Bain Capital Ventures

Every tech shift brings a wave of 'solution-in-search-of-a-problem' startups as we rush to commercialize what’s newly possible, but not necessarily needed. Many fizzle out once the novelty wears off. Moveworks took the opposite approach. Since its founding in 2016, they didn’t chase trends, they consistently tackled a gnarly, unsexy problem - automating IT and workplace support. And they kept at it, chipping away with every tech breakthrough to make their solution smarter, more indispensable, and - crucially - something customers actually pay for. That’s why ServiceNow + Moveworks makes so much sense. Both have earned their place as the backbone of enterprise IT, automating the mission-critical, to deliver real, compounding value. Together, they will create a new way to work. Congratulations to Bhavin Shah, Vaibhav N., Varun Singh, Jiang Chen - this is just the beginning for Moveworks and Bain Capital Ventures is proud to have been on the journey with them since Enrique Salem met the team 8 years ago. https://lnkd.in/gC3T24U5

Every tech shift brings a wave of 'solution-in-search-of-a-problem' startups as we rush to commercialize what’s newly possible, but not necessarily needed. Many fizzle out once the novelty wears off. Moveworks took the opposite approach. Since its founding in 2016, they didn’t chase trends, they consistently tackled a gnarly, unsexy problem - automating IT and workplace support. And they kept at it, chipping away with every tech breakthrough to make their solution smarter, more indispensable, and - crucially - something customers actually pay for. That’s why ServiceNow + Moveworks makes so much sense. Both have earned their place as the backbone of enterprise IT, automating the mission-critical, to deliver real, compounding value. Together, they will create a new way to work. Congratulations to Bhavin Shah, Vaibhav N., Varun Singh, Jiang Chen - this is just the beginning for Moveworks and Bain Capital Ventures is proud to have been on the journey with them since Enrique Salem met the team 8 years ago. https://lnkd.in/gC3T24U5

When I first met Bhavin Shah in 2017 and then Vaibhav N., Varun Singh and Jiang Chen, the Moveworks founders, it was clear they were ahead of the AI curve and focused on solving hard and previously unsolved problems in Enterprise IT. It was the unique combination of skills across the four founders that motivated Bain Capital Ventures to lead Moveworks’ Series A. They are ambitious, deep technically, prescient, relentless problem-solvers and it's no surprise that Moveworks has become integral to companies like Unilever, Broadcom, Nutanix, HoneyWell and many more in the years since. This is just the beginning for the Moveworks team and we at BCV are proud to have been on this journey together.

Hugely excited to be speaking about Rolodex and our AI strategy at Dawn Capital tomorrow at the Data-Driven VC Summit alongside Polina Jacka from Bain Capital Ventures and Marja Verbon from Five Arrows. Thanks for the invite again Dr. Andre Retterath!

Hiring your first VP of Engineering is one of the most pivotal decisions a founder can make. As Michael puts it, "As a founder, you should always be de-risking the business's top risks." Nowhere is this more true than in building and scaling your technical leadership. Working with Michael has been a masterclass in thoughtful, first-principles hiring. His piece on how to approach hiring your first VPE (link https://lnkd.in/eTu7g4GT & in the first comment of his post below) is a must-read for any founder navigating this challenge. Huge thanks to Michael R. Bock for his insights and partnership—it made all the difference in getting the right VPE in place. If you're thinking through this hire, highly recommend giving his article a read!

Scaling GTM in the early startup days is both art and science. Here are some top tips from Ajay Agarwal and Joe DiMento: 🖼️ Think big picture, but not too long-term when hiring your first sales leader. You should be optimizing for the next 24 months, not the next 48. 💰 Design compensation to be generous, simple and nimble. If your AEs are hitting or exceeding quota, they will be among the most highly compensated people in the company. That's a good thing. 👑 Hire AEs based on concrete parameters. Did they have clear accountability at their last role? Are you sourcing from companies with a similar sales motion? Does your interview exercise easily identify outlier candidates?

I'm often asked: "where's the biggest ROI from using AI?" My response: code-gen (software development) and customer support. Code-gen is progressing particularly fast, and got a lot more interesting with two new releases last week: 1️⃣ Claude Code (built on Sonnet 3.7) brings Anthropic closer to supporting agentic AI for developers. Early testers report much better code quality than Cursor—fewer errors, no broken functionality, and better handling of near-full context windows. It's not an IDE and is more expensive, so the two are not equivalent. But Claude Code will compete with Cursor for developer mindshare. 2️⃣ Mercury by Inception introduces the first diffusion-based LLM. Diffusion models have been used before for images, but this is the first time they've been shown to work for code and text. The most immediate benefit is speed -- it's 5-10x faster than current autoregressive LLMs. That could make a big difference to short-form code completions and inline editing, which make up 80-90% of API calls for products like Cursor and Windsurf. ➡️ Code-gen is advancing rapidly. If your developers are not trying out these products, or others like Devin and Poolside, they really should be.

On International Women's Day, we are proud to celebrate the accomplishments and contributions of women throughout the firm. The Bain Capital Women’s Network brings together colleagues across business units, departments, and geographies for connection and learning. As is the case for all our employee networks, events are open to everyone: those who identify, allies, and those who want to learn more. Over the past year, we hosted Women’s Network gatherings and events including the Bain Capital US Women Investors Conference, the Bain Capital Europe Cross-BU Women’s Offsite, a panel featuring women CEOs across Bain Capital’s portfolio companies, and global IWD celebrations.    We continue to collaborate with organizations around the globe, including AWF Tokyo, GAIN UK, Girls Who Invest, Level 20, Synergist Network, and The Women's Foundation, that are welcoming more women into rewarding careers in investing and providing mentorship, networking, and professional development opportunities for women in finance.    We recognize these are steps on the critical journey to continue building a supportive and inclusive culture at Bain Capital and across the finance industry.

Yesterday, amidst a torrential downpour, we hosted a packed BCV Labs AI founder <> engineer happy hour in NYC. We've been investigating some of the most interesting opportunities for applying foundation models to areas that have historically relied on manual services. As part of that effort, we brought together over 150 friends ranging from applied researchers at the foundation model labs to engineers owning AI-first products at conventional companies to hear from some of the most talented founders we've run across over the last few months. If you're interested in accelerating your path to company-building (as a founder or founding team member) through BCV Labs' talent mixers in SF or NYC, get in touch. Huge thank you to our Labs NYC team Ron Miasnik, Austen Hinton, William Eleazer, Katherine Brown, Lauren Batres and Jooli H. for putting on an amazing event! cc Josh Sach Mihir Garimella Peter Malinverni Alex Reichenbach Ryan Daniels Benton Atchison

Great to have Bain Capital Ventures and Aaref Hilaly joining us at HumanX. So many incredible speakers helping execs plot their ai journeys with confidence!