As an enterprise technology venture capital fund in New York City, Work-Bench has worked with hundreds of early stage go-to-market enterprise startups to accelerate their Fortune 1000 customer acquisitions. Executive Briefings are a valuable tool for the startups in our community to meet and connect with Fortune 1000 enterprise buyers. For enterprises, it’s a chance to evaluate relevant emerging startups that address new opportunities or solve pain points. For startups, these briefings are a foot in the door with a potential customer through a trusted partner who can help elevate you beyond the noise. After hosting more than 150 executive briefings with enterprise technology buyers and observing thousands of startup pitches, we’ve noticed key patterns from many of our portfolio companies that lead to successful meetings, follow-up conversations, and in the best case, POCs and pilots. We created a playbook, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Executive Briefings, to serve as a guide to own the room and land your next enterprise customer.

2. 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE BRIEFINGS
As an enterprise technology venture capital fund in New York City, Work-Bench has worked with hundreds of early stage go-to-
market enterprise startups to accelerate their Fortune 1000 customer acquisitions.
Executive Briefings are a valuable tool for the startups in our community to meet and connect with Fortune 1000 enterprise
buyers. For enterprises, it's a chance to evaluate relevant emerging startups that address new opportunities or solve pain points.
For startups, these briefings are a foot in the door with a potential customer through a trusted partner who can help elevate you
beyond the noise.
After hosting more than 150 executive briefings with enterprise technology buyers and observing thousands of startup pitches,
we’ve noticed key patterns from many of our portfolio companies that lead to successful meetings, follow-up conversations, and
in the best case, POCs and pilots. We created a playbook, 7 Habits of Highly Effective Executive Briefings, to serve as a guide
to own the room and land your next enterprise customer.
KELLEY HENRY
Communications
& Community
KELLEY MAK
Principal
AUTHORED BY:

3. 3
1. A LITTLE CHARISMA GOES A LONG WAY
Your pitch begins the moment you open the door. Take ownership and
control over the room by introducing yourself, your company, and your
role right away. Presentation setup doesn’t always occur as planned, so
don’t wait until you set up AV and pull up your slides to start the
conversation; at that point you’ve already wasted time and missed an
opportunity to connect.
Remember that your potential customers are humans. Don’t
underestimate the impact of making a genuine connection beyond just a
sales pitch. It may sound simple and obvious, but showing your
personality and charisma eases everyone in the room not only in that
moment, but it also sets the temperature for the rest of the meeting.
In a recent executive briefing we
hosted between vArmour and a large
media company, Tim Eades, vArmour’s
CEO, made it a point to greet and
learn about all 12 participants around
the table, share quick information
about himself, and ease the tension
with a little British humour — all within a
few minutes.
Starting the mood off strong, he was
intentional and deliberate about
building a relationship, which made a
huge difference moving forward.
COMPANY VARMOUR
WEBSITE WWW.VARMOUR.COM
SECTOR DATA CENTER
& CLOUD SECURITY
LOCATION MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA
[CASE STUDY]

4. 4
2. MAKE IT A CONVERSATION
One of the worst mistakes you can make is failing to sufficiently involve
your audience. Treat the briefing like a conversation, not a presentation.
Ask questions that set upfront expectations and ensure that you’re
speaking to the exact needs of the participants. Even if you have an idea
of their painpoint, inviting participants to express their problem on their
own terms will provide insight that you’d be otherwise blind to. This
information will come in handy later when mapping potential use cases.
Try to understand your buyer just as much as you are pitching to them.
Aside from closing a deal, the next-best (extremely valuable) outcome is
to bring insight back to your team about your buyer’s needs.
As an example, Semmle is a software
engineering analytics company that
provides software engineers and IT
leaders visibility into their software,
engineering processes, and teams to
create reliable and secure products
without slowing down. Since the
technology has several core use cases
across software security, team
performance, and code quality, the
Semmle team immediately starts a
dialogue with those in the room to
determine appropriate context. Then
they structure the conversation
according to what is most relevant to
their buyers.
COMPANY SEMMLE
WEBSITE WWW.SEMMLE.COM
SECTOR. ENGINEERING ANALYTICS
LOCATION SAN FRANCISCO, CA
[CASE STUDY]

5. 5
3. PREPARE FOR THE TECHNICAL
Executives that we bring into a briefing are ready to dig into the
weeds and can see right through a “salesy” pitch. Always bring a
senior leader that has the technical aptitude, knows your product
inside and out, and can tell the company’s story in a meaningful way.
Of course, it’s always best to send your CEO/Founder if you still have
a single digit total customer count. However, if they can’t make it,
ensure that your sales lead is accompanied by a senior-level technical
product person. When in doubt, err on the technical side, and be
able to provide solid business use-cases.
Algorithmia’s CEO Diego
Oppenheimer is a prime example of a
technical founder who can explain the
grand vision of how their platform that
enables large enterprises to
productionize their machine learning
models fits into the broader future of
enterprise AI, as well as provide
deeper details on their tech stack and
what features to be excited about in
upcoming releases. He speaks to the
technical side while still telling a
compelling story.
COMPANY ALGORITHMIA
WEBSITE WWW.ALGORITHMIA.COM
SECTOR OPEN MARKETPLACE FOR
ALGORITHMS
LOCATION SEATTLE, WA
[CASE STUDY]

6. 6
4. NO FLUFF ZONE
We could go on and on about creating your perfect pitch deck. Be
specific and tactical, focus on why you’re the right team for the job,
use graphics, and don’t add fluff or filler. Ultimately: tell your story.
Case studies and customer slides are great references because it
proves you have the capacity to support large enterprises, which
helps de-risk their working with you, as well as details what they
could expect as a potential partner. However, make sure you’re up to
speed on the logos that you showcase. Chances are the folks in the
room might know a peer that works at an organization featured and
can ask for further details of your engagement. It could spell disaster
if you mischaracterize your actual involvement.
Dialpad’s CEO and Founder, Craig
Walker, always shares why they’re
uniquely positioned to bring the best
cloud communications experience to
large enterprises by providing their
unique background. They previously
founded the technology behind
Google Voice, and now they’re
addressing the needs for the
“anywhere worker” for large
companies like Uber and Motorola.
COMPANY DIALPAD
WEBSITE WWW.DIALPAD.COM
SECTOR CLOUD COMMUNICATIONS
LOCATION SAN FRANCISCO, CA
[CASE STUDY]

7. 7
5. DON’T DANCE
Don’t dance around questions, especially if they poke holes. There
are few things worse than sitting in a meeting with a presenter who is
clearly avoiding questions. If you don’t have an answer, or your
product doesn’t solve the specific issue that they’re inquiring about,
it’s better to be candid and say something to the effect of, “that’s on
our radar - here is another way we could be helpful.” Trying to be a
sneaky wordsmith never works and ends up diluting your overall
pitch. Don’t undermine yourself.
Your audience knows you’re a startup
and it’s okay to admit you don’t have
everything built out. Be transparent
about what you can solve for now and
what is on your roadmap. Tim Delisle,
CEO of Datalogue, whiteboards to
help align his audience with the
greater vision. Highlighting the
excitement in the room, Tim shows his
team’s thoughtfulness in focusing
efforts on particular challenges in data
prep and uses visuals to explain how it
plays out in his broader view of data
operations.
COMPANY DATALOGUE
WEBSITE WWW.DATALOGUE.IO
SECTOR. DATA PREPARATION
LOCATION NEW YORK, NY
[CASE STUDY]

8. 8
6. BE MINDFUL OF THEIR TIME
Stick to the schedule and be mindful of time. It’s tempting to rush
through those last few points in “just a few more minutes,” but we've
found it to be more harmful than helpful because it shows lack of
organization and preparedness. Instead, come ready with how you
want to run the meeting. Make sure you hone in on the key aspects of
your offering that differentiate you while leaving ample time for
discussion. Even if you don’t quite finish your pitch, ideally your value
is communicated and there is an opportunity to cover it in the follow
up.
Veteran executive briefers Tamr have
the pitch on lock. They know their
presentation inside and out, have
conducted research on their audience
prior, and make a point to feel out the
room with prep questions. The Tamr
team know what to highlight about
their solution for data unification, such
as key metrics for ERP reduction at the
largest industrial firms, and when to
wrap up with questions and follow
ups.
COMPANY TAMR
WEBSITE WWW.TAMR.COM
SECTOR ENTERPRISE DATA
UNIFICATION
LOCATION CAMBRIDGE, MA
[CASE STUDY]

9. 9
7. END WITH A PLAN FOR NEXT STEPS
Always end with a verbal plan for next steps. It can be as simple as
taking their card and making a plan to follow-up via email, or even
setting a date for a second meeting. Whatever the plan is, explicitly
state it in the room out loud at the end of the meeting. This will give
your audience a chance to provide feedback, express interest, and
ensure everyone is on the same page so that these next steps are
actually executed. Not every conversation will lead to a follow up with
contract potential, and it’s best to assess the fit early on to save time
for everyone.
The Merlon Intelligence team is a
prime example of how to best put
follow ups into action. We’ve seen
them wrap up meetings pinpointing
the key areas where they can
immediately start working with
corporates, such as augmenting or
supplanting current KYC efforts for
AML compliance, and identifying the
right people to carry the conversation
to the next stage. At the same time,
not all financial services are mature
enough to begin to modernize their
regulatory practices.
COMPANY MERLON INTELLIGENCE
WEBSITE MERLONINTELLIGENCE.COM
SECTOR FINANCIAL COMPLIANCE
LOCATION NEW YORK, NY
[CASE STUDY]

10. Work-Bench is an enterprise technology VC fund in NYC.
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