At a Glance
Work-Bench is a venture capital firm based in New York, NY founded in 2013. We’re your go-to VC partner in the trenches supporting you to close enterprise deals and scale your go-to-market effort with our unmatched New York City hustle. The firm focuses on Pre-Seed, Seed investments across sectors including Enterprise, AI. The firm manages $250M in assets under management. Notable portfolio companies include Digital Ocean, Namely, Managed by Q, SecurityScorecard and Immuta. NYC-based seed investor helping enterprise-focused founders close deals and scale go-to-market strategies.
“NYC-based seed investor helping enterprise-focused founders close deals and scale go-to-market strategies.”
Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin co-founded Work-Bench and run it as general partners. Lehr came from Morgan Stanley's Office of the CIO, where he sat on the buying side of enterprise software procurement, and invests in AI and machine learning, developer tools and infrastructure. Lin came from Cisco, where she worked on agile transformation and culture, and covers horizontal and vertical SaaS.
Kelley Mak is a general partner focused on security and cloud-native infrastructure, previously a security analyst at Forrester. Daniel Chesley is a principal covering machine learning, developer tools and SaaS, and was a product manager at Hyperscience. Proby Shandilya is an associate working on agentic systems, developer tools, security and enterprise applications, and Pattie Tope manages day-to-day operations and the firm's heavy New York events calendar.
Work-Bench's institutional history is visible in full through its SEC filings. Work-Bench Ventures II, LP, a New York partnership formed in 2016, noticed a $40 million target in May 2017 and closed at $46.235 million, fully sold, with a first sale on May 23, 2017; a parallel vehicle, Ventures II-A, filed alongside it. Fund III was organised in 2020 and noticed a $100 million target in November 2020, with Ventures III-A filing at the same $100 million in June 2021.
A Work-Bench Ventures Select Fund, LP followed in April 2022 at a $30 million target, built to concentrate follow-on capital into existing positions, and Work-Bench Ventures IV, LP was noticed in November 2023 with a $125 million target. The firm has also used single-purpose vehicles, including Work-Bench Kelethin, LLC, which raised $79,000 in 2019. Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin are the named executive officers on every filing, with Work-Bench Management, LLC as promoter. The portfolio now spans 43 active companies and six exits, including CoreOS to Red Hat, Semmle to GitHub and FireHydrant to Freshworks.
Work-Bench primarily invests at the Pre-Seed, Seed stages. This means they focus on companies that are at the earliest idea or prototype phase.
Work-Bench is headquartered in New York, NY. Many of their portfolio companies are also based in this region, though they invest across geographies.
Work-Bench focuses on investments in Enterprise, AI. Their portfolio reflects deep expertise and networks within these sectors.
Work-Bench's typical investment check size ranges from $3M to $6M. Actual amounts may vary based on the stage, sector, and specific opportunity.
Work-Bench manages approximately $250M in assets under management (AUM) across their funds.
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