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HubSpot

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HubSpot, Inc.
Company typePrivate
IndustrySoftware
FoundedJune 2006
Headquarters
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Key people
Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder

Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Founder
J.D. Sherman, COO
Jim O'Neill (technologist), CIO
Mike Volpe, CMO
Mark Roberge, SVP Sales and Services

David Stack, CFO
ProductsConsulting service
Revenue$28.5 million (2011)[1]
Number of employees
179 (2011)[1]
304 (2012)[1]
Websitewww.hubspot.com

HubSpot, Inc. is a marketing software as a service company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.[1][2] Its namesake product is also called HubSpot. It was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in June 2006.

History

Co-founders Brian Halligan (left) and Dharmesh Shah (right)

HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004.[3]

Both had backgrounds in the software industry and reportedly planned to launch new companies to create software for small businesses after earning their degrees. Shah invested the first $500,000 in HubSpot followed by Edward B. Roberts, founder and chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.[3] HubSpot’s co-founders were also semi-finalists in an MIT business plan competition for $50,000 in funding.[4] Two years were spent in discussions before HubSpot incorporated in June 2006.[3] A majority of HubSpot’s early customers, investors and employees were MIT classmates, professors, alumni and community members.[5]

The company was founded on the idea that traditional marketing was broken and the tools needed to do inbound marketing were too complex and disconnected.[6] HubSpot’s investors include General Catalyst Partners, Matrix Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and Salesforce.com.[7][8][9] It raised $5 million in Series A funding in 2007[10] and $12 million in Series B funding in 2008[11] Another $16 million was raised in a C round in 2009, followed by an additional round of funding for $32 million in 2011[12] brought total funding to $65 million.[13] In the summer of 2010, HubSpot moved its offices into the Davenport, in the Lechmere neighborhood of Cambridge.[14]

On June 16, 2011 HubSpot announced its acquisition of the marketing automation company Performable, [15] which was integrated into HubSpot.[16] Performable developed software for analyzing sales and marketing performance,[17] which had triggers for sending email messages based on a visitors’ prior interaction with the company.[16] On August 18, 2011 the company tweeted its acquisition of Laura Fitton's company oneforty. Oneforty began as an app store for Twitter,[18] but evolved to also be a hub of guides, reviews and other information for marketers to learn how to use social media.[18] The acquisition was announced over Twitter, drawing praise from the Wall Street Journal.[19] Oneforty’s catalog of third-party Twitter apps and SocialBase, a social media management system integrated with HubSpot’s app marketplace.[20]

Products

HubSpot provides software for businesses to coordinate their online marketing efforts.[21] A free product, Marketing Grader, was launched in 2011 to replace Website Grader.[22][23] It analyzes online marketing activities and then provides a report on what to fix on the website or blog to increase leads.[24][25]

Strategy

See Main Article: Inbound marketing HubSpot uses its blog, social media and free tools to attract prospects to lead-generation content such as webinars. HubSpot’s own marketing has been used as an example for LinkedIn company pages,[26] press releases made for Twitter,[27] content marketing,[28] and viral videos.[29] The company focuses its customer acquisition strategy on providing educational material that customers will value.[30][31]

Technology

HubSpot's Content Management System is written in C#, uses the ASP.Net framework, and runs on IIS web servers. The company's server-side code is in Java with Python and NodeJs. Web servers are hosted primarily in Nginx using Django for Python apps. Databases are a combination of MySQL and HBase. HubSpot runs the CentOS operating system on its Amazon EC2 servers with Windows Server for C# app servers.[32] The dashboard uses an API to extract information about links primarily from Moz.

HubSpot customers install a piece of JavaScript on their website, which tracks information about every page on the site. This creates data from customers' pages. To address the volume of data and keep queries fast, HubSpot uses a parallel Hadoop analytics cluster and Hive for some queries. HubSpot processes six million tweets per day.[32]

HubSpot's hosted products were considered in a private cloud until transitioning to a "hybrid cloud". The hybrid cloud keeps certain functions private, while tapping into the resources of a public cloud that can expand quickly as more resources are needed. HubSpot works with Rackspace and Amazon.com as their cloud vendors.[21]

Corporate

Leadership

HubSpot co-founder and CEO Brian Halligan is a senior lecturer at MIT[33] Halligan believes the military-inspired command-and-control principles of leadership don’t take into account technological and societal changes that make knowledge workers more nimble.[34][35]Brian was also a 2005 Sloan Fellow and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.[5]

HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah is a member of Boston’s entrepreneurial community. He is an angel investor in more than 30 startups and a speaker on inbound marketing, innovation and startups.[33][36] Shah believes in making fast decisions and allows business owners to grow their business their own way.[36] He supports the mantra of “watch your competitors, but don’t follow them,” meaning that becoming overly absorbed in what the competition is doing can dampen innovation. Dharmesh is an advisor to AngelList.[36] He was named as one of the top innovators by the Boston Globe in May 2011[37] Dharmesh was quoted that he still writes software code, which he says isn’t work, but more like “a calling.”[38]

Corporate culture

The main entrance to HubSpot's offices

HubSpot has documented 13 features of its “post-modern culture.”[39][self-published source?] The company culture was inspired by the AMC television program MadMen. HubSpot created an unlimited vacation day policy[40] on the basis that employees already work through weekends and evenings, so they shouldn’t have to ask for a weekday off.[35] The CEO called the typical corporate vacation policy “a relic of an era when people worked 9 to 5 in an office.”[41] The HubSpot culture has been described as “fun and fast-paced.”[42]

Teams are named after Boston sports teams with employees participating in playful viral videos.[13] HubSpot favors cash perks, saying that ping pong tables and foosball tables only collect dust. For example, senior recruits coming from big companies are offered a “jailbreak” bonus of $1,000 per year they spent working for a big corporation.[43] The company has a free beer fridge, which it says encourages employees to spend time together after work and foster cameraderie.[44] HubSpot is aggressive about competing for talent. When HubSpot couldn’t find talent to implement HTML5, it offered a $10,000 bounty to anyone who referred a successful candidate.[32][43][45]

HubSpot has a "no door" policy and employees routinely switch seats to meet new people.

In 2008 HubSpot salesperson Pete Caputa came up with an idea to increase sales through a partner program, but CEO Brian Halligan didn’t agree with it. Pete spent evenings and weekends working on it until it was so successful, it became his full-time job.[46] Now Pete oversees 30 employees and the partner program accounts for 20 percent of HubSpot’s revenue. This was the start of HubSpot’s startup within a startup program,[46] which supports ideas from employees. HubSpot compares the program to being a venture investor. Most of the programs fail, but come at a low cost.[42][46]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d "hubspot proifle". Inc.com. Retrieved 6 October 2012.
  2. ^ Clark, Dorie (October 16, 2012). "The Real Secret to Digital Marketing". Forbes.
  3. ^ a b c "From the Blackboard to the Boardroom". Entrepreneur. March 11, 2010. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
  4. ^ Stone, Avery (August 8, 2011). "HubSpot wants to be Salesforce.com for small business". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  5. ^ a b "Interview with Brian Halligan, CEO & Co-Founder of Hub Spot". Noam Bernstein. May 24, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012.[dubious – discuss]
  6. ^ Zieger, Melissa (October, 2011). "Interview with Dharmesh Shah: A Great Spot to Hub your Social Media". 367 Addison Avenue. Retrieved February 27, 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  7. ^ Indvik, Lauren (March 8, 2011). "Here's What Google, Salesforce & Sequoia Are Investing In". Mashable. Retrieved March 9, 2011.
  8. ^ Kirsner, Scott (October 19, 2009). "Brian Halligan's To-Do List: Run Company, Write Book, Raise $16 Million". The Boston Globe. Retrieved January 22, 2011.
  9. ^ "HubSpot, Inc. Secures $12,000,000 Series B Financing". Xconomy. May 16, 2008. Retrieved January 22, 2011. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  10. ^ Hendrickson, Mark (May 15, 2008). "HubSpot Gets $12 Million To Drive Traffic to Your Site". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  11. ^ Ha, Anthony (May 16, 2008). "Marketing software company HubSpot raises $12M". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  12. ^ Rao, Leena (February 8, 2012). "Eyeing an IPO, HubSpot Adds Akamai's CFO and Former IBM Exec JD Sherman as COO". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  13. ^ a b Greenberg, Paul (January 24, 2012). "CRM Watchlist 2012 Winners - The Marketing Mavens". ZDNet. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  14. ^ Psaty, Kyle (March 30, 2010). "EXCLUSIVE: A Tour of HubSpot's New Office in Lechmere". BostonInno. Retrieved February 27, 2012. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  15. ^ Huang, Gregory (June 17, 2011). "Performable Picked Up by HubSpot". Xconomy.
  16. ^ a b Raab, David (December 2011). "Gleansight: Marketing Automation". Gleanster.
  17. ^ Rao, Leena (June 16, 2011). "HubSpot Acquires Marketing Software Startup Performable". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  18. ^ a b Rao, Leena (August 18, 2011). "HubSpot Buys Social Media Management Platform And App Directory Oneforty". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  19. ^ Basich, Zoran (August 18, 2011). "Annals Of PR: HubSpot Buys Oneforty, Says 'Tweet This'". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 12, 2012.
  20. ^ O’Dell, Jolie (August 18, 2011). "Twitter app store Oneforty acquired by HubSpot". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  21. ^ a b Butler, Brandon (February 22, 2012). "Public Cloud vs. Private Cloud: How About a Hybrid?". Network World. Retrieved February 27, 2012.. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  22. ^ Greenberg, Paul (January 24, 2012). "CRM Watchlist 2012 Winners - The Marketing Mavens". ZDNet.
  23. ^ Gomer, Gregory (December 6, 2011). "HubSpot Marketing Grader Launches: We Put 30 Boston Startups Head to Head #Deathmatch". BostInno.
  24. ^ Marketing Grader site
  25. ^ "HubSpot Launches App Version of Marketing Grader Tool". Marketing Vox. May 18, 2012.
  26. ^ Maksymiw, Amanda (February 17, 2012). "6 Lessons from HubSpot's LinkedIn Company Page". Business Insider. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  27. ^ Seiter, Courtney (January 3, 2012). "Short Attention Spans and Social Media: How to Fight Back". Marketing Land. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  28. ^ Maxwell, Scott (October 31, 2011). "5 Content Marketing Hurdles: Where Are You?". Business Insider. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  29. ^ Gomer, Gregory (October 31, 2011). "HubSpot Reminds Us That Flash Mobs are Still Kind of Cool [Halloween Video]". BostonInno. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  30. ^ Prescott, Bill (February 5, 2012). "Business Sense: Inbound Marketing". The Times Standard. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  31. ^ Stelzner, Michael (June 22, 2011). "The Power Of Other People". FAST Company. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  32. ^ a b c McCarthy, Kevin (May 26, 2011). "The Tech Behind HubSpot". BostInno. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  33. ^ a b "Disruptor of the Day: Brian Halligan, Dharmesh Shah & HubSpot – Taking the Hassle out of Marketing". Daily Disruption. February 8, 2012. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  34. ^ Hickins, Michael (May 19, 2011). "CEOs Give Technology Executives Power Tips". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  35. ^ a b "Best Places to Work". NECN. June 10, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  36. ^ a b c Alspach, Kyle (January 19, 2012). "Dharmesh Shah's guide to angel investing: Don't worry, be snappy". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  37. ^ "Globe 100 Honors Top Innovators". NECN. May 22, 2011. Retrieved October 6, 2012.
  38. ^ "Talking in Code". The Boston Globe. May 22, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  39. ^ Halligan, Brian. "Startup Culture Lessons From Mad Men". OnStartups. Retrieved December 3, 2011.[unreliable source?]
  40. ^ "8 companies with the best vacation perks". CNN Money. June 6, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  41. ^ "HubSpot ditches vacation policy, tells staff: 'Take what you need'". Business Management. August 11, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  42. ^ a b Regan, Keith (June 10, 2011). "Hubspot's West Coast attitude gets talent". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  43. ^ a b Nickisch, Curt (November 2011). "Will Work for Perks". Boston Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  44. ^ Diaz, Johnny (November 6, 2011). "Free iPads, free beer, and more". The Boston Globe. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  45. ^ Nickisch, Curt (September 5, 2011). "For Software Developers, A Bounty Of Opportunity". NPR. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  46. ^ a b c Markowitz, Eric (September 2011). "My Story: Brian Halligan of HubSpot". Inc. Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
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