For evidence that the future of work is automated (or at least semi-automated), look no further than startups like San Francisco-based Hive. The productivity platform provider offers solutions from meeting scheduling to task management and project monitoring, and in an effort to lay the groundwork for expansion after quintupling revenue this past year, it’s secured fresh funding.
Hive today revealed that it’s raised $10.6 million in a series A round led by Comcast Ventures, with participation from existing seed investors Tribeca Venture Partners, Vocap Investment Partners, and Rembrandt Venture Partners. It brings the company’s total raised to $16.7 million following a $4 million seed round in October, which CEO and cofounder John Furneaux said will bolster development of products like a service that automatically assigns next steps from emails.
“Why do we shackle talented teams with 40-year-old technology? It’s easier for me to see what my friends ate for brunch than to see what my colleague is working on,” said Furneaux, who cofounded Hive in 2015 with Eric Typaldos. “Hive delivers what everyone has been requesting for decades — a simple platform to use each day to get things done as a team … That’s the magic of Hive. It’s not just a tool for the Silicon Valley elite — it’s a helping hand for everyone.”
Hive’s clients for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android collate chat, tasks, files, and email in a single dashboard. They turn recurring meetings into real-time notes, automatically recapping previous meetings. And they auto-suggest plans from a library of successful projects, enabling teams to choose approaches to problems encountered by others.
Projects within Hive can be organized in custom Gantt charts, Kanban boards, tables, or calendars, with updates reflected across all views. Team members can sort them by current status or assigned labels and create action cards with files, sub-actions, dependencies, and comments to keep abreast of objectives. Helpfully, they’re afforded a personal to-do list that compiles all tasks assigned to them across all projects. And managers can assign approvals, share proofs, and provide feedback in Hive while collecting project forms internally or from clients and customers.
On the analytics side of the equation, Hive taps AI and machine learning to deliver insights on team productivity and proactively spot risks, and to optimize things like resource allocation and client billing. And it integrates with over 1,000 software-as-a-service tools including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Smartsheet, from which it can import tasks.
Hive competes with well-funded startups like Mavenlink, Monday.com, and RealtimeBoard in the project management and collaboration market, which is anticipated to be worth $6.68 billion by 2026. But it’s achieved considerable momentum to date, nabbing customers Uber, Marriot, Starbucks, The Economist, Compass, Omnicom, Harvard, New York University, North Carolina State University, The University of Michigan, Burrow, WeWork, AdRoll, StoryChief Essence, WPP, and Resolution.
“More companies from small businesses to large enterprises are poised to embrace process management tools and automation at scale,” said Andrew Cleland, managing director at Comcast Ventures. “Hive has produced one of the best rated products on the market, and we’re thrilled to partner with the management team to accelerate the company’s growth.”
Author: Kyle Wiggers
Source: Venturebeat
