific post by Sarah Tavel (formerly a VP at Bessemer Venture Partners) on VC Pre-MBA Hiring.

I couldn’t have worded it better myself, and I expect anyone considering applying to follow all of her advice regarding ensuring that this role is right for you, and if so, how to best position yourself.

VC is a relationship driven business. Therefore, as your first test, please get a warm introduction to me or someone else on my team, and share your resume and answers to the following questions (your answers for all four questions must be 1-2 pages max).

Why enterprise technology?

What’s an interesting enterprise sector for investment? Name a particular company in the sector and why they’d make a worthwhile investment.

Why do you want to work in VC, and what have you done that demonstrates your passion for technology and entrepreneurship?

Similar to how Union Square Ventures hires, your web presence matters. So please share it. If you’re a developer, share your GitHub profile. If you’re a designer, share your Behance profile. To quote USV:

“This could be anything from a Twitter account to a blog or Tumblr to a project you hacked together - whatever represents you best. We expect your web presence to represent who you are, not who you think an employer wishes you were, so please don't waste time sanitizing your web presence before sending us there. We get it.”

Requirements

Demonstrated passion for technology and entrepreneurship

Enthusiastic about talking to entrepreneurs and have the written and oral communication skills to connect effectively

Qualitative and quantitative thinker who can research emerging market opportunities and source new companies

Ambition, perseverance, and resourcefulness like a startup founder

Track record of taking initiative

0-2 years work experience

Legally qualified to work in the US, and able to begin work immediately

Pluses

Your work experience relates to enterprise technology (e.g. worked at Box or VMware)

Outstanding academic record with significant leadership experience / extracurricular achievements

Computer science / technical background

What You Get

VC experience with significant responsibility and involvement in the full investment cycle

Build network of entrepreneurs and co-investors

Startup camaraderie and spirit

Leading role in the future of enterprise technology building, buying, and bridging

Work Hard, Laugh Hard, Play Hard

Come to work in our sunny loft in Union Square, New York

About Work-Bench

<h2 class="subtitle">Building the Foundation</h2> <p><img alt="image" src="http://rd.work-bench.com/images/VC-Associate.png" /></p> <p class="subtitle"><a class="discrete non-article" href="/tagged/jonathanlehr">By Jonathan Lehr</a> <span class="subtitle">August 22, 2013</span></p