In this interview, Dharmesh Shah recounts how HubSpot operated for its first three years without ever using the word “culture.” Communication among the founders was limited to long, late‑night emails, and there was no formal discussion of cultural values. The turning point came when his co‑founder Brian Halligan attended a CEO peer‑group (described as group therapy for CEOs) where the session’s theme was culture. The other CEOs challenged Brian, insisting that culture should be the top priority for any CEO. Upon returning, Brian pressed Dharmesh to take charge of figuring out the company’s culture, essentially assigning him to collect data and document what culture already existed. Dharmesh, an introvert who prefers coding to people‑focused work, felt uneasy about the task. He began sending emails to staff asking for their thoughts on culture, which provoked strong, defensive reactions. Employees feared that discussing culture would lead to superficial measures like posters and a slippery‑slope of “people issues.” The backlash highlighted a visceral resistance to formal cultural initiatives and underscored the gap between leadership’s strategic view of culture and employee perceptions. Dharmesh’s experience illustrates the challenges of introducing cultural focus in a fast‑growing startup and the importance of handling such initiatives with sensitivity.
Chapters
HubSpot in our first three years, we're about nine something years old now, we did not use the word culture at all. And I know this because neither my co founder and I, we don't have phone calls. I don't have phone calls generally at all. As it turns out. I'm quirky that way. So everything we've ever said to each other has been in late night emails from 11pm to about 2am we have these long thousand word emails that go back and forth. So I look back through the archives like, oh, like when did we first start talking about culture? It was three years in, so we didn't do it. And then this happened. So my co founder, the CEO of HubSpot, went to a CEO group, which the easiest way to think about it is like group therapy for CEOs. So they all go in and they kind of talk about issues of the day, which is super useful. I highly recommend it. And so at this particular session that he went to, the theme was culture. And we're still in our kind of early stages. And so he has, I guess I don't think I could reveal the names anyway, but he had some highfalutin CEOs in his group. And Brian's reaction, my co founder, was like, well, culture. He had that last excuse. We don't have time for that. We're trying to build this business, we're building a product, we're trying to get customers, we're doing all these things. Who has time for culture? And they beat him up over it. They're like, no, you do not understand your job as a CEO. This cannot be any higher on the priority list. It should be number one, you should do it. And so Brian nodded his head, got through that meeting. Then the next meeting that I had with him over beers, he's like, dharmesh, I've heard this culture thing is really, really important. Why don't you go do that? Now that presented a problem because on the extrovert to introvert scale, I'm like way over there, like way, like it's possible, like way over there, right? And so it's not that I don't like humans. There are some that I do like hanging around with. That's my wife and child, a gratuitous photo of the children. And so then it's like, okay, Brian's busy, he's doing other things. All he's really asking me to do what I thought my mission was going to be was, okay, well we have a culture. I just need to collect some data and ask our employees what culture is, what they think about it, do they like it or not. It's a data collection. Kind of write down and be the scribe for the culture that already exists. Like, not pleasant. I'd rather be writing code, but ok, fine, I'll take one for the team. And within days, this is my reaction. It's like, this is the worst possible thing I've ever done to myself in the history of me. It was so bad. It was bad on so many levels, it was crazy. I'll give you one anecdote. So I started sending emails around saying, by the way, I'm working on this thing, I'm trying to figure out culture at the company. And then I got these flaming responses. And I'm used to flaming responses from HubSpot employees telling me I'm an idiot for many different reasons. But this one was particularly acute and hard to think. They're like, oh, so now we're talking about culture. Next it's going to be like posters on the wall and this is the first step down the slippery slope. And then this is the one that killed me. It's like, this is not the company that I thought I joined. Like, you're killing me here. What? All they asked you was, are you happy or not? What do you think? That's like, wow. And people have this very visceral reaction when you start talking about kind of people issues and culture.
