The right hand to the CEO
How we supported Valve as Chief of Staff
Valve
The CEO
A year
Valve aims to become the infrastructure powering flexible workspace transactions. The company operates in the flexible workspace industry, which can be considered part of the larger commercial real estate industry. The team offers SaaS and API products to clients such as JLL, WeWork, TOG. Their key stakeholders and clients in the flex ecosystem are operators, which provision and operate flexible workspace as well as agents or broker like CBRE, JLL, Cushman and Wakefield who act for businesses needing flexible workspace and provide services like advising on real estate strategy, identifying relevant solutions, negotiating workspace contracts.
We invested in Valve’s seed round in summer 2022 and supported the company with various operational streams shortly after. The team was around 30 people back then and in high growth mode. The CEO had the need for a Chief of Staff to support him as a right hand and confidante during that time.
A member from our Venture Development team stepped in and supported the CEO and the wider leadership team over the course of several months. Key goals were to support the CEO with all company priorities and focus and step in operationally where needed:
- Hiring and onboarding several roles such as VP Finance and VP Product as well as wider Org-Building as well as Re-Organization
- Series A fundraising preparation: Investor Long List, Outreach structure, Fundraising Deck, Financial Model, Data Room Prep
- Investor Relations with quarterly Board Meetings and Monthly Investor Updates
- Steer the development of the first proper data infrastructure including Management dashboards in order to make the company more data driven
- Setting up a first Financial model until the first Finance hire, the VP Finance joined
- Enable, drive and execute on selected key strategic projects with the leadership team
- Company Steering through weekly management meetings, bi-annual management offsites organization & execution as well as company wide monthly All-Hands meetings
In early stage growth, having a Chief of Staff proved vital for us. It's reassuring to know that our investor has the capability to help us at any time with interim support in case we need it.
Overall we supported over the course of a year and were an integral part of the Valve team working cross-functionally and across the globe.
Want to learn more? Contact us at magdalena.maier@project-a.com.
Magdalena Maier
