Hive, a Kitchener, Ontario company that sells marketing software to venues, promoters and festivals, announced a $27 million Series B from Frontier Growth on October 21. Most of the round was secondary capital, money paid to an existing investor for its shares rather than new money for Hive, BetaKit reported after interviewing co-founder and CTO Patrick Hannigan.
According to BetaKit, the secondary purchase bought nearly all of the stake held by Avenue Growth Partners, the Washington, DC firm that led Hive's $7 million Series A in 2023. Avenue had said in a July 21 announcement of its $155 million second fund that Hive and another portfolio company, Minga, had recently been recapitalized by later-stage investors. Avenue's statement came three months before the Hive Series B was announced, and neither Hive nor Frontier has said when the deal closed.
Hannigan told BetaKit that Hive's main reason for the deal was to work with Frontier, a Charlotte, North Carolina firm that invests in growth-stage vertical software companies. “This isn’t a venture investment,” he said.
What the new money is for
A small part of the round is new money for product development and sales, BetaKit reported, and Hannigan declined to give the split or Hive's valuation. Hive said the money will pay for AI assistants for event teams, more ticketing, data and advertising integrations, and growth in live events markets abroad.
What Hive sells
Hive's software pulls ticket buyer and event data from more than 40 ticketing systems, including Ticketmaster, AXS, Eventim, Etix, Tixr and DICE. Promoters use it to build audiences by purchase history, location, artist and genre, then aim email, text and Meta ad campaigns at a particular show, market or on-sale date.
Hive says more than 1,600 venues, promoters and festivals use the platform and that it has helped customers generate more than $1 billion in ticket sales. BetaKit described Hive as a 75-person company, and Hannigan told the outlet that annual recurring revenue is now well over $10 million.
Why Frontier invested
Andrew Lindner, a partner at Frontier Growth, gave the firm's view of the market in Hive's announcement.
The live events market is large, underserved by generic tools, and moving quickly toward automation.Andrew Lindner, partner at Frontier Growth
Lindner joins Hive's board, BetaKit reported. Frontier's own post on the deal discloses that the firm holds a board seat at Hive and is a shareholder.
Funding history
Ian Roberts, Hive's CEO, and Hannigan founded the company in 2014 and went through Y Combinator's summer 2014 batch, according to Hive's company timeline. BetaKit reported that the pair started Hive as a ticketing business while students at the University of Waterloo, raised a $750,000 seed round that year, and, after several pivots, found their footing around 2019 by selling marketing software to music venues.
BetaKit put Hive's total raised at about $35 million, most of it secondary.
