HubSpot

HubSpot, Inc.
Type Private
Industry Internet Marketing
Web Analytics
Online Marketing
Founded June 2006
Headquarters Cambridge, Massachusetts
Key people Brian Halligan, CEO & Founder
Dharmesh Shah, CTO & Founder
Jim O'Neill, CIO
Mike Volpe, VP Marketing
Mark Roberge, VP Sales
Yoav Shapira, VP Engineering
David Stack, CFO
Jonah Lopin, VP Customer Services
[1]
Products HubSpot Small
HubSpot Medium
HubSpot Large
Consulting service
Revenue $15.6M (2010)[2]
Employees 170 (07/26/2010)[3]
280 (06/23/2011)[4]
Website http://www.hubspot.com/

HubSpot is a venture-funded[5] marketing software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Its customer base grew from over 1,400 in July 2009[6] to over 3,600 in November 2010,[7][8][9] mainly in the USA.In 2010, Inc. magazine reported the company has $15.6 million in revenue.[2]

Contents

History

The founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, met at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2004 and incorporated HubSpot in June 2006.[10] It was backed by venture capitalists including General Catalyst Partners, Matrix Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures and Salesforce.com.[11][12][13]

In summer 2010, HubSpot moved its offices into the Davenport, in the Lechmere neighborhood of Cambridge.[14]

Products and services

Strategy

HubSpot is based on the idea that permission or inbound marketing (e.g. appearance in a search engine results page (SERP) at the moment a prospective customer is searching on a term related to your product) is more powerful than interruption or outbound marketing. Their products help customers use and measure internet marketing techniques such as social media, blogging, and search engine optimization (SEO). They include a set of tools such as:

The company is influenced by the ideas of David Meerman Scott who serves on its board as special advisor.[20] Scott featured Website Grader is his book World Wide Rave[21] and HubSpot is a sponsor of the Inbound Marketing Summit[22] that Scott co-organizes. Scott wrote the foreword and is series editor of a book that Halligan and Shah co-authored.[23] Scott's E-book Goobledygook Manifesto[24] inspired Gobbledygook Grader (an automated tool to detect gobbledygook) and some metrics in Pressrelease Grader. A copy of Scott's book The New Rules of Marketing and PR[25] appears prominently on Rebecca Corliss's desk in her music video that satirizes "link love".[26]

HubSpot models the behavior it teaches its own customers by promoting itself through conversations, not one-way broadcast, and by the 'publish your way in' (or 'think like a publisher' or 'always be publishing (ABP)') mindset. This strategy is in alignment with Google's advice to webmasters[27] that to rank high in the SERPs you must create great content that readers will want to link to. Content includes:

For one hubspot.tv episode,[32] the hosts secured a celebrity guest appearance from Biz Stone not by hiring a booking agent but by hearing he was in the area, hosting a #BizInBoston Tweetup event,[33] and then creating a viral campaign[34] on Twitter itself using a #bizinboston hashtag and mentions of Stone's Twitter username. The tactic initially caused concern among some members of the Twitter community, but these were quickly resolved.[35]

Using a similar technique the hosts secured a guest appearance[36] by MC Hammer whose refreshing insight about Internet marketing and social media was "Forget the numbers! Just stay interesting."

Acquisitions

Return on Investment

Two studies by a student at MIT Sloan School of Management indicates a substantial return on investment of the HubSpot methodology.[39][40] HubSpot itself also has published several success stories.[41] One web site offers a free spreadsheet to estimate ROI on such methods.[42]

Community

HubSpot is a sponsor of InboundMarketing.com, a community website for marketers.[43] The discussion forum of the community was hosted by the StackExchange software service, until support was withdrawn.

Awards

In June 2010, HubSpot was awarded "Best Places to Work in Greater Boston"[44] in its category. Halligan documents 13 features of the company's "post-modern culture" (including not tracking vacation time taken by employees) in an article on Dharmesh Shah's web site "OnStartups" that he believes led to the award.[45]

The same year, HubSpot was named in the Lead411's Hottest Boston Companies list.[46]

HubSpot was also recognized as an AlwaysOn East Top 100 company in the "SaaS and Enterprise" category.[47]

The company also received the 2010 TiE50 Award[48] and the 2010 BtoB Social Media Marketing Award.[49]

Easter Eggs and Betas

Besides the seven subdomains and one beta site linked there,[50] the grader.com site has unadvertized Easter egg and beta subdomains:

Criticism and Controversy

Guy Kawasaki praises Website Grader[51] for its effectiveness and its congruence with his webmaster's SEO practices and own informal SEO strategy of "Create as good content as you can and assume that Google finds it." On the other hand, Michael Gray claims[52] that automated analysis of the on-page and off-page SEO can give misleading results compared to human expert analysis. The comments section of this posting includes a rebuttal from Shah. Similar pro and con themes emerged in a discussion[53] on the Web Pro World Forum.

Video blogger Steve Garfield visited the hubspot.tv studio for the Biz Stone episode[32] and published a largely favorable review.[54]

Cartoonist Mark Hill and HubSpot's Shah satirized their industry in a cartoon[55] which speculates that such marketing is only being used incestuously to market marketing to marketeers. Nick Ellery's commentary[56] on this expresses concern that it's hard to find "gems" for marketing.

In his analysis[57] of Google's sandboxing of Website Grader in May 2009, SEO expert Rand Fishkin speculated that it was a case of Google's anti-spamdexing algorithm "...throwing out the baby with the bathwater." The grader.com domain acquired over 250,000 inbound links from inception to the time the article was written[58] and it's possible this unusually rapid growth tripped a "circuit breaker" in Google's algorithm. Sometime around September 2009, this issue resolved itself and HubSpot's position on Google SERPs for the queries Fishkin used was at or near the number one position.

Some attendees of HubSpot webcasts question HubSpot's judgement on the delicate matter of when one has won permission to talk about ones products rather than the audience's critical business issue.[59]

On February 11, 2010 Twitter Grader was hacked and a message sent out to all Twitter Users who had active OAuth promoting a video of BizStone by an account started just a day earlier - creating a storm on Twitter.[60]

On June 2, 2010 HubSpot launched a social media experiment that involved an alternate reality game.[61] The game involved a spoof home page for an educational site that they sponsor (Inbound Marketing University). The spoof inconvenienced the site's students, so HubSpot had to backtrack and apologize.[62]

Technology

HubSpot Content Management System is written in C#, use the ASP.Net framework and SQL Server database, runs on IIS web servers.The apps run in the Rackspace Cloud. Other tools are written in a mixture of Python, Java, and PHP and run on MySQL and Apache at Amazon EC2.[63]

Notes

  1. ^ "HubSpot Management". HubSpot, Inc.. http://www.hubspot.com/company/management/. Retrieved 2009-04-22. 
  2. ^ a b Eric Markowitz (Septemebr 2010). "My Story: Brian Halligan of HubSpot". Inc. magazine. http://www.inc.com/magazine/201109/inc-500-brian-halligan-hubspot.html. Retrieved December 3, 2011. 
  3. ^ "Startup Culture Lessons From Mad Men". http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/13420/Startup-Culture-Lessons-From-Mad-Men.aspx. 
  4. ^ "HubSpot Acquires Marketing Automation Company Performable". http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/16943/HubSpot-Acquires-Marketing-Automation-Company-Performable. 
  5. ^ "HubSpot Secures 5 Million in Venture Capital Funding Led by General Catalyst" (Press release). Wed, Sep 12, 2007. http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/2251/HubSpot-Secures-5-Million-in-Venture-Capital-Funding-Led-by-General-Catalyst. Retrieved 2009,April 19. 
  6. ^ "How to Use Social Media for Lead Generation Webinar". HubSpot. http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/social_media_lead_generation_july2009.pdf#page=3. Retrieved 2009-10-26. 
  7. ^ "How to Promote Your Business Blog Using HubSpot". HubSpot. http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/promote_business_blog_with_hubspot_october_2009_final.pdf#page=3. Retrieved 2009-10-23. "Over 120 employees ... $16M third round led by Scale Partners ..." 
  8. ^ "SXSW 2010: Inbound Marketing Presentation, Slide 4, HubSpot Customer Growth". http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/sxsw-2010-inbound-marketing-presentation. 
  9. ^ Brian Halligan. "Ben & Jerry's Complete Rejection Of Conventional Wisdom". HubSpot. http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/7209/Ben-Jerry-s-Complete-Rejection-Of-Conventional-Wisdom.aspx. "...it is working out pretty well so far (3600 customers today -- up from about 1600 customers a year ago)." 
  10. ^ "From the Blackboard to the Boardroom". Entrepreneur. http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2010/april/205496.html. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
  11. ^ "Here’s What Google, Salesforce & Sequoia Are Investing In". Mashable. http://mashable.com/2011/03/08/hubspot-funding/. Retrieved 2011-03-09. 
  12. ^ "Brian Halligan's To-Do List: Run Company, Write Book, Raise $16 Million". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2009/10/brian_halligans_todo_list_run.html. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
  13. ^ "HubSpot, Inc. Secures $12,000,000 Series B Financing". Xconomy. http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2008/05/16/hubspot-inc-secures-12000000-series-b-financing/. Retrieved 2011-01-22. 
  14. ^ Psaty, Kyle (March 30, 2010). http://bostinnovation.com/2010/03/30/exclusive-a-tour-of-hubspots-new-office-in-lechmere/. 
  15. ^ "HubSpot Basic". http://www.hubspot.com/hubspot-basic. Retrieved 2011-10-16. 
  16. ^ "HubSpot Professional". http://www.hubspot.com/hubspot-professional. Retrieved 2011-10-16. 
  17. ^ "HubSpot Enterprise". http://www.hubspot.com/hubspot-enterprise. Retrieved 2011-10-16. 
  18. ^ "Compare Editions". http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/HubSpotEditions-2011.pdf. 
  19. ^ "About HubSpot Services". http://www.hubspot.com/services/. Retrieved May 18, 2009. 
  20. ^ "HubSpot Board of Directors". http://www.hubspot.com/company/board-of-directors/. Retrieved April 19, 2009. 
  21. ^ Scott, David Meerman (2009). World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. Wiley. pp. 208. ISBN 978-0470395004. http://www.worldwiderave.com/. Retrieved April 20, 2009. 
  22. ^ "Sponsor list, Inbound Marketing Summit 2009, San Francisco". http://city.inboundmarketingsummit.com/sf/sponsors.html. Retrieved April 19, 2009. 
  23. ^ Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2009. ISBN 0470499311. "Scheduled for publication in October 2009" 
  24. ^ Scott, David Meerman (August 8, 2007). "The Gobbledygook Manifesto" (PDF). http://changethis.com/pdf/37.03.Gobbledygook.pdf. Retrieved May 20, 2009. 
  25. ^ Scott, David Meerman (2007). The new rules of marketing and PR how to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley & Sons, Inc.. ISBN 0470113456. 
  26. ^ "Webmaster Guidelines at Google". http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769. 
  27. ^ Todd Andrlik; Charlie Moran. "AdAge Power 150: A Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs". Advertising Age Magazine (Crain Communications). http://adage.com/power150/. Retrieved May 19, 2009. "#73: HubSpot Internet Marketing (as of access date: rankings are updated daily)" 
  28. ^ HubSpot TV podcast archive at iTunes Store (link attempts to launch iTunes)
  29. ^ HubSpot channel on YouTube. Retrieved on 2009,April 20
  30. ^ "You Oughta Know Inbound Marketing". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-lGe5MnBlY. Retrieved April 19, 2009.  A parody of the Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard song You Oughta Know
  31. ^ a b Corliss, Rebecca (April 20, 2009,). "Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone Visits HubSpot and Answers Five Business Questions". http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4687/Twitter-Co-Founder-Biz-Stone-Visits-HubSpot-and-Answers-Five-Business-Questions.aspx. Retrieved April 28, 2009. "The key to developing a community is listening, paying attention and engaging." 
  32. ^ "#BizInBoston Tweetup". April 17, 2009. http://bizinboston.eventbrite.com/. Retrieved April 30, 2009. "Have you heard? The famous Biz Stone, founder of Twitter is in Boston for a few days! Let's give him a warm welcome..." 
  33. ^ "Twitter search for #bizinboston hashtag". http://search.twitter.com/search?lang=all&q=%23bizinboston. "Over two hundred #bizinboston tweets in the one week period leading up Stone's visit" 
  34. ^ Roush, Wade (April 20, 2009). "HubSpot, Hybernaut bury the hatchet for now". http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/04/20/hubspot-hybernaut-bury-the-twitter-hatchet-for-now/. Retrieved May 4, 2009. 
  35. ^ "HubSpot TV - Forget the Numbers with Surprise Guest MC Hammer". http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4585/HubSpot-TV-Forget-the-Numbers-with-Surprise-Guest-MC-Hammer.aspx. 
  36. ^ "Why HubSpot Acquired Marketing Automation Company Performable". http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/16942/Why-HubSpot-Acquired-Marketing-Automation-Company-Performable.aspx. 
  37. ^ "Annals Of PR: HubSpot Buys Oneforty, Says ‘Tweet This’". http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/08/18/annals-of-pr-hubspot-buys-oneforty-says-tweet-this/. 
  38. ^ DiBella, Melissa (February 2009). "Return on Investment from Inbound Marketing through Implementing HubSpot Software" (PDF). http://www.hubspot.com/Default.aspx?app=LeadgenDownload&shortpath=docs%2fROI_from_HubSpot.pdf. 
  39. ^ DiBella, Melissa (January 2010). "Return on Investment from Inbound Marketing through Implementing HubSpot Software" (PDF). http://www.hubspot.com/Portals/53/docs/roi_from_hubspot_report_2010.pdf. 
  40. ^ "ROI from Inbound Marketing with HubSpot Software". http://www.hubspot.com/roi/. 
  41. ^ "Practical Solutions For Measuring Marketing and ROI". http://theinboundmarketingcompany.com/inbound-marketing-blog/bid/19237/Practical-Solutions-For-Measuring-Marketing-and-ROI. 
  42. ^ "About InboundMarketing.com". http://www.inboundmarketing.com/about. 
  43. ^ Boston Business Journal Best Places to Work
  44. ^ Brian Halligan (July 26, 2010). "Startup Culture Lessons From Mad Men". OnStartups. http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/13420/Startup-Culture-Lessons-From-Mad-Men.aspx. Retrieved December 3, 2011. 
  45. ^ Lead411 launches "Hottest Boston Companies" awards
  46. ^ Announcing the AlwaysOn East Top 100 Companies
  47. ^ TiECON 2010 Winners
  48. ^ BtoB Social Media Awards 2010
  49. ^ "Grader.com: Measure all that matters in inbound marketing". HubSpot, Inc. http://grader.com. Retrieved April 22, 2010. "grader.com grades websites, books, blogs, press releases, Facebook, Twitter tweets, and Foursquare profiles. There is a link to a private beta of Marketing Grader. The April Fool's joke subdomain that graded 'personality' http://personality.grader.com/ has been removed. There's also blog about Grader itself, which ironically is an example of low quality blogging, given that there are only two postings (one within 11 minutes of the other) dating back to November 2009..." 
  50. ^ Kawasaki, Guy (2007,October 3). "Website Grader". http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/10/website-grader.html. Retrieved 2009,April 19. "The fact that my blog did so well is entirely because of Neil Patel." 
  51. ^ Gray, Michael (2007,October 5). "Why Website Grader is a Bad Idea". http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/why-website-grader-is-a-bad-idea/. Retrieved 2009,April 28. "At the end of the day you need a [sic] an experienced analyst." 
  52. ^ Allen, Craig (2009,April 14). "What is the value of the HubSpot Website Grader?". http://www.webproworld.com/search-engine-optimization-forum/82808-what-value-hubspot-website-grader.html. Retrieved 2009,April 28. "I've now run all my clients' sites through it and found that the average of all my websites ends up a measly 32.6!!!" 
  53. ^ Garfield, Steve (2009,April 18). "Hubspot TV". http://offonatangent.blogspot.com/2009/04/hubspot-tv.html. Retrieved 2009,April 28. "There's a tendency to copy what TV does. That works, but we also have an opportunity to push the technology to add interaction and conversation, and that's exciting." 
  54. ^ Shah, Dharmesh; Mark Hill (2009,January 14). "Social Media Marketing Madness Cartoon". http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/4494/Social-Media-Marketing-Madness-cartoon.aspx. Retrieved 2009,April 22. "I have a Facebook group for Twitter users that tweet about podcasters that talk about marketing bloggers" 
  55. ^ Ellery, Nick (2009,January 15). "Hubspot's Social Media Marketing Madness". http://marketingisadirtyword.com/2009/01/15/hubspots-social-media-marketing-madness/. Retrieved 2009,April 22. "...seemingly endless volume of noise out there around marketing, social media etc. It’s getting harder and harder to find those gems that deliver real value..." 
  56. ^ Fishkin, Rand (2009,March 8). "Google's Sandbox Still Exists Exemplified by grader.com". http://www.seomoz.org/blog/googles-sandbox-still-exists-exemplified-by-gradercom. Retrieved 2009,April 28. "Let's check out some searches ... 'Websitegrader Website Marketing SEO Tool' ... Not in Top 200 at Google, #1 at Yahoo!, #1 at MSN/Live" 
  57. ^ "grader.com link report for grader.com". http://grader.com/site/grader.com. Retrieved May 7, 2009. 
  58. ^ Yarbrough, Adam (2008,December 17). "It's a tradeoff". http://twitter.com/adamyarbrough/status/1063377092. Retrieved 2009,April 25. "#hubspot It's a tradeoff. We get free good information and a bit of a sales pitch. It IS still marketing, The ? is how hard is the pitch?" 
  59. ^ Arthur, Charles (February 11, 2010). "Twitter Grader hacked: are you a victim?". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/twitter-grader-hacked-tweets. Retrieved May 4, 2010. 
  60. ^ "HubSpot Gambles with Trust to Explore New Marketing Strategy". http://bostinnovation.com/2010/06/10/hubspot-gambles-with-trust-to-explore-new-marketing-strategy/. 
  61. ^ "Reactions and Lessons From the #IMU ARG So Far". http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/6056/Reactions-and-Lessons-From-the-IMU-ARG-So-Far. 
  62. ^ "The Tech Behind HubSpot". http://bostinnovation.com/2011/05/26/the-tech-behind-hubspot/. 

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