IL Tech in NY"Taking that Israeli startup DNA and blending it with NYC’s enterprise customer base is a powerful combination"
IL Tech in NY
"Taking that Israeli startup DNA and blending it with NYC’s enterprise customer base is a powerful combination"
New York-based enterprise venture capital firm Work-Bench took part in CTech's IL Tech in NY series in collaboration with Israeli Mapped in NY ahead of Calcalist’s Mind The Tech conference next month.
“Don’t spend all day working from home. Even if your company is remote, there’s so much action here to plug into that can benefit your career,” said Work-Bench. “Attend meetups and build your network.”
The New York-based enterprise venture capital firm was giving advice to Israeli founders as part of CTech’s 2025 IL Tech in NY series in collaboration with Israeli Mapped in NY. The firm was founded in 2013 by Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin and leads pre-Seed and Seed rounds.
“Don't talk about sensitive company information in public places like coffee shops or on the subway,” it continued. “Many people in New York City speak Hebrew even if it's not immediately obvious from looking at them.”
You can read the entire interview below.
Fund ID
Name and type of VC: Work-Bench is an enterprise venture capital firm based in New York City. We lead $3M - $6M Seed rounds in enterprise software startups, focus on supporting all things go-to-market, and have built a dynamic enterprise tech community.
Main fields of investment: AI / Machine Learning, Cloud Native Infrastructure / Dev Tools, Cybersecurity, and Application Layer
Names of managing partners: Jonathan Lehr and Jessica Lin co-founded Work-Bench in 2013.
Partners and/or other backers: Kelley Mak is our third General Partner.
Year of founding/start of NY operations: Work-Bench launched in July 2013.
Total sum of investments/size, number of funds: $375M AUM
Median investment amount/Average investment in startups: We lead Pre-Seed and Seed rounds and our typical check size is between $2.5-$3.5M.
Number/size of rounds led: 60+
General background on the organization, its managers, its founders, and partners:
Jonathan Lehr is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Work-Bench, focusing on investments in areas including Machine Learning and AI, Cloud-Native Infrastructure, and Developer Tools. Before Work-Bench, Jon worked at Morgan Stanley in the Office of the CIO in IT where he partnered with internal technology clients to facilitate the selection and onboarding of emerging technology startups. Here, Jon realized the enterprise startup community in NYC was still relatively nascent, so he founded the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup in January 2012 as a place for entrepreneurs, Fortune 500 technologists, and investors to collaborate. Today, the meetup is now over a decade old with over 10,000 members and 100 events hosted.
Jessica Lin is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Work-Bench, focusing on investments in the future of work and enterprise applications. Jessica is passionate about growing and supporting women in enterprise tech, launching our 2023 #Womenterprise Summit, 2018 Navigate Summit, and our Founders of Enterprise Startups (Who Are Women) Database. Before Work-Bench, Jessica was a Learning and Development Manager at Cisco Systems, where she worked with the Engineering organization on Agile transformation, innovation and culture. Seeing the complexities and barriers to corporate organizations, she knew she wanted to make enterprise software more accessible and fun, and jumped headfirst into investing. Additionally, Jessica is actively involved with the education and workforce development community in New York City, as a longtime adult GED educator.
The Vision:
Since day one, Work-Bench has been a thesis-driven venture capital firm with a concentrated approach to Seed investing in enterprise startups. We flip the traditional VC model on its head and start with the pain point rather than the technology. Our model works by leveraging our customer network of Fortune 500 and scaling technology companies in our NYC backyard to develop investment themes across various sectors. We then share our research publicly and host community events related to those themes which helps us identify the best companies solving those challenges.
Through this model and our concentrated approach to portfolio construction, not only can we find relevant startups early, but we’re able to understand what they’re building on a much deeper level than more generalist investors and in ‘speaking the same language’ of their unique product domain, identify ways we can support their go-to-market and scaling efforts post-investment. Specifically we enjoy digging into the 0 to 1 GTM journey with founders to assist with messaging, ICP definition, pipeline generation, and more.
We’ve written extensively about different Seed VC archetypes and their underlying incentives, and this article is a helpful primer on the pros and cons of different models and why we choose to take a concentrated approach at Work-Bench.
What types of Israeli startups/entrepreneurs are you interested in?
At Work-Bench, we’re thesis driven across our areas of investment in AI / Machine Learning, Cloud Native / Dev Tools, Cybersecurity, and Application Layer companies. When evaluating startups, we often appreciate founders who have deep domain expertise in their target market and have prior work experience where they felt the pain they’re now solving firsthand. This experience gives them an advantage in more deeply understanding the buyer and the complexity of go-to-market as well as navigating product development and sales cycles.
Why invest in an Israeli company in New York? What advantages do such companies have? How is the New York market different from the Israeli market?
Israel is at the forefront of many tech trends such as Cybersecurity and Machine Learning, and the tech talent available in Israel is top-notch. A powerful combination for enterprise startups is taking that Israeli startup DNA and blending it with NYC’s enterprise customer base. What we’ve seen work great is co-founders/CEOs who move to NYC to build their sales and marketing organizations near their customers, and their co-founder/CTO runs R&D out of Israel.
It’s one thing to close an Israeli company as a customer, but your startup takes on another level of scale and legitimacy if you can close a Wall Street bank or large media company in NYC.
How do Israeli entrepreneurs/startups differ from their local counterparts?
Scaling startups is never easy and the only sure thing is that there will be significant ups and downs in the journey. Founders need to have grit, and no group embodies this more than Israeli entrepreneurs. We have several investments in Israel and our conversations with founders there continue to amaze us. We’ve done catch-ups with founders who have had to run to their shelter mid-call and then somehow continue the conversation seamlessly. We’ve done Zoom pitches with founders dialing in from their reserve bases while they’re in uniform. We’ve had founders juggle having many team members out on reserve duty who still find a way to meet product development goals and sales targets.
How do you assess the risk involved in investing in Israeli companies in the current situation?
The toll the war has taken on people, and as a result, startups are real. Founders have had to deal with some employees being out for reserve duty and other employees juggling work, family, and the emotional toll of the broader situation. So in short, it’s not easy for them. But at the same time, the ingenuity and grit we’re seeing from these founders to overcome all the adversity thrown at them and still achieve company goals makes us even more impressed by what we see. So while there is a risk, we’ve been actively investing in Israeli companies and plan to continue doing so because of the enormous opportunities they’re chasing to build.
Two suggestions for Israeli entrepreneurs on what to do in New York:
Spend time in person with customers! We have the highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the world in NYC and they’re all just a subway ride away. Use the ability to meet in person as an advantage against other companies who aren’t local and need to pitch over Zoom. Besides meeting at their offices, host customer prospect dinners or grab lunch or coffee with them to get to know them as people and develop empathy for their pain points and goals.
Attend meetups. We have a diverse tech scene and regardless of your company’s focus, there’s a group for you of like-minded builders. Our tech community tends to be tight-knit and the networking can lead to potentially finding a cofounder, investor, hire, or even a customer.
A suggestion for Israeli entrepreneurs on what NOT to do in New York:
Don’t spend all day working from home. Even if your company is remote, there’s so much action here to plug into that can benefit your career. To my point above, attend meetups and build your network.
Don't talk about sensitive company information in public places like coffee shops or on the subway. Many people in NYC speak Hebrew even if it's not immediately obvious from looking at them.
Examples of successful investments:
Socure has revolutionized digital identity verification and they work with leading financial services, gaming, and public sector companies. Their last round valued the company at $4.5B.
Cockroach Labs is the cloud-native, scale-out SQL database that’s trusted by industry leaders to run their most data-intensive, mission-critical applications. Their last round valued the company at $5B.
Spring Health is a comprehensive mental health solution for employers and health plans used by some of the largest companies in the world. Their last round valued the company at $3.3B.
