Hive is a productive tool for teams that puts all your actions, messages and files on one simple page. With Hive’s all-in-one dashboard, your team members have their actions prioritized automatically and everything they need to complete them.
Kevin William David interviewed John Furneaux, CEO at Hive to know more.
Hi John, So tell us about Hive?
Hive is a powerful project management platform for teams. It combines messaging, project management, file sharing onto one easy-to-use dashboard.
Tell me more about why you are building this?
Most tools only cover one area of collaboration — chat, planning, files — and force you to invest in a whole productivity stack. These leaves teams fractured and inefficient.
I saw this over and over again as a consultant at Capgemini and later as global head of customer success at Huddle. So I set out with my co-founder Eric Typaldos to create more integrated platform that is really easy to use.
That is what we have built in Hive.
Manage your to-do list. Check on project progress. Chat with colleagues. Get updates from CRM. All. In. One. Place.
It streamlines your workday. It makes it easier to drive projects forward. It’s also deadly easy to use, with lots of flexibility (kanban boards, calendar, lists) and available integrations.
What’s unique about what you are building & why do you think companies should use Hive?
Some of our primary competitors are Asana, Basecamp, Trello but we also compete against more established tools like Microsoft Project.
Unlike these tools, Hive allows teams to plan and execute their projects in one place.
So often, a project manager puts together the perfect project plan, but every time something changes they need to resend the file to everyone on the team. In Hive, a manager can make changes to the gantt chart and everyone on the team gets the updates in real-time on their “My Actions” list.
Even better, we also have a chat accessible right next to your action tracking. So if someone asks you to do something in chat all you have to do is drag the chat onto your to-do list so you won’t forget.
Can you tell us a bit about the different customer segments using Hive?
Hive is a great place for any group of people looking for a better way to organize their work. So, we have a diverse set of customers ranging from small tech startups to large insurance companies to marketing agencies.
However, Hive has resonated best with marketing, operations, project management and design teams. These are teams with a lot to projects and people to manage at once, who aren’t being served well by any other tools out there. These are also teams that expect the same frictionless user experience they get in all their consumer facing apps. We provide everything they need in one place, and that is why they come to us from some of the other tools they are using.
How are your customers using Hive? Could you share a few different use cases?
The Pin Factory group at Pinterest is one great use case. The Pin Factory is responsible for creating pins for sales campaigns. Previously, sales team members would submit request via a Typeform which were then transferred to a google sheet and then assigned out by email. After assigned the requests, the team would collaborate and ask questions in slack. They were spread out between 4 different tools, which made it hard to keep track of it all.
Hive completely streamlined their workflow. Now, the sales team uses Hive Forms to request new pins. These requests drop straight into the Pin Factory’s Hive workspace and are assigned out with just a click of a button. Any discussions they need to have happen right in the chat on their Hive dashboard.
Before they were using 4 different tools to get work done. Now they use one. That is the magic of Hive.
Were there any early ‘growth hacks’ or tactics that have contributed to your current success?
Integrations have been key for widening our reach. We particularly proud to be one of Zenefits integrations partners and on the WeWork services store. Both organizations have complementary customers, and in these stores we catch them at the decision point.
Another thing that was important to us was identifying key verticals and regions we wanted to focus on. This has helped us build a name for ourselves and get more customer referrals.
I also think one of the most important factors in our growth has been our focus on customers. We work hard to make sure our customers happy and almost all of our feature improvements have come directly from feedback from customers. Many of our assumptions about what would be helpful have been proven wrong from discussions with our customers. So many companies get caught up in the attitude of “I know better” and I think letting go of that has been key to our success. Our complete focus is on making it easier and more fun to do your work in Hive.
What were some of the biggest challenges while building the product early on and how did you solve them?
One of the biggest challenges was honing in on the experience that customers wanted. The key for us was setting up customer interviews with our early adopters and watching FullStory videos to see where people were struggling and constantly iterating to make it better. We are constantly adding new features or improving user experience. It is definitely a continuous process that will always be apart of the way our company works.
What have been some of the most interesting integrations you’ve added? Are there any that have been particularly impactful for you?
We have over 100 integrations available to accommodate all different needs.
Some of our most popular Google Drive, Dropbox and Box for files, which allows users to have immediate access to their important documents in Hive. You can also connect your Slack account and share Hive actions in your slack channels. Another integration we are excited about is Zenefits so that when an employee is hired they are automatically added into the company’s Hive workspace.
Before we end, what are the top products that you depend to run the company & how do you use them?
Hubspot is the central place where we handle all marketing and sales activities. From the beginning to the end of the customer lifecycle is handled in Hubspot.
We couldn’t live without Intercom. It’s live chat support is critical in helping us provide customers with the best possible experience, and it has really made it easy for a small team to provide best-in-class support.
Fullstory has been great for helping use understand user behavior and make it easy to identify what changes we need to make.
Chargebee is where we handle all our subscription billing. It makes it easy to create invoices and adjust plan details.
Satismeter is great for keeping a pulse on customer satisfaction. We can monitor the feedback and quickly identify any weak points so that they can be handled right away.
Originally published at siftery.com.