Our investment principles

When a deal lead proposes an investment to our group, they argue that you meet our bar across the following dimensions.

Venture scale

You've found an opportunity in a space riding some serious tailwinds.

Capital lite

You’re able to make swift and iterative changes in your product development and go-to-market with limited resources.

Momentum machine

You’re achieving significant progress and momentum, and we have an opportunity to add fuel to the engine.

Product differentiation

You’re building something beautiful and we’re as excited about the long term road map as you are.

Customer understanding

You intimately understand a problem that needs fixing and you’re in the trenches with the people experiencing it.

Founder brilliance

You have a clear superpower and the size of your ambition makes you a magnet for talent.

Our Values

AfterWork's six values are our attempt to verbalise what matters most to us, how we hope to operate, and what kind of dent we want to make in the universe.
All crew; No passengers
The more we give, the more there is
Open up!
Learn fast and forever
Fly your freak flag
Dream diligently

Our diligence process

Surprises are for birthdays. We know your time is valuable, so we let you know exactly what you can expect from us in the diligence stage.

1) Get to know us and what we look for

Beyond capital, we aspire to add value to early stage founders by providing both relevant expertise and coaching on the investor mindset.

2) Let’s catch up

We want to get to know your business, the people behind it, and what motivated you to start your company.

You will meet with a dedicated deal lead who will come prepared and will be candid. Transparency is core to everything we do.

3) We share our thoughts - warts and all

Your deal lead will pitch your business at our weekly partner meeting and will be challenged across multiple dimensions.

They will share with you whether they think your company could be a fit for our portfolio, as well as their opinion on your biggest strengths and areas of concern.

4) Deep dive into areas of interest

Alongside our overall thoughts, we will suggest next steps to deep dive into specific areas of your business.

We may include other relevant members of our team and will equally want to meet more of your team too.

5) Hear from your customers directly

We invest in customer obsessed teams. Your customers know more about the problem than we do and we want to learn from them.

We appreciate not all customers have signed up to be speaking with your investors, so will be considerate in how we impact your customer relationships.

6) Meet the full AfterWork team

If you and the deal lead agree you are a match for AfterWork, you will team up to convince the rest of the partnership in a conversation with the investment committee.

Deal leads are expected to only bring investments to the group that they are stoked about, so expect them to be on your side!

7) Cross the t’s and dot the i’s

After the investment committee makes an in principle decision to invest in your company we will need to verify the usual boring stuff and complete the legals.

We don’t expect to lead rounds so terms will typically be set by others, however we prefer vanilla terms that set founding teams up for success in the long run.

8) We introduce you to our friends

If you don’t already have one we can help you and a lead if we have conviction. We introduce our favourite teams to our favourite investors to help lead or contribute to rounds.

9) Our investment doesn’t stop here...

We love it when founders are demanding and call on us when they know we can add value. Our community is hungry to help and can be a resource to help you solve a problem.

Equally, we understand that sometimes we are most useful when we stay out of the way. Either way we expect you to tell us how we can be most useful to your business.

We invest more than cash.
Our community brings experience, skills, and passion.

Meet the community

Want to put a demt in the universe?

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Let's build the future together.