Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot's co-founder, argues that scammy sales tactics don't work anymore because the internet exposes bad behavior instantly. He built HubSpot on inbound marketing and transparency instead, claiming ethical practices are now the real competitive advantage for billion-dollar companies.
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So at HubSpot, we believe that we are on the path of truth and justice because we believe in this inbound marketing and stopping spam and direct mail and killing trees and harming kittens and all those things. And it's true, so we really believe that we're actually making the world a better place. But I'm gonna posit to you that today versus, let's say, 10, 15 years ago, or let's say in the '80s or '90s, if you were in the software business, it was sort of okay. Not okay as in, like, ethically okay, but profitable to be somewhat evil. Uh-oh. And the reality is you had all sorts of kind of misbehaviors because the market didn't punish bad behavior that well because we didn't have an opportunity to. So you had like drive-by sales, essentially like, oh yeah, here's a $600,000 CRM implementation or whatever, never saw the light of day, very aggressive sales, like lots of bad things. And my argument to you now is that if you're really looking to build the next multi-billion-dollar business, bad behavior gets talked about now. And it will crush you because of the internet. People can search on HubSpot sucks in 30 seconds and find out how many people think HubSpot sucks. You can't hide anymore. Customers don't have to go to a conference to figure out like, oh yeah, well, we tried that product from that company or whatever, and that kind of sucked. It's all open right now. So I think the red-blooded capitalist right thing to do is to put yourself on the path of truth and justice and solve something where you can say, well, I'm actually solving a problem. My customers are happy. I care about that. And my hope is that leads to a multi-billion dollar company someday. And my answer is that maximizes your odds. If it were me, that's what I would do. Dharmesh Shah.
