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96% of human behaviour research draws from 5% of the world. Besample built the fix — then raised $1.1M to scale it.
~$1.5MTotal raised across all rounds | $1.1MPre-seed round — VC lead + angels | 2,000+Scholars from MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge, Yale |
Before Hive Founders
Elena Brandt is a social psychologist who spent years watching her field produce research it then applied to the whole world — from data collected almost entirely in the West. Ninety-six per cent of human behaviour research draws from American populations that represent five per cent of the global population. The rest of the world is an afterthought.
Her answer was Besample: a data collection platform connecting researchers with pre-screened participants across 42 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. The problem was clear. The pitch was not. Investors did not understand academic research and assumed the product was targeting a small market. They did not see the big picture of the problem.
When Elena joined the Hive Founders Investment Readiness Accelerator, Besample was closing a family and friends round — just over $200K — and preparing for the next phase of growth. She joined for mentorship and community, knowing a larger raise was coming and wanting to be ready for it when it did.
The goal wasn't simply to improve her pitch deck. It was to create a clearer narrative and to build a stronger investment case and make sure the business was ready for the investors she wanted to attract.
The work
The most consequential thing Elena did in the Hive Founders Investment Readiness Accelerator was relearn how to open her pitch. Before the accelerator, Besample's problem statement was tactical: there is no reliable way to engage people in research globally, vet them, pay them, or collect research data across the world. Accurate — but it described a logistics gap, not a crisis. It did not tell an investor why this mattered, or why now.
As she applied the Investment Readiness Methodology, over several one-on-one sessions with her mentor, Elena unlocked a different kind of framing. The mentor kept returning to the bigger picture: the way human research currently operates does not match the world we actually live in. From that came a single, precise insight — 96% of research on human behaviour is drawn from 5% of the global population — and a pitch that opened with a problem anyone could feel, not a product anyone had to understand. This is a core part of the Investment Readiness Methodology: getting extremely clear on the commercial problem being solved, why it matters, and how to communicate it in a way investors immediately understand.
"The way it had been framed before was more tactical — there's no way to collect data around the world. My mentor gave it a much bigger framing. She helped me see what we were really solving." — Elena Brandt, Besample
The result was a framing that opened many doorways. Elena used this framing at Web Summit, where Besample was accepted to pitch in 2024, and where they were discovered by Techstars. The same framing continued to have a big impact, with investors continuously responding to pitches with comments like: “Wow! What an insight.”
The pitch Elena built in the Hive Founders Investment Readiness Accelerator helped her get into Techstars, one of the world’s most competitive pre-seed accelerators.
The raise
Techstars accepted Besample into its accelerator in February 2024, with an investment attached. Elena began fundraising in earnest that June, dedicating 100% of her time to the raise. What followed was a bridge round that included her own users as backers, then a $1.1M pre-seed led by Gutter Capital, a fund that backs companies of consequence. Gutter delivered a term sheet that October, and closed by the end of the year. It was followed by an investment from the founder and former CEO of Prolific - a research company that built one of the first tools for online data collection.
Total raised across all rounds: approximately $1.5M.
How an early investment moved the price
Womankind Ventures was among the investors who came in during the bridge period.The check was small. The timing was critical.
By the time Gutter Capital came to the table with a term sheet, Elena had already closed investments at a valuation roughly 1.7 times higher than Techstars’ a few months earlier — Womankind Ventures among them. When Gutter's initial offer came in slightly lower, Elena held the floor.
That’s the reality of raising investment. Sometimes smaller checks can have big strategic significance.
One other benefit of the Womankind Ventures investment was understanding how long it took an investor to commit. This is a truth the accelerator really highlights: fundraising always takes longer than the founders plan.
"One thing I learned through Hive Founders is that investors may be charmed by your personality, but the smart ones will not write a check on that alone. A check happens when you have earned their trust. Family and friends trust you before you have built anything — investors you are meeting for the first time need a reason, and the best reason is progress, shown consistently over time. — Elena Brandt, Besample
The Hive Founders and Womankind Ventures team knew the business well, and still took several months to watch for the right signals and identify the progress they needed to see before investing.
Because of this lesson, Elena planned her runway to last longer than originally planned, even as she began raising earlier. Besample’s round closed before they ran out of funds. It was another lesson from the accelerator playing out in real life: start raising earlier than you think, protect your runway, and build the business so you don't have to accept capital on bad terms.
The business now
Besample now has over 2,000 scholars on the platform from MIT, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Cambridge, Yale, Duke, and others, and participants span 16 countries where Besample have built their own independent panels.
The funds raised enabled the team to hire an engineering, data, and design team, build their own supply and a proper product — moving from a working but provisional early MVP to infrastructure built for scale. It also revealed something the original model hadn't accounted for. Pure software, it turned out, wasn't enough. Collecting data in countries where most participants use mobile devices, don't read English, and operate in contexts that Western study designs have never accounted for required an expert services layer: cultural adjustment, study review, design for the actual user rather than the assumed one. Besample built both the software and that service layer. As of today, no one else in the market has both.
The business crossed $500K in annualised revenue in summer 2026. It is heading toward $1M GMV and break-even — where the team can take a break from raising, at least for a while.
Looking back on her fundraising journey, Elena noted that she really appreciated Womankind Ventures’ investment because they do not take equity — a distinction Elena has come to value more as Besample has grown.
"When I look at my cap table now, I wish I had raised less and diluted less. Early on, you don’t appreciate what equity costs — until the business turns into something real, and every $100K raised starts to look like a million dollars you forgo at exit. If you can raise less, raise less — and it is why I appreciate Hive Founders' support even more: it came without dilution." — Elena Brandt, Besample
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