Our startup story (so far)
WhyHive began in 2018 as a social enterprise consultancy. We had a (not so) humble mission: democratise data analysis.
In the early days, our team spent thousands of hours helping organisations learn from their data. We worked with corporate and government clients and donated our services through pro-bono and low-bono (heavily discounted) work for the impact sector.
As consultants, we worked on some great projects with great people, and were able to make a considerable impact.
All up, we estimate we made in-kind donations to the tune of $220,000 (AUD).
But our ability to help other teams learn from their data was always limited by our business model. As a consultancy, we could only help as many organisations as we had consultants.
Our first office was in a warehouse in Collingwood, Melbourne. Other tenants included absolute legends HoMie (Melbourne social enterprise) and 50 million pigeons. Boiling in summer, freezing in winter. Prone to indoor waterfalls when it rained. An incredible time.
Plus, our clients kept telling us that they wanted to analyse their own data but the tools on the market were too hard to use.
We heard this from our clients in the business sector just as much as in the not-for-profit sector, and we realised that the problem was sector-agnostic.
We looked around for a data tool that was easy and affordable, but nothing solved our customers’ needs.
Surely there was a better way?
So we started pitching an idea for an easy data analysis app for the everyday person. Like Canva, but for data.
After a short while we stopped consulting and went all-in on the idea.
Some of our awesome teammates from back in the consulting days.
The idea resonated with a lot of people, and next thing we knew, we’d won a couple of pitch competitions and landed ourselves a new office — for free.
The best part? This office has sparkling water on tap air conditioning.
T pitching at the CreativeCubes co-working space in Collingwood, Melbourne. This was the second pitch we’d done publicly after pivoting to build software. This pitch won us free desks for a year!
We’re still here today. Shoutout to Creative Cubes!
Since then, we’ve been busy building.
Data analytics is a big field, so we’ve started with the problems that we see teams struggle with every day and that we know cause a lot of pain: text analysis and survey analysis.
We’re always listening to our community of early adopters when it comes to deciding what to build next. If you’ve got ideas about what you need from an easy data analytics solution we always love to hear from people. We’re most active on LinkedIn - send us a message! (T’s LinkedIn, Matt’s LinkedIn).
If you’d like to join us on this ambitious mission, here are a few ways you can get involved:
Give us your feedback - our product has a free plan and we’d love to know what you think.
Get in touch with us for a free license if you’re a grassroots not-for-profit (i.e. volunteer run) and/or if you’re doing a cool data activism project that you think we could support.
Advocate for WhyHive in your organisation (we’ve found that having an internal champion is a great way to get the team on board and become a customer).
The journey continues. Matt refuses to work under ergonomic conditions. Such is the startup way.