HubSpot

History

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

The company grew from $255,000 in revenues in 2007 to $15.6 million in 2010. Later that year HubSpot acquired Oneforty, the Twitter app store founded by Laura Fitton. The company also introduced new software for personalizing websites to each visitor. According to Forbes, HubSpot started out targeting small companies but "moved steadily upmarket to serve larger businesses of up to 1000 employees." HubSpot filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 25, 2014 requesting they be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS.

Software and services

HubSpot provides tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages and search engine optimization. HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others. There are also third-party services such as templates and extensions. Additionally, HubSpot offers consulting services and an online resource academy for learning inbound marketing tactics. It also hosts user group conferences and inbound marketing and certification programs. HubSpot promotes their inbound marketing concepts through their own marketing and has been called "a prolific creator of content" such as blogs, social media, webinars and white papers.

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

Tech industry reviews

HubSpot has been described as unique because it strives to provide its customers with an all-in-one approach. A 2012 review in CRM Search said HubSpot was not the best business solution in each category but that taken as a whole it was the best "marketing solution" that combined many tools into one package. It identified HubSpot's "strengths" as the sophistication of its Call to Action (CTA) tool, its online ecosystem and its "ease of use." Its weakness were described as having "more breadth than depth." The review said the lack of customization and design tools could be limiting and that it was missing advanced features such as Business Process Management (BPM) tools to manage workflow.

Controversy

In July 2015, Hubspot's CMO Mike Volpe was dismissed for violating HubSpot’s code of business conduct after 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. 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.

In April 2016, after releasing his book, Lyons criticized the company in a New York Times article by saying it had a "frat house" atmosphere and described it as a "digital sweatshop." Later that month, HubSpot's founders gave an official response to the book, in which they addressed several, but not all of Lyons claims.

Reception

The Boston Business Journal named HubSpot a "Best Place to Work in 2012." In 2015, the company was named the best large company to work for in Massachusetts by the Boston Globe.