How we’re doing and what we’ve been up to

As we enter a new phase of growth at Worklife, I want to take a moment to highlight where we’re at as a firm and recent findings from our humanity in the age of AI survey.

Worklife was founded in 2019 with the goal of making work more creative, flexible, and human. At the time it was just me, writing the copy for the website, cold emailing investors for my first fund on AngelList with this deck, and hosting all founder-facing programming with help from operators in my network. 

With the first fund, I set out to raise $5M and ended up raising a little over $10M.  

Here’s a snapshot of how that fund is currently performing: 

While it’s still early, we worked with Aduro to measure how Worklife is tracking against other similar-sized funds ($0-50M) across 10 vintage years from 2014 through 2023. 

Across the board, we’ve continued to deliver metrics well above average. 

IRR: Top 25% of funds: 22.3%

Worklife IRR: 33.8% 

DPI: Top 25% of funds: 0.08

Worklife DPI: 0.5 

MOIC: Top 25% of funds: 2.29

Worklife MOIC: 3.6

TVPI: Top 25% of funds: 2.07

Worklife TVPI: 3.1

As we look at our top performers, I’m reminded that there’s nothing better than seeing companies with an important mission and a great culture do impressive things. 

While I was raising money for Worklife, Deel was a company I mentioned time and time again that I wanted to invest in and needed the capital to do so. 

Today, the company not only makes hiring internationally easier, they hire and pay contractors on your behalf and help with visa support to make work more flexible than ever. 

This work has become especially critical following the pandemic when relocation meant keeping families together, in Ukraine where technology workers have moved to safer parts of the world, and in America where it’s becoming increasingly hard to secure a work visa. 

Across the portfolio you’ll see, we care about empowering individuals and investing in tools that change your work life. 

Whether you’re a data scientist running queries, a chef starting your own business, a teacher wanting to make education more modern and engaging, or a tech founder looking for creating ways to finance your startup, Worklife was designed to give all types of founders the tools they need to be successful. 

A few areas where I’m incredibly proud of the firm is our commitment to research and our ability to build a community around us. 

When I founded Worklife I wanted to build something bigger than myself and designed the firm to take a mission-driven approach to how we think about changing how people work and building companies with great cultures. 

Research plays a critical role in how we gauge consumer sentiment around topics like work culture, the jobs of the future, and artificial intelligence. 

In our recent Humanity in the age of AI, we surveyed 569 Americans to understand how AI has impacted how they feel about art, fashion, music, travel, and other aspects of daily life.

Here are some of the findings from the survey: 

• People still prefer talking to a real human over a chatbot 

• People will pay a premium for products made by real people 

• AI art drives people to appreciate art made by a real person even more 

• That said, there’s increasing demand for learning Chat-GPT and other new tools. 

You can find the full survey findings here and other recent findings: 

Your co-workers want to see you 

Our day jobs used to be our identities, not so much any more

pandemic side projects: creativity, hobbies, and developing new skills