The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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

Oct 14, 2019

Brianne Kimmel, Founder and Managing Partner at WorkLife Ventures, shares her remarkable journey from teaching to venture capital, emphasizing the importance of innovative funding structures for SaaS. She advocates for operators starting their own funds and explains how to create high-signal funding rounds. The discussion highlights the rise of angel funds, celebrity investors, and the shift towards sustainable user acquisition in 'hypebeast SaaS' startups, showcasing the evolving landscape of the tech ecosystem.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

ANECDOTE

Brianne's Path to Venture

Brianne Kimmel's path to founding WorkLife Ventures started with teaching at General Assembly and operating at Expedia.
She then became an angel investor while at Zendesk, before raising outside capital to establish WorkLife.

INSIGHT

Holding Company Structure

WorkLife Ventures is structured as a holding company to provide more flexibility than traditional VC funds.
This structure allows Kimmel to explore boutique funding models like private equity alongside early-stage VC.

INSIGHT

Check Size Strategy

Kimmel chose a $150k check size for WorkLife to remain founder-friendly while still being competitive with multi-stage funds.
She often invests in pre-product or pre-revenue SaaS companies alongside larger firms.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

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.