HubSpot

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HubSpot, Inc.
Company typePublic
NYSE: HUBS
IndustryInternet Marketing
FoundedJune 2006
Headquarters
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Key people
Brian Halligan, CEO & cofounder
Dharmesh Shah, CTO & cofounder
ProductsHubSpot, marketing consulting services
Revenue$186.49 million (net income -$46.05 million) (2015)[1]
Number of employees
785[2]
Websitewww.hubspot.com

HubSpot is a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that develops and markets a software product for inbound marketing also called HubSpot.

HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006. The company advocates for the inbound marketing concept in its own marketing through viral videos, Twitter, webinars and an annual inbound marketing report.

Software and services

HubSpot provides tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages and search engine optimization.[3][4] The HubSpot suite of online tools has three primary applications: content management tools for creating or managing blogs, templates, forms and landing pages; exposure optimization applications that help the content be found, such as through search engine optimization; and lead tracking and intelligence tools, which track and manage e-mail marketing, customer interactions, qualified prospects, reports and analysis.[5][6] HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others.[7] There are also third-party services, templates and extensions that can be downloaded through the HubSpot App Marketplace.[8] HubSpot offers consulting services and hosts the HubSpot Academy, an online resource for learning inbound marketing tactics.[9][10] It also hosts user group conferences and offers inbound marketing and HubSpot certification programs.[10]

Corporate history

HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006.[3]

The company grew from $255,000 in revenues the first year the software was released to $15.6 million in 2010.[3][11] Later that year HubSpot announced its acquisition of oneforty. Oneforty began as an app store for Twitter,[12][13] but shifted into an online resource for social media marketing.[12] The company also introduced new software for personalizing websites to each visitor.[14] According to Forbes, HubSpot started out targeting companies of 1-10 employees, but "moved steadily upmarket to serve larger businesses of up to 1000 employees."[15][16]

HubSpot filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 25, 2014 for listing on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS.[17]

Ethics scandal

In July 2015, Hubspot's CMO Mike Volpe was dismissed for violating HubSpot’s code of business conduct. The company's board of directors found that Volpe tried to obtain a draft copy of Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble, by Daniel Lyons. The book is a critical look at HubSpot, its company culture, and its business practices.[18][19]

Materials obtained under the Freedom of Information Act showed that certain Hubspot executives considered the book "a financial threat to HubSpot, its share price, and the company’s future potential." The FBI report discusses "tactics such as email hacking and extortion" in the attempt to prevent the book from being published. The individuals involved were ultimately not charged for any wrongdoing; the records released do not indicate why.[20]

Inbound marketing concept

HubSpot promotes the concept of inbound marketing through its own marketing.[5] According to CRMSearch, "the company promotes a message of 'publish your way in' and practices what it preaches as a prolific creator of content, including blog posts, social media posts, white papers, webinars and more."[15]

According to Harvard Business Review, HubSpot's most effective inbound marketing has been its free online tools,[21] such as Marketing Grader (formerly Website Grader), which grades a website's performance and gives it a score based on how it compares to other websites that have been ranked.[22][23] WhoRetweetedMe.com, which was introduced in Beta in August 2011, shows the number, timing and audience of tweets containing any URL provided by the user.[24][25]

Corporate culture

HubSpot's offices

Writing in The New York Times in 2016, former HubSpot employee Daniel Lyons said of the company, "Imagine a frat house mixed with a kindergarten mixed with Scientology, and you have an idea of what it’s like." He called Hubspot "a digital sweatshop" where "there is no need for work-life balance because work is life and life is work" and employees are treated "as if they are widgets to be used up and discarded."[26]

In 2012, Boston Business Journal named HubSpot a "Best Place to Work."[27] In 2015, the Boston Globe called the company a "Top Large Employer."[28] The company began an unlimited vacation day policy in 2010[29] and started an employee training program, called the HubSpot Fellows Program, the same year.[27]

Critical reception

A review in CRM Search said HubSpot "is not the best product in every category ... yet may still be the single best marketing solution in bringing all the tools together."[15] Many of HubSpot's individual applications have competitors, but HubSpot strives to provide an all-in-one approach.[6][30]

A comparative analysis conducted by VentureSkies compared data security in HubSpot’s CMS with WordPress-based websites. It showed that HubSpot maintains an increased level of information security, as well as protection against hacking, through a set of security measures including human factors (e.g., 24/7 monitoring), restricted access to hosted data (limited to Web server level, no file server access), restrained JavaScript and multilayered infrastructure security embracing network, storage and compute environments.[31]

A review in CRM Search identified HubSpot's "Strengths" as the sophistication of its Call to Action (CTA) tool and its online ecosystem, the HubSpot Marketplace. According to the review "Ease of use is a design hallmark for this application" and its pricing is reasonable. Under "Weaknesses" the review said "it has more breadth than depth." It said the lack of customization and design tools can be limiting. According to the reviewer, it lacks some advanced tools such as Business Process Management (BPM) tools to manage workflow.[15]

References

  1. ^ HubSpot Income Statement - Quarterly, amigobulls.com, January 16, 2016, retrieved June 16, 2016
  2. ^ Kirchoff, Lindsey (February 22, 2013), HubSpot Continues Rapid Trajectory with 82% Revenue Growth, HubSpot, retrieved December 27, 2013
  3. ^ a b c Stone, Avery (August 8, 2011). "HubSpot wants to be Salesforce.com for small business". Fortune Magazine. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  4. ^ Gage, Deborah (March 8, 2011). "Google Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Give HubSpot $32M". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved December 27, 2013.
  5. ^ a b Steenburgh, Thomas; Avery, Jilly; Dahod, Naseem (January 24, 2011), HubSpot: Inbound Marketing and Web 2.0, retrieved December 30, 2013
  6. ^ a b McCarthy, Kevin (May 26, 2011). "The Tech Behind HubSpot". BostInno. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  7. ^ Greenberg, Paul (January 24, 2012). "CRM Watchlist 2012 Winners – The Marketing Mavens". ZDNet. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  8. ^ Marketplace, HubSpot, retrieved December 27, 2013
  9. ^ Blackwell, Gerry (January 16, 2008). "HubSpot: The Evolution of Marketing". Small Business Computing. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  10. ^ a b HubSpot Academy, May 18, 2009, retrieved December 26, 2013
  11. ^ Alspach, Kyle (December 15, 2011). "HubSpot: We plan to be like HP, a huge company that lasts 100 years. But in Cambridge". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  12. ^ a b Rao, Leena (August 18, 2011). "HubSpot Buys Social Media Management Platform And App Directory Oneforty". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  13. ^ O’Dell, Jolie (August 18, 2011). "Twitter app store Oneforty acquired by HubSpot". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  14. ^ Alspach, Kyle (December 14, 2011). "HubSpot: What we're working on now will change the Internet". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  15. ^ a b c d Schaeffer, Chuck. "HubSpot Marketing Software Review—An Independent Marketing Software Analysis". CRMSearch. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  16. ^ Colao, J.J. (March 15, 2012). "HubSpot Looks to Pounce as Traditional Marketing Gets "Obliterated"". Forbes. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  17. ^ FORM S-1 REGISTRATION STATEMENT UNDER THE SECURITIES ACT OF 1933: HubSpot, Inc.
  18. ^ beta Boston
  19. ^ My Year in Startup Hell, Dan Lyons in Fortune, April 2016
  20. ^ Extortion, hacking claims sparked HubSpot investigation, FBI records show, Boston Globe, 24 March 2016
  21. ^ Psaty, Kyle (April 27, 2010). "HubSpot's New Alerts Grader Cures Social Media Email Overload". BostInno. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
  22. ^ Ha, Anthony (May 16, 2008). "Marketing software company HubSpot raises $12M". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  23. ^ Gomer, Gregory (December 6, 2011). "HubSpot Marketing Grader Launches: We Put 30 Boston Startups Head to Head #Deathmatch". Bostinno. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  24. ^ Gomer, Gregory (August 10, 2011). "HubSpot Powers Useful Tool to Track ReTweets, Suffers Unfortunate Name: WhoretweetedMe". BostonInno. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  25. ^ Dugan, Lauren (August 16, 2011). "Find Out Which Influencers Retweeted You". MediaBistro. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  26. ^ The New York Times, April 9, 2016: "Congratulations! You’ve Been Fired" by Dan Lyons
  27. ^ a b Regan, Keith (June 10, 2011). "Hubspot's West Coast attitude gets talent". Boston Business Journal. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  28. ^ Sarah Shemkus,"HubSpot Tops List of Large Companies," Boston Globe, 12 November 2015 (page visited 16 June 2016)
  29. ^ "8 companies with the best vacation perks". CNN Money. June 6, 2011. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  30. ^ Roush, Wade (August 24, 2007). "Online Marketing for Dummies—and for People with Better Things to Do". Xconomy. Retrieved February 27, 2012.
  31. ^ Scholten, Ulrich. "Hackers, Phishing, Databreach: Why HubSpot Is More Secure than WordPress". VentureSkies. Retrieved 6 January 2016.

Further reading

  • 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.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to HubSpot.
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