The Hive Raises $22M for New Co-Creation Studio

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 12, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hive, a co-creation studio to build a new generation of data-driven start-up companies, today announced the closing of its second fund ("The Hive II"), with $22 million in capital commitments.  The new studio will identify, build and launch up to 10 new companies that are leveraging data and the innovations in data science and scale-out infrastructure.  The Hive is not only an incubator and accelerator backed by some of tech's most respected entrepreneurs and innovators, but also serves as early stage investor, providing seed funding, strategic business counsel and go-to-market expert to its portfolio companies.

"We believe that every industry will be radically transformed in the next 5 to 10 years with the use of data, and verticals that lend themselves to volume, velocity or variety of data are ripe for innovative approaches," said T.M. Ravi, Co-Founder and Managing Director of The Hive. "We are pleased to have closed The Hive II, which we'll use to invest in data-driven applications in enterprise, Internet of Things and online segments." The Hive investments span verticals such as retail and e-commerce, financial services, and media and advertising. The enterprise focus is on a new generation of Line of Business applications driven by predictive analytics as well as in areas such as security, data center management, CRM and marketing. The IoT focus is on application development platforms, applications and security.

With eleven companies funded and launched since The Hive I was started in 2012, The Hive's high touch engagement model is already proving to be very successful. In January, The Hive realized its first exit when Pinterest acquired Kosei, a promising machine learning commerce recommendation engine that is exemplary of the kind of innovation possible with big data. Investors gravitating to the model include corporate and institutional investors such as AME Cloud Ventures, March Capital Partners, MDC Partners, and Verizon Ventures. Individual investors and advisors include the world's best-known business leaders and technologists from companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Pivotal, Walmart, UC Berkeley, and Stanford University.

"What is so compelling about The Hive is that it aligns the portfolio with the interests of founders, advisors, and investors, while directly applying their deep entrepreneurial and business expertise to help entrepreneurs move through company building, business design and go-to-market," said Paul Maritz, CEO of Pivotal and individual investor in The Hive.

An in-house team of well-known company-builders, serial entrepreneurs, technologists and investors are a critical part of The Hive's model with a wholly different approach to company building.  The Hive team is actively involved in guiding The Hive's participating startups through each step of their development. The Hive technology team provides architecture and design guidance to its startups and an open source based big data application server that its startups can leverage. Startups receive mentorship from the investors and advisors of The Hive who are some of the world's most successful technology experts.

"Our experience in creating multiple successful companies over the last decade has enabled us to structure The Hive's model of bringing companies to market quickly and successfully," said Sumant Mandal, Co-Founder of The Hive. "The Hive is building a whole new wave of companies with the world's best people around big data and machine learning."

The Hive provides initial seed capital of $1.5 to $2 million, follow-on capital, and helps syndicate future rounds of financing with venture capitalists. The Hive value-add is comprised of seed investment, business design, data infrastructure and data science technology guidance, and critical early partnerships and customers that propel startups through launch and ensure successful outcomes.

"The Hive is helping talented entrepreneurs build start-ups that are tackling complex business problems using data-driven solutions, and we're thrilled to be involved," said Gopal Rajagopalan, Executive Director at Verizon Ventures. "Our partnership with this innovation factory will give us insights and knowledge to create sophisticated products and services that will help Verizon better serve its customers and partners."

About The Hive
The Hive believes that innovation in data technologies will help create a new generation of applications that will disrupt markets and create new business opportunities. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Palo Alto with related The Hive entities in India and soon in other regions of the world, The Hive is a studio that creates and launches startups and provides capital, company-building and technological resources to bring companies to market. Dedicated to utilizing the latest open source innovations and infrastructure, The Hive offers participants an in-house petabyte scale Big Data App Server that enables startups' rapid product development and reduced time to market. The Hive runs a Big Data Think Tank, a community of over 6,500 entrepreneurs, business professionals and technologists who gather for weekly forum events to share thought leadership, knowledge and trends in Big Data. For more information visit www.hivedata.com.

SOURCE The Hive

Related Links

http://www.hivedata.com