Office Hours: I'm the founder of Worklife Ventures. We have invested in 40+ companies and are backed by the founders of Cameo, Spotify, Twitch, and Zoom. I'm Brianne Kimmel.Featured

Brianne·Oct 18, 2020

Hi everyone! I’m Brianne Kimmel, founder and managing partner of Worklife Ventures. I invest in tools for work and I especially like developer tools, design and workplace productivity. We’ve invested in over 40 companies including Webflow, Tandem, Roam Research & more. Worklife is backed by the founders of Cameo, Spotify, Twitch, Zoom. Ask me anything about fundraising, go-to-market or community building.

jessicali·Oct 18, 2020

Thanks so much for joining us @BrianneKimmel!Elphas – please ask @BrianneKimmel your questions before Friday, October 23rd. @BrianneKimmel may not have time to answer every questions, so emoji upvote your favorites!

genevieveRB·Oct 19, 2020

Thanks for your time, Brianne! I'm curious about your thoughts on community building: how do you maintain a sense of authenticity and trust within a community as it grows?

prettycold·Oct 20, 2020

Thanks Brianne for your time!I'd like to know how to reach a target segment in B2B who do not have much of a digital presence (neither LinkedIn nor active in their segment related forums). Mass email campaigns also don't seem to work great. They seem to go by just word of mouth. In such a scenario, what would be your advice on GTM ?

khanesiahw·Oct 19, 2020

"I invest in tools for work and I especially like developer tools, design and workplace productivity."Thank you Brianne for your time!As an investor in tools for workplace productivity, what are your motivations for choosing to invest? What are your industries of investment? What are your thoughts on niche workplace productivity tools? I appreciate your feedback.

NoraThom·Oct 19, 2020

Hello Brianne I'd like to understand your view on mindfulness and compassion as workplace productivity 'tools'. If something like this can be embedded into a workplace or team then it can have immense impact. What are your thoughts? Thank so much.

leilamakarim·Oct 19, 2020

Hi Brianne, thank you for your time. I am a co-founder of sofisofi.co. We are building a material library to reduce waste in the construction industry in Indonesia. My question is that: during covid, are Silicon Valley VC are still interested in seed funding in Southeast Asia (or anywhere else), or are you guys more interested to just invest in the US? Thank you again Brianne.

bethanystachenfeld·Oct 19, 2020

Hey Brianne! Question re: community buildingWhat is the best way to build a user community (for a b2b saas platform)?My company - Sendspark - helps sales & marketing teams to engage customers personalized video messages. We want to better connect our users, so they can share ideas and spark inspiration for new ways to use video to engage customers. So far we've thought of starting communities on Slack, Discord, and Facebook Groups, but all have limitations. Would love to know what you've seen work!

mortylin·Oct 21, 2020

Would love to know what your experience of each is! We've been on slack, but were considering discord since it doesn't have the message limitations but a lot of people don't have discord so we went with slack...

SuzanneRosman·Oct 19, 2020

Hi Brianne, my name is Suzanne and I work at Torre, a new automated recruitment platform for remote work. When you are investing, are you more interested in tools that you see are needed right now as work has changed to remote work or tools that you believe will change working in the long term? Purely as I can imagine demand in tools has completely changed in the last 6 months and new 'pains' in the future of work have become much clearer much faster. Thank you so much and I'm looking forward to your answers to all these awesome questions on Elpha!

Siran·Oct 19, 2020

Hi Brianne, thanks for hosting these office hours! I'm interested to learn about your investment thesis around workplace productivity. My company, Mirza (heymirza.com), relieves the anxiety women and soon-to-be parents face when thinking about starting a family and being able to succeed in both spheres. How have you seen companies like Headspace resonate with employers, i.e. do you see reducing stress as a compelling case?

eanderson·Oct 19, 2020

Hi Brianne, I'd love to hear more about how you shifted from being an operator and into advising and starting your venture fund. What advice do you have for women who are looking to make the shift?

suzanna23·Oct 20, 2020

Hi Brianne was so excited to see your recent event on LinkedIn! Your advice: please what is the best way to find investors for #over40 female founders. All #female founders experience "chicken and the egg." You have a great idea but men tell you that you need a Beta, then they say you need users, then they say you need revenue and then there are accelerators and incubators trying to charge us all money. Caramba.....love your thoughts on the best way to navigate... Thanks!

beckystephens7·Oct 21, 2020

Hi Brianne, I’m the founder of Multiplii (multiplii.io) - a calendar based nudge tool that helps senior leaders make small but impactful changes in leadership, behaviour and communication at work. 1. Have you or any of your portfolio used a similar community building strategy to Notion? What have you learnt in the process and how did you measure the ROI? 2. In terms of market opportunity and investment, what excites you more and why? Tackling unknown problems (where there is an opportunity to create a new behaviour) or tackling a known problem (with a well understood market and a product which is cheaper, faster, or better than its competitors).Thanks so much!

AmyRQ·Oct 21, 2020

Hi Brianne,Thank you for offering your time. My questions are around community building and go to market strategy with the lens of preparing to seek investment. I’m working on a meditation/stress relief hardware product with a content streaming app. The product has both B2B and B2C capabilities. Can you give general advice about which to focus on first, or to pursue both channels simultaneously? Since hardware takes a while to iterate on, I’ve been advised to start building a following in advance of launching. The product is very experiential and immersive so are there resources you can recommend on how to build a following and engagement when the people can’t yet try the product?Last question, what is your perspective on doing a crowdfunding campaign as a means to get the first round of funding? I’ve heard investors want to see traction in order to invest, yet I need the funds to produce the product to get the traction. The two user test studies of the first 2 prototypes went exceptionally well and I am confident there is a market. Are user test testimonials sufficient to prove traction? If not, crowdfunding seems to be a viable option to the chicken and egg cycle, yet I’ve heard that some VCs frown upon it for various reasons. Any insight you can offer will be greatly appreciated! Many thanks--Amy

Ona208·Oct 22, 2020

Hey Brianne, What are work-related trends that you see as temporary vs ones that will be more permanent? For example, do you see companies' investments in real mental health benefits for their employees to continue to persist or more of a short-term trend as we weather a tough climate. Thank you!

Annalouisewestern·Oct 22, 2020

Hi Brianne, I’d love to check out your fund and share what I’m building! I’m working on Prism, the best way to save, browse and share everything you want to keep track of online, or put simply, bookmarks. The difference is I’m adding screenshots so it’s easy to see what you saved without opening it in a new tab, and you can explore what others have saved, so it’s social. Sort of like Pinterest for websites. www.tryprism.coMy question is, I’ve been struggling to find a cofounder. I built the mvp with a dev studio last year and I’m a solo design founder. I believed in this product idea so much I just wanted to build it and get it out there rather than waiting to find someone who would agree with me on everything. I’ve already been through a founder breakup due to not seeing the same vision on the product. I keep being told I really need a cofounder before anyone would invest. I would love a cofounder, but is that really a dealbreaker? I’ve built a product people are using daily, by myself, and on the side (I took a design job to pay the bills). We have over 2k signups, 125k bookmarks and 20k boards. I can’t say we’ve hit 20% MOM growth but I’m not really trying to hit the growth phase yet as we’re not marketing. I’m just wondering if it’s possible to raise a pre-seed investment in your mind or would waiting for more traction in 6 months be better. And do you ever invest in solo founders? I realize everyone wants to maximize their capital investment by having an engineer on board putting sweat equity in (and I keep searching for that) but I also wonder if it’s possible to negotiate more friendly investor terms for investing early. Does it just come down to telling the story and getting someone to fall in love with the idea? I truly think this could be the next Pinterest and I’m hoping that’s worth investing in. But I feel like when I talk to investors they kind of don’t really believe I can do this and are looking around the room for the Stanford CS grad to comfort them. Curious to hear your thoughts!

EeVon·Oct 23, 2020

Hi Brianne, thanks for your time. :) I would love to know more about community building and what was your story behind starting SAAS school? What advice do you have for building a community of like-minded people? How do you validate the need for a community with the smallest viable step? 🙋‍♀️

Brianne·Oct 23, 2020

Great question, my vision for SaaS School was to create a platform that gave founders access to the best SaaS operators at companies like Dropbox, Figma, Notion, Superhuman. As an operator & founder myself, I found there's no shortage of great sounding advice and wanted to build something more tailored with in-depth workshops, 1:1 office hours & actionable GTM playbooks. I believe the smallest viable signal for community is a single "pick your brain" moment. If someone reaches out to ask a question, there's value in proactively seeking others with the same question.

meganbianco·Oct 23, 2020

Hi Brianne, thank you for being here! When an organization you're investing in decides to do a tandem VC-raise & crowdfunding campaign, does it change your perception or interest in investing in them? Roam Research is a great example of this in saving $1M of their round for crowdfunding.

Brianne·Oct 24, 2020

Hi Megan, I view fundraising as a critical skill for founders, equally as important as Product or GTM. What i love most about the current fundraising environment is the optionality that's available to founders today, which includes more specialized early stage firms, solo capitalists that write Series A+ sized checks, and non-dilutive options (Pipe for SaaS, Settle for DTC/CPG). For companies like Roam where the team has made a significant investment in both technology and community, I believe crowdfunding or allocating a significant amount of room on the cap table for early believers (#roamcult) is a reinforcing loop for the community. Your cap table is your GTM strategy, early angels bring their network & their operating experience & crowdfunding can make sense if you'd like to activate a larger base of early believers. It all comes down to what goals you're trying to achieve with community & what skills and experience will supercharge the team ahead of the next round. I wrote about it a little bit here: https://wfh.substack.com/p/why-founders-killed-the-friends-and/comments

octavia88·Oct 20, 2020

So that means you won't invest in Struck? 😅💘

suzanna23·Oct 23, 2020

Hi Brianne so great to see your thought leadership on LinkedIn and enjoyed your recent webinar. Any advice to 50+ founders looking for Angel investors...what is required? Thanks

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