Brooklyn Bridge Ventures invests in freelance marketplace Wethos

Charlie O’Donnell, the founder of Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, announced Monday that he’s invested in the freelancer marketplace Wethos.

The site allows freelancers who want to work on projects or with companies that have a social mission to have their own labor platform online.

The round, which included seven other investors, is also notable as it comes after a massively impactful New York Times article from this summer in which Wethos’s founders, who are all women, talked about sexual harassment from male investors they’ve faced in the process of raising money.

Couldn’t be more excited to back this team (and to work w/ @ceonyc)! People should do more of what they love instead of simply more work. https://t.co/fBEicUIfw1

— Jesse Middleton (@srcasm) September 16, 2017

In a post on his website about the investment, O’Donnell explained that he sees mission-driven work as a growth opportunity.

“The best and brightest are going to need a much better reason to work for your company than the perks and benefits—the work itself is going to have to be meaningful,” he wrote.

O’Donnell did not disclose the size of his fund’s investment, but he is a seed investor who typically invests in the low six figures. In total, Wethos raised $1 million in the round, according to Crunchbase.

With regard to the message of sexual harassment, O’Donnell said he’d invested in Wethos before the Times story hit, and was unaware of their previous experiences.

“We met at a Sheworx event, I gave [cofounder] Rachel [Renock] a term sheet after one additional meeting and I closed soon after,” O’Donnell wrote in an email. The issue never came up in their discussions. “In fact, we had never discussed their prior experience pitching.”