Merritt Hummer

I co-lead Inflection, Bain Capital Ventures’ growth fund, where I invest in AI and software companies as they scale.

I look for founders who will build the category defining companies of this generation

We back the most ambitious founders in the world, full stop. The problems they choose may have nothing to do with each other, but they share a deep desire to build something meaningful. I work with founders across a wide range of domains in AI, from industrial operations (MaintainX) to ERPs (Rillet) to legal (Legora) to customer support (Pylon) to physical AI (Atoms) to chips (Etched). We invest across the full AI stack, from compute to infrastructure to applications.

Why now

When I started investing at BCV in 2018, it was relatively rare to see a new market emerge. Most of what I saw was incremental: a slightly better version of whatever preceded it, like a cleaner CRM or a more intuitive productivity tool. AI changed that. Now I see a new market take shape every quarter, as AI rebuilds the tech stack and gives rise to new business models that couldn't have existed before. Prior to AI, legal software helped lawyers store and search documents. Platforms like Legora now draft, review, and research alongside them, transforming how law is practiced and billed. Our job is to spot these as early as we can, often before the market has a name or a clear winner.

I'm drawn to founders with grit and a novel insight

I back founders with an irrational will to succeed. When challenges arise, as they inevitably will, the founders who feel that they must find a way are the ones who do. I look for something in a founder's background or personality that gives them an extra gear. I also look for an insight that a founder derived from personal experience with a problem. Those are more compelling than ideas that came out of a whiteboarding session. Steven Schwartz and Cameron Zoub started Whop after meeting in a chatroom as teenagers and realizing that a digital platform to support online sellers like themselves didn't exist.

Your bridge to the real economy

Bain Capital was founded in 1984 and our roots are in the real economy. Today we wield that as a competitive advantage for the startups we back. We are investors in technology, but also in healthcare, industrials, financial services, life sciences, and consumer companies. We invest in venture capital, private equity, credit, and real estate. We look for ways to leverage this breadth to our founders' advantage. Whether you need to reach the Fortune 500, industrial manufacturers in Europe, or supply chain leaders in Asia, we can open the door. AI adoption started in technology and is now moving to the rest of the economy. As AI diffuses through the economy this decade, we have an important role to play in linking the AI ecosystem to sectors beyond technology.

We want to be the most valuable investor on your cap table

Before we invest, we work out how we can uniquely help each company. If we can't articulate how we will disproportionately support its goals, then we shouldn't invest. What that looks like differs by company. For Legora, it meant supporting a European company as it expanded to the US. For MaintainX, it meant helping build the executive team and making introductions to global manufacturers. For Rillet, it meant expanding beyond mid-market tech. Each company needs something different and we tailor our effort to address its key goals.