Meister

Meister develops smart and intuitive web apps. Our flagship products MindMeister and MeisterTask support your complete creative workflow from social brainstorming to collaborative task management.

<div><p>Meister is a developer of software solutions to support employees in creative workflows from social brainstorming to collaborative task management. Its product suite consists of MindMeister (a mind mapping tool), MeisterTask (a task management app), and MeisterNote (a note-taking app). In addition, the platform integrates with tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, Slack, and Zendesk. Meister gained 8 million new users in 2020 and reports a total of 25 million users as of July 2021. Its customers include Dropbox, IBM, and Deloitte.</p></div>

The tools that power remote work are define the next generation of enterprise software.

Remote Work Tools

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  <p>
    Meister is a developer of software solutions to support employees in creative workflows from social brainstorming to collaborative task management. Its product suite consists of MindMeister (a mind mapping tool), MeisterTask (a task management app), and MeisterNote (a note-taking app). In addition, the platform integrates with tools such as Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, Slack, and Zendesk. Meister gained 8 million new users in 2020 and reports a total of 25 million users as of July 2021. Its customers include Dropbox, IBM, and Deloitte.
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  <p>
    Meister raised USD 52 million in financing led by private equity firm Verdane in July 2021. The fresh funds were allocated to expand Meister’s product suite and to expand into additional markets in Europe and the US. It also plans to rapidly expand its 100 employee workforce to more than 500.
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  <p>
    Hive is a productivity platform for project management and collaboration. The platform provides automated workflows, project planning layouts, and action templates to assign and keep track of project tasks. Hive focuses on improving task execution with instant feedback cycles for editing and approvals. Additional features include note taking (Hive Note), instant messaging, online meetings, and file sharing.
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  <p>
    Hive offers a variety of ways for teams to organize their projects, including Gantt charts, Kanban boards, tables, and calendars, with updates made in one view automatically reflected in all others. The platform allows team members to create action cards with files, sub-actions, dependencies, and comments to stay on top of their objectives, and have access to a personal to-do list that compiles all assigned tasks from all projects. Managers can use Hive to assign approvals, share proofs, provide feedback, and collect project forms from clients and customers. Hive also uses AI and machine learning to provide insights on team productivity and identify potential risks, and to optimize resource allocation and client billing.
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    <b>Key customers and partnerships</b>
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    The company&rsquo;s customer base includes Uber, Marriot, Starbucks, The Economist, Compass, Omnicom, Harvard, New York University, and WeWork. Hive offers integrations over 1,000 SaaS platforms, including Asana, Trello, Basecamp, and Smartsheet, allowing users to import tasks from these platforms.
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    <b>Funding and financials</b>
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  <p>
    Hive raised USD 10.6 million in&nbsp; raised USD 10 million in a funding round led by Rembrandt Venture Partners in August 2021. The funding round included Zoom as well as existing investors Tribeca Venture Partners and Angelpad. Hive is one of the first startups to receive an investment from Zoom&rsquo;s recently launched Zoom Apps Fund (a USD 100 million global venture fund). The fresh funds were allocated toward platform development.&nbsp;
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Hive

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  <p>
    Grain’s software allows users to record and share online meeting content from tools such as Zoom in an effective manner. The content can be in the form of recorded videos or transcripts from the call. In addition, the shareable content can be clipped and tweaked to create summary videos of lectures, workplace meetings, etc. Grain operates a subscription-based model with a free-to-use version, a paid plan priced at USD 19 per user per month, and an enterprise plan with custom pricing. The company’s products focus on distributed teams, sales, product and user research, and hiring teams.
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  <p>
    In its latest funding round (
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/9759">
      <u>April 2022</u>
    </a>
    ), Grain raised USD 16 million in Series A funding led by Tiger Global Management. The funds were raised to expand operations and develop its ​​video meeting system of record for content, which allows employees to collaborate around insights, topics, relationships, or teams. 
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Grain

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  <p>
    Air is a creative operations system that enables designers and marketers to create, store, search, collaborate, and review image and video content. Air&rsquo;s smart search function is equipped with image recognition, automated tagging, and search filters to reduce time spent on manual processes. Kanban-style project management tools that integrate with third-party tools like Asana and monday.com are also included in Air to manage visual content planning, production, and distribution workflows. Further, Air supports collaboration and the review process through version stacks and features like annotations, which can be&nbsp;timestamped and shared publicly. As of January 2022, Air offered a free version with a storage capacity of up to 5 GB for three members and paid subscription plans starting from USD 10 per month/per user.
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    Shane Hegde and Tyler Strand, both Stanford graduates, founded Air in 2017. Hegde was the former chief digital officer at TV network Revolt Media (an American music cable television network). Strand&rsquo;s previous venture hostess.fm (a live-streaming company) was sold to LA-based events company SFX Entertainment in 2014.
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  <p>
    Although it was founded in 2017, Air launched in March 2020. In its first four months since launch, it reported weekly paid user growth of 10% and attracted 200 clients as of September 2020. As of January 2022, the company&rsquo;s revenue in the direct-to-consumer (DTC) and ecommerce markets had seen more than 500% YoY growth in the preceding 12 months. Air&rsquo;s free product is used to manage nearly 20 million creative assets, 25% of customers use the product daily, and customer revenue has doubled every six months, as of January 2022.
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  <p>
    In its most recent funding round in 
    <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/8139">
      <u>January 2022</u>
    </a>
    , Air raised USD 10 million in an &ldquo;Operator Round&rdquo; led by Headline with participation from Tiger Global, Lere Hippeau, and 50+ strategic founders and marketing executives including Peter Rahal (Co-Founder, RXBAR), Kipp Bodnar (CMO, HubSpot), and Joe Thomas (CEO, Loom), valuing the company at USD 110 million. The company considers the Operator Round to be unique, as its backers included Air&rsquo;s existing customers, potential customers, and prominent product advisors. The fresh funds will be used to accelerate Air&rsquo;s go-to-market activities and growth.
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    Acapela was co-founded by Roland Grenke, founder of Dubsmash, a video sharing social media app. Acapela facilitates online meetings without real-time interaction between participants; instead, members contribute to meetings over time. 
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  <p>
     Acapela provides voice and video messages integrated with popular productivity tools such as Asana, Google Workspace, Notion, and Atlassian. Additionally, meetings will generate tasks and meeting summaries automatically. The company identified distributed tech teams as its initial target segment and plans to shift focus toward small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger enterprises eventually.  The product is currently in invite-only beta.
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    In October 2020, the company exited stealth mode with a USD 3 million seed funding round led by Visionaries Club. The round included Entrepreneur First and other notable individual investors, such as Christian Reber (founder of presentation software Pitch) and Taavet Hinrikus (founder of online money transfer service TransferWise). 
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Acapela

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  <p>
    iObeya is a French company that has begun its global expansion starting with the United States. The company focuses on visualization tools for management, such as lean, agile, and manufacturing, often in the form of Gantt charts, whiteboards, and post-it notes. The platform currently has more than 300,000 users across 350+ clients, which are mainly large enterprises.
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iObeya

Solutions in this industry hub are predominantly offered under a B2B SaaS model

Some solutions in the virtual office and video conferencing segments are based on AR/VR

Facilitates hybrid workforces by offering tools for employees to collaborate regardless of location

Meeting transcription and note-taking apps, design, and project management tools use AI/ML for product development

Platforms that facilitate task delegation and tracking with board, timeline, and kanban style views.

Meister

Remote Work Tools

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Meister raises USD 52 million

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