I agree, if you just want to not "waste" the cash while it's sitting, keep it very simple with something like T bills or, if you don't need it immediately, maybe a total market fund.

This also makes sense from the investors point of view, they invested in your company to receive growth from your product/business, not from random stocks you bought with it.

That said, I think there is a distinction between trying to be innovative across the company (ex. Gitlab's open employee handbook, CEO shadows, etc.) which is arguably not a bad thing at all, and this specific case of trying to actively invest company funds. In some cases, a more innovative way of doing things may actually be simpler and less complex than the default way for bigger companies, it just depends on the exact scenario.

> if you don't need it immediately, maybe a total market fund

That strikes me as unwise. If there’s a sharp downturn in the total market, that’s precisely when you might need to call upon otherwise unneeded cash reserves.