Building a company is so many things all at once: exhilarating, chaotic, lonely and yet profoundly rewarding. For founders, the world is a place of constant urgency and zero certainty. They're not just living at the edge of what's possible — they're building it.

We know this because we’ve been there. The Hive, Bain Capital Ventures’ platform team, is a collective of startup operators and hypergrowth veterans from places like Dropbox, Stripe and Navan. We’ve helped turn nothing into something, built companies during the volatile 0- to 10-employee stage and lived through the roller coaster of rapid expansion from hundreds to thousands. The Hive exists to be the scaffolding we wish we had when we were in the trenches.

Today’s landscape has shifted. Once upon a time, venture capital meant a check and a board seat. Now, platform teams are a dime a dozen, features of nearly every major firm. Platform teams often promise operational support, strategic guidance, and industry connections so founders can build their businesses faster, better and stronger. These are great ambitions. But if we’ve learned one thing after our years of operating, promises don’t build companies.

We think about platform teams differently

Our goal as BCV’s business acceleration program is to help founders build outlier companies. But it's not about putting on a show of force or hiring a small army of former operators to drive volume — more meetings, more introductions, more advice. It’s also not about being prescriptive or skin-deep. We often hear from founders, “I didn’t even know what I didn’t know” — and that’s exactly why we’re here. Delivering for founders means tuning in to what they really need, devoting resources and diving in with intention, purpose, and passion.

Startups need partnerships, not playbooks

Every founding team is unique — from how they met and what they care about to how they collaborate and problem solve. Why should a winning structure to turbocharge founders be one-size-fits-all?

At The Hive, founders tell us where they need fuel — not the other way around. We don’t believe in silver bullets or generic playbooks that promise to hack growth. Our offering goes far beyond generic “support”. At The Hive, we see the founder’s journey as a long hike. Our experience means we’ve already marked the trail for you. Those markers signify progress — you can stop at the ones that make sense for you and blaze by the ones that don’t. We’re here to guide you, not to prescribe a single way of getting to the top. Some early-stage companies might need to recruit an entire leadership bench, while others need a few pivotal hires. A growth-stage team might have nailed its marketing but struggle with developing sustainable sales momentum.

Founders deserve partners who take their work as seriously as they do. The Hive is not where burned-out operators go to wind down their careers — we work alongside our founders, sharing their mindset as they build their companies. Until you’ve developed a track record of success, it’s hard to hire high-caliber talent outside of your network — we’ve hired those people so you don’t have to. And you can have them on speed dial. Although The Hive doesn’t work at your company, it sometimes might feel like we do. To give a company the best possible start, we might rename your company and build your website, jump in as a temporary chief of staff, or design your GTM playbook for early lighthouse customers. We know that true partnership means both giving strategic guidance and rolling up our sleeves to make work happen.

Not all networks are created equal

VCs all know people. But today, connections inside the tech echo chamber aren’t enough. As AI blends into every corner of the economy, startups need pathways into and insights about the industries where adoption will become a standard operating layer.

That’s why we lean on something bigger: the Bain Capital ecosystem. With more than 1,200 current and former portfolio companies, Bain Capital’s reach extends far beyond other tech startups and Silicon Valley. We draw insights from our ownership stakes in airlines, manufacturing companies, pharmaceutical firms, restaurants and even veterinary offices. The total assets under management for Bain Capital are equivalent to the GDP of Turkey. This is the real economy, and it’s where tomorrow’s technology will be most needed.

While our network opens doors for startups, we think strategically about introductions. We make the right ones, at the right time, with founders prepared to seize the opportunity with companies of all sizes.

Workshops that actually work

Founding can be lonely. As a founder, you’re the first recruiter, the first marketer, the first salesperson. You don’t need theoretical frameworks, you need practical output. Put simply, you need to get the work done.

At The Hive, workshops are the cornerstone of our operating model. They are immersive, hands-on, and designed to reframe the problem and shorten or erase learning curves. We don’t believe in giving advice from a podium; we dive into the weeds with you. When you ask us for help thinking through hiring your first marketing leader, we don’t just offer a 30-minute call to share some high-level frameworks. Instead, we have our “Hiring Your First Leaders” workshop that walks through the tactics and mindset you’ll need to successfully hire this leader. We will sit side-by-side with you to build your hiring scorecard, calibrate on profiles, and select a search partner.This approach is rigorous, but not performative. It’s about being in the trenches with you to tackle a narrative workshop, for example, created to make you question who you really are, or a sales pitch workshop that dissects your videos frame by frame.

Where we help

Every company is unique, but there are three areas where our team is best positioned to help startups do more with less to better accelerate their growth. We’ve built our team to operate where we can give founders the most leverage to build the best companies, which is exactly where we are positioned to be the most useful.

Hiring

Hiring is a founder’s most important job. The right people shape the culture, the product and the destiny of a company. But in a world of endless résumés and fierce battles for top talent in key roles, discernment is harder than ever.

We believe that great hires start in a founder’s imagination, before a single interview or LinkedIn search. Our job is to help clarify the profile, sharpen the criteria and surface a handful of people who actually fit. Not a 500-person name dump. Not even 50. Just the right ones, leading better outcomes and a faster hiring pace. Our head of executive talent Laura Hilton plays a key role in expanding and strengthening our talent ecosystem, while our head of tech talent Matt Stephenson works closely with founders and teams at BCV’s portfolio companies, helping them build and scale high-performing technical teams.

Marketing

Attention has never been more fleeting. In a world where algorithms and generative AI dictate what people see, clear storytelling isn’t optional — it’s existential. Too many founders see marketing as spin, not strategy.

At The Hive, marketing is about clarity and conviction. The story you tell and the brand aesthetic you create shape who listens, who joins, who invests and who buys. We help founders articulate that story, not with jargon, but with creativity and courage. In our two-week narrative workshop, we don’t ask the usual questions. We want to get founders thinking differently. Partner Allison Braley runs our narrative workshops and leads BCV’s marketing team, which supports BCV and its portfolio companies through communications, brand strategy and events.

Go-to-market

The path to customers and partners looks nothing like it did even five years ago. Enterprise budgets are scrutinized. Buyers expect proof, not just potential. Startups often underestimate how hard it is to convert curiosity into adoption.

We help founders think beyond the getting-in-the-door phase, focusing on trust-building and designing motions that scale. In our Strong Start sales workshop, we comb pitch videos, frame-by-frame, to help founders excel in every meeting. Because landing your first customer is difficult. Landing your tenth in the same vertical takes true startup growth strategy. Joe DiMento heads and leads BCV’s Go-to-Market and Industry Partnerships team, working across the BCV portfolio to help our founders unlock commercial opportunities and scale their go-to-market efforts.

The Hive Method, BCV’s business acceleration program, is simple: Listen deeply, get our hands dirty, think and act outside of the tech bubble, and stand with founders on the challenges that matter most. We don’t pretend to have every answer, but we do know how to build alongside people who are bold and committed. Because in the end, companies aren’t forged by capital alone. They’re built by conviction, craft and partners who never forget how hard the journey really is.

Case Studies: What Founders Say About the Hive

MaintainX

When MaintainX’s VP of Partnerships departed unexpectedly — just months after a grueling six-month search to fill the role — it created a critical gap at a pivotal moment. Partnerships were central to the company’s growth strategy, and leaving the function idle wasn’t an option. MaintainX needed a seasoned leader who could step in fast and keep the go-to-market engine running.

The Hive partnered with MaintainX’s founder and CEO on a highly targeted search. Together, we built a list of ideal companies and candidates, then tapped our network to identify and vet two top-tier executives. We provided the founders with backchannel references and detailed candidate insights to sharpen their interviews. Within a month, MaintainX had landed an exceptional VP of Partnerships who was ready to hit the ground running.

To help this new leader succeed, The Hive identified companies within the Bain Capital ecosystem that might have interest in MaintainX’s maintenance software, making over a dozen high-value intros to enterprises that would otherwise be out of reach. Those connections converted into six figures in ARR, validating both the hire and the value of the company’s product.

FERMAT

In the crowded and noisy martech category, FERMAT stood out. The team had built a technical solution that did what every marketer claims to want and few actually achieve: true, individualized personalization — at scale, on autopilot and without landing pages.

The challenge was getting the rest of the world to see what we at The Hive saw. FERMAT needed to sound different, because it is.

We started with a narrative workshop, pulling the company out from under the jargon and sharpening its positioning into something human and hard to ignore. We asked: What does “personalization” actually mean? What if, instead of optimizing landing pages, you didn’t need them at all? That became the hook.

Then we made sure people heard about it. We led efforts to get coverage in Axios, Fortune, Business Insider, StrictlyVC and more. And because nothing lands like a founder telling their own story, we co-published a blog post with Rishabh Jain that made the rounds on social. At the same time, Rishabh launched Whiteboard Wednesdays, a video series on LinkedIn and Twitter that quickly became one of the most followed in tech, making him an influential early-stage voice in the category.

The early results are a steady stream of daily inbound customer inquiries, material revenue growth and a spot on The Information’s TI50 list of top startups.

HYCU

In early 2021, HYCU spun out of Comtrade to compete in the $18 billion data protection market. As a newly independent company, HYCU faced the urgent challenge of building both a leadership team and a go-to-market engine capable of positioning the company as a category leader.

The Hive stepped in as a true collaborator. We partnered on executive searches for go-to-market and product leaders, connected founder and CEO Simon Taylor with top-tier search firms at preferred pricing and helped vet candidates. While the search for permanent hires was underway, we placed a Hive team member as interim CRO to quickly scale the commercial organization. To strengthen recruiting, we also guided HYCU’s transition to an equity-based compensation model that could attract top talent.

Within months, HYCU had assembled a high-caliber leadership bench, including a standout marketing leader placed through BCV’s network. Our executive briefings and group sessions with CISOs gave the company valuable market exposure, generating 22 enterprise prospects and advancing opportunities with companies like ServiceNow, BlackRock and Liberty Mutual.

Our partnership with HYCU continues — supporting more than 10 additional searches and acting as an advisor to Simon as he scales the company and his team.

Northflank

In a crowded category littered with flameouts and missed opportunities, Northflank’s founders had ambitious goals: to create a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) for engineering teams that was faster, cleaner and genuinely usable.

Northflank had strong technology and sharp founders. But in a sea of sameness, great features alone aren’t enough to stand out. To continue growing through its Series A, the company needed a clearer story, a sharper go-to-market strategy and a sales team capable of executing at a higher level.

The Hive stepped in to help retool Northflank’s engineering interview process to better attract top talent, and leveraged our network to bring in high-performing candidates. On the sales side, we supported the founders through a critical team transition, helping hire and onboard account executives who could drive results.

We also collaborated on messaging and story development for the Series A announcement, landing coverage in VentureBeat. The impact went beyond polishing a pitch. The company gained momentum, setting the stage for the next phase of growth.