YC
HubSpot CEO and Cofounder Brian Halligan with Wufoo Cofounder Kevin Hale
@ Y Combinator
05/08/19
Takeaways
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I'm an introvert and I manage it as best I can, balancing my role as a public company CEO with my introverted nature.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Every Wednesday, I work from home alone with no meetings or calls to recharge my energy, which is essential for me as an introvert.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I block off my Wednesdays on my calendar so no one can schedule meetings, allowing me to focus on my work and recharge.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I realized I needed to manage my energy differently when I started my journey as a CEO, especially in a social environment.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
My co-founder Dharmesh and I met at a cocktail event before business school, where he was scouting potential collaborators.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
We discovered our shared interests in entrepreneurship and small businesses while working on a project together in business school.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Our initial idea was to create a suite of applications for law firms, but we pivoted to a marketing application for all businesses.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
We framed our marketing approach around the shift in consumer behavior, focusing on how people shop and buy in the digital age.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the early days, we set HubSpot's pricing at $250 a month, which remained unchanged for the first six years as we figured out our model.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
If I were to start HubSpot again, I would implement a freemium model to attract users more naturally before converting them to paying customers.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the beginning, our software was basic, so we compensated for its limitations by providing customers with valuable advice on optimizing their websites.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
One of our first customers was a comedian who used HubSpot to set up his website, showcasing the diverse range of businesses we served. In the early days of HubSpot, we built a tool called Website Grader that helped users evaluate how well their websites attracted links and were optimized for search engines.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
SEO is underrated; it can be a goldmine for generating traffic if done correctly, despite many people shifting their focus to ads.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Freemium models, like those used by Atlassian and Zoom, represent the future of software sales, allowing users to experience the product before committing to a purchase.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
The way people buy products is changing; they prefer a seamless customer experience without waiting for sales representatives, which is becoming crucial in both B2B and B2C markets.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the past, breaking out in the market required having a product that was ten times better than the competition; today, it's about creating a go-to-market experience that is ten times better.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Creating a great customer experience doesn't necessarily require a lot of funding; it's more about creativity and understanding your audience.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the early days of HubSpot, we wrote two blog articles a week and competed to see who could generate more leads from them, emphasizing the importance of high-quality content and effective titles. We built our audience on a blog before we even started writing the first lines of code for our startup, which took us a couple of years to be seen as experts in our space.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
A lot of people undervalue building an audience ahead of time; they get impatient and think their first couple of blog posts will be a home run, but it usually takes a long time.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
At the time we were writing, there wasn't much content about how to market properly on the internet, which helped us stand out.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
We effectively used the inbound versus outbound marketing argument to make our points clear and understandable.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
The internet allows small businesses to gain a marketing advantage without a lot of money, enabling them to grow without needing to buy ads.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
To keep our company hungry, we focus on the competition with giants like Adobe and Salesforce, which prevents us from getting complacent.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
The assets we built years ago, like our content and freemium applications, continue to generate leads for us today, acting as permanent assets on the internet.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Freemium models work well for large markets, allowing companies to give away products as a strategy to capture a larger audience.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In niche markets, companies may need to rethink their pricing and marketing strategies, as traditional methods may not be effective.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Decisions in companies are increasingly made from the bottom up, with users influencing CIOs rather than top-down directives.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I would have changed the focus from sales and marketing to delighting customers earlier, as our early DNA was too sales-heavy and not customer-focused.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the early days, we invested heavily in sales and marketing, but now we increase our R&D spending by 50% a year to improve our product.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
The transition from a sales-driven company to a product-driven company was challenging, as it required changing our organizational DNA and objectives.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
We shifted our company objectives to focus on customer satisfaction, using metrics like Net Promoter Score (NPS) to guide our decisions.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
In the early days, we tracked visitors, leads, and customers, but we should have focused on churn rates to understand customer satisfaction better.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I had a coach who helped me improve as a CEO, and we conduct aggressive 360 reviews every year to gather honest feedback.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I realized I wasn't good at product management and had to let go of that role to allow someone more qualified to lead product development.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
Humility is a core value at HubSpot, and we look for it in our hiring process, as it fosters a culture of continuous improvement.
BH
Brian Halligan
05/08/19
@ Y Combinator
I've noticed a shift in the personality of CEOs today, with many being more humble and down-to-earth compared to previous generations.