We announced Worklife a little over a year ago, a specialized firm backed by founders to build new tools that make work more creative, flexible, and ultimately more human for individuals, not institutions.
We started with a $10 million dollar debut fund, which includes the fastest startups to unicorn status: Hopin, Clubhouse, Public.
We backed technical teams leaving Affirm, Airbnb, Palantir, Plaid, Slack, and other great companies.
In many cases we invested months before they left their last thing. 🤫
How? We host exclusive Worklife community events to validate an idea and offer workshops that take a systematic, tactical approach to building an enduring software company from formation to IPO.
From the beginning, our greatest strength is our community of builders. We hosted over 50 community events in 2020 with help from dozens of Product and GTM executives, DevRels, small business owners, and friends of Worklife who have openly shared their best practices to help us build a strong ecosystem for early stage companies.
(Over 50% of our management fees were reinvested in founder education and programming.)
We’re now investing out our second fund with more resources to build the next generation of great companies through education and programming.
Today, we’re excited to announce a new program for rising stars in tech called The Residency.
What is the Residency?
The Residency is a new program developed alongside artists, DJs, and friends in the creative industry.
A traditional artist-in-residence program invites artists, musicians, and rising stars to build, work, and play with support from an established institution.
Worklife is a modern institution that looks more like a community than a traditional venture firm, that’s intentional.
For early stage companies, the rising stars are product designers, technical writers, DevRels, and passionate builders who have a lot to give to the ecosystem but have less time for meeting startups, writing blog posts, and doing the personal brand thing.
We want to create a safe space for founders to ask questions and for rising stars in tech to have the resources and support system to continue to hone their craft alongside the next generation of great software companies.
What do we offer?
- A platform for hosting virtual events and workshops
- Curated access to the next generation of software companies
- Resources to write, build & fund startups
- A community to learn, grow, and give back to the ecosystem
This program is well-funded with resources and upside in Worklife investments (even if we introduce you to the company).
What have we learned so far?
The role of a traditional scout looks more like an Associate than a General Partner. There’s an expectation to source new investments, take meetings during work hours or on evenings and weekends, and make investments with relatively little financial upside and deal by deal approval.
We have no expectation of deal flow. We’re committed to creating scalable ways for you to contribute to the ecosystem, so you can stay focused on building and scaling at your current company or occasionally go all-in as a paid position while you’re taking time off or exploring your next move.
We tested this model in 2020 and our previous designers, writers, and community builders have gone on to work at high growth companies like Figma, start their companies, full-time podcasts, and social media empires with tens of millions of followers (hey, @girl).
What does this mean for companies we back?
Not all founders have access to friends and family with money to invest. Rather than relying on this outdated model of raising capital, the Worklife team directly connects you with experienced builders and triple threats for your cap table who will roll up their sleeves to help.
The Residency by Worklife gives every company we back access to experts in the industry and influential people from all industries.
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