Enjoy The Work Adds Former Salesforce VP of Product as Latest Partner
San Francisco, CA – Enjoy The Work, a startup advisory firm that works with 35+ companies including Tipalti, WeWork, and inDinero Tuesday announced the addition of new partner Dr. Leslie Fine.
Fine is a product veteran and startup founder with 10+ years of diverse entrepreneurial experience. She founded her first startup Crowdcast in 2008. Crowdcast raised capital, brought a product to market, and was acquired by enterprise software company, Spigit in 2012.
Following her time at Spigit, Fine became the first head of product at tenXer, an engineering management software company that sold to Twitter in 2015. She then founded Swerve Routing, a consumer app focused on route-based map search and optimization.
But after four startups and two acquisitions, Fine was ready for a change.
“It’s very hard, lonely work,” she says. “Nobody teaches you how to be a founder. It’s existential crisis after existential crisis. I experienced four startups, two of which had positive exits but all of which taught me a great deal.”
Opting for more stability, Fine joined Salesforce as VP of Product. There, she shipped the company’s first AI product before shifting focus to the M&A side of operations, where she was instrumental in the acquisition of big data company, Krux.
Fine’s decision to join Enjoy The Work represents a growing desire to return to the fast-paced nature of startup life, but in a way that allows her to share her expertise across a broad range of entrepreneurs.
“For those who have been through it, the bruises and gray hair caused by startup life evolve into wisdom,” she says. “I’m fulfilled by helping founders avoid the same mistakes I’ve made over the years.”
Fine embraces much of what Enjoy The Work stands for, especially as it relates to alleviating stress and worry in the founder’s journey.
“Eighty percent of business building is the same,” she says. “The startup ecosystem is better off when founders have the freedom to focus on the remaining 20%, where innovation happens.”
Enjoy The Work prides itself in making the 80% easier. Fine looks to bring a new perspective to both the growing team of partners at ETW and the countless portfolio companies that will benefit from her counsel.
About Enjoy The Work
Enjoy The Work is a San Francisco-based startup advisory firm founded in 2014 by Jonathan Lowenhar. The firm’s unique, hands-on approach to startup mentorship is designed to give founders a support system in times of inevitable uncertainty. Through working closely with dozens of portfolio companies, ETW is proud to be the go-to resource for passionate founders a range of fields.
Partners at Enjoy The Work hail from a variety of backgrounds—consumer Internet, enterprise SAAS, finance, sales, and more. But a common denominator exists among them all: deep and successful startup experiences both as early stage operators and investors.
Enjoy The Work believes that while it takes grit to be an entrepreneur, it takes skill to be a founder. The company’s mission is to serve founders by teaching that skill.
