Work-Bench is an enterprise software VC firm leading Seed rounds. If you are or know anyone thinking about founding an enterprise software startup — we’d love to meet! Please reach out to chat. 📩
This Monday, Elon Musk’s AI company xAI launched its latest model, Grok 3. As the most advanced in xAI’s lineup, Grok 3 competes directly with OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini 2.0, offering image analysis, question-answering capabilities, and integration with X/Twitter. While full evaluations of the new model will take time, xAI claims Grok 3 outperforms GPT-4o across multiple benchmarks with an early version securing the top spot on Chatbot Arena, a widely followed AI leaderboard.
As AI models continue to improve and lead to more efficiencies across workflows, this begs the question: will it be easier than ever to build a startup with fewer people?
While it’s still early days, Erin Griffith’s recent NYTimes essay suggests ‘yes.’ She points out that instead of raising massive VC rounds and scaling headcount, some AI startups are staying lean—leveraging AI across customer service, marketing, coding, and data analysis to do more with fewer people. And it’s working for startups like Gamma, Anysphere, and ElevenLabs, who are generating millions in revenue with just a handful of employees.
For venture, this could be both an opportunity and a challenge. While AI-driven efficiency could reduce the need for massive funding rounds, it also encourages startups to be more strategic with their capital—further moving away from the “scale at all costs” mentality of previous years. That’s not a bad thing.
This half-day summit is designed to arm Pre-Seed enterprise, SaaS, and Infra founders with the exact sales and marketing playbooks needed to land customers and scale fast. No fluff. No theory. Just battle-tested tactics:
💡 Hard Lessons of GTM as a Technical Founders with Dan Lorenc, Founder & CEO of Chainguard
🤝 Sales That Close Deals led by Kiran Narsu, Work-Bench Sales Advisor
🎯 Marketing That Builds Demand led by Ryan Narod, Work-Bench Marketing Advisor and VP of Corporate & Integrated Marketing at Rippling
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Company: Spring Health
Role: VP, Strategic Finance and Investor Relations
Technology: Mental Healthcare
Funding: $466.5M from Work-Bench, Northzone, Rethink, Kinnevik, Tiger Global, Generation Investment Management
🌟 Company of the Week 🌟
Gomboc AI raises $8M led by Ballistic Ventures
Risk / Security • Seed • New York, NY
Co-Founders: Ian Amit (CEO), Matthew Sweeney (CPO)
FullEnrich raises $2M led by Flex Capital,Kima Ventures, and Others
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Serverpod raises $2.8M led by node.vc
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • Stockholm, Sweden
Lingo.dev raises $4.2M led by Initialized Capital
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Valid raised $5.5M led by Canaan Partners
Sales / Marketing • Seed • San Francisco, CA
MirrorTab raises $8.5M led by Valley Capital Partners
Risk / Security • Seed • San Francisco, CA
Singulr AI raises $10M led by Nexus Venture Partners and Dell Technologies Capital
Risk / Security • Seed • Palo Alto, CA
Stacks raises $10M led by EQT Ventures and General Catalyst
Future of Work • Seed • Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Nodes & Links raises $12M led by ETF Partners
Future of Work • Series B • Tel Aviv, Israel
Relish raises $25M led by Base10 Partners
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series B • Newbury, OH
Sanas raises $65M led by Quadrille Capital
Future of Work • Series B • Palo Alto, CA
Augury raises $75M led by Lightrock
Future of Work • Series F • New York, NY
Baseten raises $75M led by IVP and Spark
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Luminance raises $75M led by Point72 Private Investments
Future of Work • Series C • London, UK
Hightouch raises $80M led by Sapphire Ventures
Sales / Marketing • Series C • San Francisco, CA
Dream raises $100M led by Bain Capital Ventures
Risk / Security • Series B • Tel Aviv, Israel
Verkada raises $200M led by General Catalyst
Risk / Security • Series E • San Mateo, CA
Together AI raises $305M led by General Catalyst and Prosperity7
Data / AI / Machine Learning • Series B • San Francisco, CA
Lambda raises $480M led by Andra Capital and SGW
Infrastructure / Dev Tools • Series D • San Jose, CA
Rezolve Ai acquires GroupBy for $55M
Sales / Marketing • Acquisition • Toronto, Canada
CyberArk acquires Zilla Security for $165M
Risk / Security • Acquisition • Boston, MA
Deepwatch acquires Dassana for an Undisclosed Amount
Risk / Security • Acquisition • San Mateo, CA
Menlo Security acquires Votiro for an Undisclosed Amount
Risk / Security • Acquisition • Austin, TX
