Chances are, you won’t make it through this article without receiving a new email.
When you’re browsing tech news, it’s not a big deal. When you’re trying to complete a project at work, that barrage of emails becomes a serious obstacle.
Juggling dozens of browser tabs, monitoring Slack and email and sitting in meetings all can get in the way of employee productivity. But what if all that activity was condensed into one platform that used artificial intelligence to tell teams what needs to happen next?
That’s what Hive’s co-founders John Furneaux and Eric Typaldos set out to create.
“I sent the product team the challenge of how could we set up a collaboration tool where I can come in in the morning, be in one spot and stay in that spot until I go home,” Furneaux said. “Not having to have 50 tabs open and six different tools so my brain is split five different ways. We think we can accomplish a single screen for your whole work day.”
Furneux and Typaldos left their jobs to take Hive through the AngelPad accelerator in 2015 and launched the company officially in 2016. Since then, the startup has attracted customers like Google, Uber and the U.S. government. It quintupled revenue in the past year, and today announced a $10.6 million Series A to beef up marketing and sales efforts, as well as grow its team.
The company is looking to add five engineers, 10 salespeople and two marketing professionals as soon as possible, Furneux told Built In.
Hive integrates with more than 1,000 applications to combine messaging, email, calendars, file-sharing and workflow tools into one platform. This boosts visibility for every stakeholder in a project and reduces time in meetings. Next, Hive will roll out AI-driven features that read emails, assign to-do items and create processes. The platform will even suggest the best project plans for a given goal based on a library of successful past projects.
Hive was founded in San Francisco but soon relocated to New York City. For Furneaux, the move was a no-brainer, he said.
“I think people are realizing that all the customers are here, even if there’s a very strong engineering and product-creation culture in the Bay Area. For us, all our customers are here, so it’s the only place we would want to build the business.”
Hive’s Series A round was led by Comcast Ventures, with participation from Tribeca Venture Partners, Vocap Investment Partners and Rembrandt Venture Partners. Its total funding is $16.7 million, according to a company news release.
