HubSpot

HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006.[2]

The company grew from $255,000 in revenues in 2007, to $15.6 million in 2010.[2][3] Later that year, HubSpot acquired Oneforty, the Twitter app store founded by Laura Fitton.[4][5] The company also introduced new software for personalizing websites for each visitor.[6] According to Forbes, HubSpot started out targeting small companies but "moved steadily upmarket to serve larger businesses of up to 1000 employees."[7][8] HubSpot filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 25, 2014, requesting to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS.[9] They raised more than $140 million by selling shares for $25 which then peaked at $840 in November 2021. In July 2017, HubSpot acquired Kemvi, which applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to help sales teams.[10] The company reported revenues of $1 billion in 2021.[11]

In February 2021, Axios reported that HubSpot would be acquiring The Hustle, a content and email newsletter company focused on small business owners and entrepreneurs.[12][13]

In September 2021, HubSpot announced Yamini Rangan as their new CEO,[14] while Brian Halligan stepped out of the role and became an Executive Chairman at the company.

On January 31, 2023, HubSpot announced the first layoffs in the company's history. Affecting ~500 employees, this layoff eliminated ~7% of its total workforce. On the same day, HubSpot also announced plans to restructure its Cambridge campus, centralizing operations within a nearby office the company had already been leasing.[15][16]

Interior view of HubSpot's office space at its Cambridge HQ

HubSpot Marketing Software provides tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages, customer support, and search engine optimization.[2][17][18][19][20]

HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and others.[21] There are also third-party services such as templates, and extensions.[22] Additionally, HubSpot offers consulting services and an online resource academy for learning inbound marketing tactics.[23][24] It also hosts user group conferences and inbound marketing and certification programs.[24] HubSpot promotes their inbound marketing concepts through their own marketing,[18] and has been called "a prolific creator of content" such as blogs, social media, webinars and white papers.[7]

In 2010, an article in the Harvard Business Review said that HubSpot's most effective inbound marketing feature was its free online tools.[25] One such tool, the Marketing Grader, assessed and scored website performance.[26][27] The company introduced a Twitter tracking feature in 2011.[28][29]

In November 2016, HubSpot launched HubSpot Academy, an online training platform that provides various digital marketing training programs and free certifications upon completion.[30]

In 2018, HubSpot integrated Taboola on the dashboard, a global pay-per-click native ad network.[31]

In November 2019, HubSpot acquired PieSync, a customer data synchronization platform.[32]

In August 2021, HubSpot partnered with Envato to launch hundreds of high-quality CMS Hub templates.[33] [34]

Conferences

INBOUND conference in 2018

HubSpot hosts an annual marketing conference for HubSpot users and partners called "INBOUND". The event is typically located in Boston. In 2019, HubSpot hosted its largest conference in the event's history, with a record of over 26,000 attendees from 110 countries.[54][55] The first INBOUND conference took place in 2012. Since then, speakers such as Oprah Winfrey,[56] Michelle Obama, Barack Obama,[57] Tig Notaro, and Issa Rae have spoken at their events.

In July 2015, HubSpot's CMO, Mike Volpe, was dismissed for violating HubSpot's code of business conduct. It was found that he tried to obtain a draft copy of the book Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble, written by his former employee Daniel Lyons.[58][59] According to an article in The Boston Globe, records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicated that HubSpot executives considered the book "a financial threat to HubSpot" and Volpe used "tactics such as email hacking and extortion" in the attempt to prevent the book from being published.[60]

In April 2016, after his book was published, Lyons wrote in The New York Times that HubSpot had a "frat house" atmosphere. He also called the company a "digital sweatshop" in which workers had little job security.[61] Later that month, HubSpot's founders gave an official response to the book, in which they addressed several, but not all, of Lyons' claims.[62]

The Boston Business Journal named HubSpot a "Best Place to Work in 2012".[63] In 2015, the company was named the best large company to work for in Massachusetts by The Boston Globe.[64][65] In 2017, HubSpot was named seventh by CNBC as one of the best places to work.[66] Glassdoor named HubSpot the best place to work in 2020 and the #2 best place to work in 2022.[67][68]

• Lyons, Daniel (2016). Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble. Hachette Books. ISBN 978-0316306089.
• Halligan, Brian; David Meerman Scott; Dharmesh Shah (2010). Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-0-470-49931-3.

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