20VC: Worklife Ventures' Brianne Kimmel on Why More Operators Should Start Their Own Fund, How To Structure Your Round for the Highest Signal Round & What The Multi-Stage Funds Playing At Seed Means For The Rest of The Asset Class
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2019
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brianne Kimmel is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Work Life Ventures, a very new firm focused on the future of work backed by some of the best in the valley including Marc Andreesen, Chris Dixon, Zoom's Eric Yuan, InVision's Clark Valberg and then dear friends of the show, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan and Matt Mazzeo. To date, Brianne has invested in the likes of Webflow, Tandem, Lunchclub and Girlboss to name a few. Prior to starting Work Life, Brianne spent 2 years at Zendesk on their GTM strategy; building Zendesk for startups, ultimately representing 3,000 startups and 250 accelerators. From 2013-2017 Brianne also taught over 5,000 students at General Assembly all things user acquisition and growth marketing.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Brianne made her way into the world of startups and SaaS, how that led to her angel investing and what was that a-ha moment for the founding of Work Life? Why did Brianne choose to structure Work Life as a holding company?
2.) With the fund, how does Brianne think about portfolio construction? What is the right check size for her? Why does Brianne think we are seeing more angel funds than ever today? Why are we seeing so many celebrity names on the cap tables of great companies? How does Brianne think about scout programs? What impact have they had? Why is Brianne against founders actively angel investing?
3.) What does Brianne advise founders on how to structure a high-signal round? What are the two types of angels that exist in the world today? What can founders do to keep their angels actively engaged? How have what founders expect from their angels changed over the last few years? How does one measure the true value of an angel?
4.) Does Brianne agree with Semil Shah, we are seeing "founders vote with their feet and bypass seed funds for multi-stage funds"? How does Brianne advise founders when choosing between a boutique seed firm and a large multi-stage firm? What does Brianne believe are the pros and cons of taking multi-stage money at seed?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Brianne’s Most Recent Investment: Pace
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brianne on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We are back in the Land of Venture on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings |
| 0:04.3 | 1996 with 2Bs, and I always love to see you there. |
| 0:07.3 | But to our show today, and I've been looking forward to releasing this one for quite a long time now, |
| 0:11.1 | and so I'm thrilled to welcome Brian Kimmel, found and managing partner at Work Life Ventures, |
| 0:15.8 | a very new firm focused on the future of work, backed by some of the best in the Valley, including Mark Andreessen, Chris Dixon, Zooms Eric Yuan, envisions Clark Valberg, and then some dear friends |
| 0:25.9 | of the show, Alexis O'Haney and Gary Tan, and the wonderful Matt Mazio. To date, though, |
| 0:30.3 | Briann's also invested in the likes of Webflow, Tandum, lunch club, and girl boss, just to name |
| 0:35.3 | a few. And prior to starting work life, Brian spent two years at Zendesk on their go-to-market strategy, building Zendesk for |
| 0:41.2 | startups, ultimately representing 3,000 startups and 250 accelerators. And I'd also have to say |
| 0:47.0 | a huge thank you to Vlad at Webflow, Braden at Voiceflow, and Ryan Hoover for some fantastic |
| 0:52.0 | questions suggestions today. Mahito's on me for that, chaps. |
| 0:55.1 | But before you dive into the show today, if you have employees and they're anything like me, |
| 0:59.1 | you need spend management. |
| 1:00.4 | And that's where Airbase come in. |
| 1:01.9 | Airbase is the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing startups. |
| 1:06.1 | With Airbase, you can issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as |
| 1:10.6 | checks and ACH transfers for |
| 1:12.5 | invoice payments. They also have an incredible pre-approval system for expense requests, so you see |
| 1:17.3 | expenses as employees request them instead of only learning about them when the statement comes |
| 1:21.7 | through at the end of the month. And finally, because of all the transaction flows through the |
| 1:25.5 | air-based system, they can really help you automate a ton of accounting work, like coding expenses, collecting invoices and receipts and more. |
| 1:32.8 | And that's why Gusto, front, and segment, all love Airbase. Simply head over to Airbase.com to book a demo and find out how to get up to 1.5% cashback on your monthly spend. |
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