Extending and Customizing the HubSpot CRM Platform | HubSpot Developers at INBOUND23

So happy to see everyone out here to talk about the HubSpot platform and ecosystem. We'll kick it off. My name is Kelly Sarabin and I run App Partner Enablement and Advocacy. And we're here with two of the pivotal leaders who are building out the HubSpot platform and building more extensibility for everyone. We have Scott Brinker, our VP of Platform ecosystem, Brian Gorbutt, our VP of Product and Developer Ecosystem. Sounds like you do know Brian, but Brian joined us four months ago and prior to here, he had a key role in building platforms and running developer relations@intuit, PayPal, Google and Meta. So, Brian, could you kind of share what your role is at HubSpot and why you chose the HubSpot ecosystem?

Yeah, no, thank you. Also, my voice hasn't been doing very well today, so I'm working on it. Working on it. No, thanks. It's four months here. When I was interviewing at HubSpot, one of the things I had said was that there is this deck that talks about the values that HubSpot has. And I said, if we have something that public, it cannot be true. 100% is. And I'm not just saying that. The other piece was, is that at some of these other places I've been at, I've seen how an ecosystem can drive not just economies of scale for the company that supports those ecosystem, but the partners and even the customers within that ecosystem. Building revenue models, building monetization opportunities, building out a platform is what I love to do. And at HubSpot, the reason why it was the time is, as you've seen, I think at Inbound, we are at this pivotal moment where platform, the move from product to suite to platform is becoming more and more real and becoming more and more important for us to make sure that the platform and the ecosystem is strong. So, four months, I still don't know everything, but it was a great choice and I'm glad they have me.

And on the other side, we have Scott Brinker, who's been here for six years now.

Yeah, six years. Wow. Yeah.

No, could you share a little bit about your purview and also maybe a little backstory on the history of HubSpot as a platform in the six years that you've been running the platform ecosystem.

Well, I mean, it's been fantastic to be on this journey and I want to give a shout out to. When I started in 2017, there were about 50 or 60 early partners who were building integrations and apps into the HubSpot ecosystem. And so grateful for, like, the early partners who have been with us on this journey as we figure out, okay, how do we do this? How do we support you? How do we enable this? And I have to say, just, I mean, like, coming here to Inbound, particularly this inbound, and like, you walk in and like, all you see is this incredible array of, like, technology partners and services partners, you know, and here in HubSpot, like, we're way in the back of the hall. I mean, like, the main focus is all these amazing providers through our ecosystem and what they're bringing. I think the other thing I was really excited about here with this Inbound was, as you know, Sales Hub has been a pretty big topic here at Inbound with the relaunch, a whole bunch of new features. I hear the LinkedIn partnership is garnering quite a bit of interest. But as part of this, with the launch here of Sales Hub, we also launched essential apps for saleshub that's featuring, you know, almost a couple dozen of some of our best partners here. Shout out to all them, like org charthub what they're doing. Deal Hub on cpq quotapath on sales commission. And when you start to lay this out, you realize, you know, when a company is adopting a CRM and they're adopting a sales solution, it's not just like those core aspects of prospecting and deal management that's super important, but it is, how do I do things like if I want cbq, if I want to be able to like manage like the the org chart view of like, how am I working in the account if I want to have the sales comp management not be just a spreadsheet in Excel? Nothing against Excel, but, you know, we can get better than that. I mean, just seeing all that come together here six years later from where it started. Yeah, just incredibly grateful.

So one question we hear a lot from prospective partners, current partners, and also even customers who are looking to build their entire business on top of the HubSpot platform is how big is the opportunity around the HubSpot ecosystem?

Well, you know, my answer would be big, but I've been told it would be good to be more precise. So a couple years in a row, we've had the analysts for IDC actually analyze the ecosystem. You know, they do thorough research with customers, with partners, they bring it to models of what they're seeing elsewhere in the market. And the last one they had done for us, they expected actually here in 2023 there'll be a little over $12 billion of revenue. That happens around HubSpot to put that in context. Right. So we're at the 2 billion mark for HubSpot overall. For every dollar that gets spent on HubSpot, $6 is being spent in the ecosystem. About a third of that goes to other software that's being added or integrated across it and then another two thirds around like the services ecosystem for it. Okay, so that's, that's big, that's like a big number. But like they projected out to 20, 25 and they're like, okay, well that's going to go from around 12 billion to around 18 billion. And when you start adding billions to an ecosystem on a year over year basis, yeah, hopefully, I think that's big. But I think the other thing, I just frame it from the keynotes you heard from Yamini and Andy and Dharmesh. It's not just about the dollars for it. It's about really pioneering new space. As HubSpot is increasingly supporting companies of larger and larger scale, companies that have more sophisticated needs, more complex organizations, this move into those serving those upmarket customers, that is absolutely an ecosystem game that is like they need what HubSpot builds, but they need all these other things around it. And I think we're just at the beginning of HubSpot really building momentum in that segment. And so I think that's just a tremendous amount of opportunity for partners in going on that journey with us.

And Brian, what are some of the ways that HubSpot is really investing in its platform and in supporting its external developers so that they can fully leverage this economic opportunity that is sitting in front of them?

Yeah, I think as most have seen or heard, we announced the CRM UIE Extensibility or the UI Extensibility Customization. Huge transformative way for partners, developers to build within HubSpot in a way that you never had such rich access to do. So I think that's just one way. Some of the product groups that I lead at HubSpot, like Marketplace for instance, where the partners can have their app placed in a directory that makes it easy and frictionless for customers to find and solve problems with things that we're not building, but partners that are within the ecosystem are building. We have HubSpot Academy, another product group that I lead that now has the ability for partners that have the certified, the Certified Trainer accreditation can actually build courses within Academy, have them featured in Academy and have customers. The thousands of customers that go and use Academy see solutions that help solve their problems within our products that partners have access to. I think with all of the things that we do around the developer tooling around the opening up the platform, there's still lots we do need to do. We know that. I think again, as I said when I joined, the real opportunity we have is still learning more from what you need, learning more from what customers need to solve for. And that's how we're going to prioritize to continue opening up, continue building out a platform that we know we can never build, everything that our customers need. So we look to this ecosystem to help us solve customer problems, help them grow better, but in the process, hopefully helping our partners and the entire ecosystem grow better. So if you haven't seen the CRM customization extensibility, there's a demo booth over there. Definitely go check it out. It is really game changing for how partners can integrate within our platform, but how customers can realize that in a new way, in a new rich way, it is fantastic. I think again, we're just getting beginning on how this is going to transform how customers use it. But there's opportunities everywhere for partners to take advantage. So highly recommend checking out all kinds of accessibility opportunities. We've, I've even heard like since the launch here at Inbound, we've already had like tons of use cases that partners have already solved for that quickly. So definitely, definitely check it out.

I think one thing, I'd just follow up on that too by the way, because yeah, like your remit is across all things ecosystem in our product organization. So, you know, I hear, I am, I'm yammering on about, hey, there's this great opportunity around for app partners, but it's ad partners, it's solutions partners, it's academy. Looking at that education ecosystem, it's the marketplace. I think the stat is almost like three quarters of a million visits per month to that marketplace. There's like a tremendous amount of interest that we're seeing, you know, and it's built in obviously you know, to, you know, HubSpot you can go in app, but also on the web, the tremendous amount of traffic and interest that comes there.

Connect.com part of this right to represent.

I love the shirt.

We have communities that are being created on a daily basis now. They have amazing ways for these communities of either HubSpot users that are using the product to learn more from each other, but also people that just want to learn more about a specific need or a specific profession. It's one of those opportunities that can really take HubSpot from being this ecosystem, which we are. But as you've probably seen in Some of the presentations that connected ecosystem. No, I guess pun intended. I'm getting the theme, but it truly is, it is the marriage of how we bring community together with learning through Academy. And when you do that, how do we increase the quality of the apps and integrations that our partners are building so that again, at the end of the day, which is what I love about HubSpot, we are always solving for the customer and that's how we do that through a product lens within the connected ecosystem.

Yeah, I love this and I think this ties into the community led growth where you can see the customer can be on the marketplace, they can find a services partner, an app partner, they can learn from the Academy and that HubSpot is really committed to making that a unified journey and investing in the platform behind that, that which benefits our partners. Right. I'd like to talk a little bit about the go to market side of this too. Right. Because you have to provide the technical tools, the extensibility for people to build on an ecosystem, but you also want to help your partners and your customers go to market together. What are some of the ways that HubSpot is investing in helping its partners go to market?

I'll let you. I build the stuff.

So.

But, but there are ways there I could maybe start with especially within like our Marketplace app. Right. We work with those. We have the. One of my teams has an entire team that works not just on the quality, but how can we get you more visible in that marketplace? How can we help you talk more about the customer use cases that you are building for? It's just one of the ways where I think within product we want to learn how we could do more. But Marketplace really is that place for our app partners to have visibility for the products and integrations they're building for the products that we have that gives them at least a place to share and let our customers that come there know more about it. And we are they. They can get access to that right within HubSpot. Today there's a market for HubSpot users here, you probably know that. But we're looking at in the future more and more ways to get it more integrated into how customers, customers want to solve problems and find the right apps, the right integrations to solve those problems.

Yeah, I'm very excited about some of the things. I don't think we can share them here yet, but they're on the roadmap. It'll be exciting. I think some of the things that we're doing this year that have been very Exciting is first of all and I think I can share this. Anyone from legal here? Okay, so we had our partner day at the beginning of this week and this was actually the first time in HubSpot where we had actually brought together our solutions partners and our app partners all in one room. And it was all about how they're able to work together here, particularly with a focus on servicing this expanding opportunity upmarket. And I think this is an area like we're just getting started on how we can help facilitate app partners and solution partners working together. I think there's certain aspects and content marketing there, I think there's a lot of things through like the marketplace and the ecosystem. Because at the end of the day, like this is where for customers they really are looking for that entire solution. And so how we bring those pieces together I think is going to be a big part of the go to market for our ecosystem. Another thing we actually started piloting this year is there is a technology out there called Reveal that is a software really built for these ecosystems to allow people to do opportunity matching across like, okay, well who are my customers? Who are your customers? Where are my open opportunities relative to your customers? And so we've started bringing on partners into this. Even so we're able to identify things as obvious as like, oh wait, you build an integration to HubSpot. You know, we look and we see we have 1,000 customers that are actually overlapping, but maybe only 200 of them have actually installed the integration. Like, okay, now with this insight, can we be incredibly targeted about how we help coach those customers to connect these two solutions which brings more value to the customer, it brings more value to the partner, it brings more value to HubSpot. So that's just a couple of the things that already this year they're really showing great momentum. I, I'm just looking forward to us putting fuel on the fire for 2024.

So let's say somebody is completely sold on either building into the HubSpot ecosystem or they've already built and they want to invest more. What is the one piece of advice that you would give to them? Whether that's thinking about white space as a platform perspective or go to market. How would you advise them to make the most of the opportunity today?

I think again, this is the solve for the customer philosophy. It's what drives everything here at HubSpot. It's absolutely what we encourage our app partners when we talk with them. One of the things I love best about the partner management team that I work with is for These different categories of partners that we're working with, one of the main things we've actually focused on is with those partners creating these blueprints, imprints of. Okay, well, for that category, what would a best in class integration look like with HubSpot? And this isn't something where like, oh, we just sit and stare at the wall and like, maybe it would be this. It's about actually talking to customers and solutions partners and being like, okay, what are the use cases that people want for these two pieces of software to really work well together? And that, that is the first and foremost thing to like twice drive a great partnership. So I'd say yeah, if you're looking to come into the ecosystem, I mean, coming in from that focus of like, okay, where is there something where we can add value? There's something we can bring that's innovation to the customers. Because if we get that piece right, you know, don't get me wrong, there's lots of innovative ways we can go to market on top of that. But that solid foundation makes all the difference.

Yeah. And I would just add like from a product perspective, Obviously being at HubSpot for only four months, this is my first inbound and it is as crazy as everybody told me it was going to be. But what I loved out of it, and this would be the advice I would continue to give our partners and customers, is that I've spent the entire time here at Inbound just talking to partners, talking to our customers, learning to help us evolve. What you need when it's not there and you're struggling with it. I want to know, we want to know so that we can prioritize and focus again for as Scott said, like brilliantly, what are the top customer problems that we are not solving well and that partners may not have known to solve better or well. Just I'm constantly looking at selfishly feedback loops from our partners and customers to continuously learn, understand where we can reprioritize, in some cases, opportunities to help solve again some of those bigger, bigger customer problems. So for me, again, and I think for every good product that we build, the feedback is the most important driver for how we build. So without your feedback, our product will stall. And so I want that there are tons of opportunities from our website and other areas from connect.com where I'm obviously on a lot to provide all of that feedback. But it is, it's critical and crucial to how we build all of our products, not just, not just the ones I focus on.

I think that's a perfect Segue. We want to open up to the room. Anybody who has a question for Brian or Scott, please feel free to ask any of your hardest questions.

The first one's always the toughest one.

And they don't have to be your hardest questions. If you have a softball, I mean, feel free to bring it out or.

I'm going to pick somebody from our product team that's going to pretend that they're not.

Don't make Brian call on someone.

When do you think React cards will be installable via public apps?

I had that same question myself.

The inevitable question. You know, we do have a roadmap that is publicly available. It is obviously on our roadmap for how we're going to do it, and we know we need to do it. I'm just not at liberty to say exactly when we think that will happen. It is obviously one of our top priorities. And I knew that question was coming. But no, I mean, honestly, as soon as we firm up closer to when we really do think it will be available on that, you know, just for HubSpot.com forward slash. New legal has given me that URL is the only one I need to know this week. So. But we do, we constantly update that roadmap and advise all of you to just always, always go to it. Understand, it tells you a lot about when some of these things will be available. But it is a focus, actually, if.

I can add on to that, too, because I've been talking to a few, believe me, every partner of mine I've been talking with this week. So I've got a question for you, Scott. But actually what some of them have already started to do is just even on the extensibility for private apps, you know, they're not building this into the core product at this point, but actually they're doing some initial experiments with, like, some of their customers of like, hey, this is like, we can just build this for years to see how would this even look. And one of the things I think that's just very useful to us is as you see those examples of, hey, this is how we would really like this to wear. Like, if we could do this in a public app, this would be the way we would do it. I think that sort of feedback, again, take the chance on your own. But I think there's certainly an opportunity to explore this in the private apps.

I think we're. What's a similar question?

Similar question.

Okay.

Everyone's like, I have a question.

Well, we got that question out of the way.

So you had said that feedback is the most important driver.

What's the best way to give feedback? How is the easiest way for us to convey that feedback to you?

Yeah, and there are, you know, I'll just again be very transparent about this. I think honestly what we're working on and thinking through is that there might be frankly too many ways right now, but we do have community.HubSpot.com, which is a product based community where there is a lot of folks talking about our products and giving feedback. We certainly have connect.com and as we evolve and innovate in that area, that'll be one of those places where I think we'll start to see a lot of mentoring not only from the community but from us coming out there and sharing a lot more about where to where, how, where and how we collect feedback. And there certainly is one of the other teams that helps support the product groups I run is our developer advocacy team. So we have. There we go, There we go. They have routes to get to them too which is they're able to really take the real technical developer feedback for how we build or what they need to build, synthesize it. So I would start just like@developers.HubSpot.com there's community links there. I'm B Gorbitubspot.com so like I said, I'm very, very intentional about feedback. So If I get 100 emails which I just might, that's fine.

Actually really quick on that point though I'll add right now we are running an app partner survey to all our app partners partners which you'll probably get emails about and it's about nine minutes long. Please be brutally honest. We want to collect that feedback. We want to learn. The other thing I would say is pass it back to your app partner manager or your channel consultant or your cam, whoever your point person is or your CSM if you're a customer. We do synthesize that feedback internally. We do take it seriously and we want to hear it.

Yeah. And if you do have that route and you have those avenues, definitely that is, that's why like Scott is like my partner in crime from like how we build product. That is definitely route for those that don't have that I would recommend doing more of the more that public way to do it.

Two part question. So in your ecosystem you have the concept and I'm going to steal this from a larger software company of built for HubSpot meaning that the app is well integrated, it's not going to fall apart when you do an upgrade, their upgrades are going to keep up with your upgrades. And then also kind of a two part, you know, how do I trust, how do we trust that those apps will work well, that they're going to be robust enough and everything? I've never really been able to tell in your ecosystem what's the, Is there a top tier built for HubSpot? Is there ones that get automatically installed within your instance versus some assembly required? I don't see distinctions of those, but maybe I missed that.

I'll first say, like within our marketplace, for instance, we do have certified apps. We have a team that does review quality and does do quality checks for those apps. Do we do that for every single one? Not probably to the level that we do for some that we do. Again, understand where's the most customer need? Where do we see the most usage? But there are like categories of apps that are one built for HubSpot, one of the other product teams that I have, our strategic integrations team where you'll see apps there that say built by HubSpot. And so we are thinking through the best way for both customers and partners, frankly to understand how well their app looks to customers, how well it's being used, how much usage is it having. But those are a couple of the ways right now.

Yeah, there's a whole ecosystem quality group on Brian's team that does an absolutely fabulous job with this and they are continually like investing and going deeper with that analysis. The other thing I would say is we've tried to be very transparent in the marketplace around things like the number of installs that a given app has. So, you know, the popularity of it. We also do have a ratings and review system where we solicit customers being able to provide that sort of feedback, particularly if it's a new app, being able to have that feedback from folks who actually used it, what they think, what they like about it. I know this is again another area, this is why all the pieces in your world fit together is there's a lot further we can take the marketplace over time to helping surface more of those signals and more of that information. So I think those would be the really key things to like look for as far as this idea being built for HubSpot. It's not so much that it's like there's a designation from us saying this was specifically built for HubSpot. We've got some partners who have built a product that it only serves HubSpot customers. They've really focused on that market. But we have other SaaS companies who, you know, they integrate, integrate with other systems out there, but they're really also focused on how do they build a great integration with HubSpot so that when you bring these two systems together, you're really able to get the value from both of them. And so I don't know, I look across that whole ecosystem like it doesn't have to be built for HubSpot to be a really great integration.

Like number eight, I have a quick.

Question on Marketplace, specifically the templates marketplace with modules and the papering of that revenue into HubSpot and then kind of cut back to the partner right on paid templates and modules. Is there any indication or thought on how that might come to parity in the apps marketplace?

HubSpot.com new no, I'm kidding. There's. I've been lucky in the four months I've been to really take on and lead some amazing product teams. One of the areas that we are looking at are not just how we truly monetize or make a marketplace, but how we think through what, again, solving for a customer, how a customer would want to interact with that payment. Probably any more that I say about that, I will be getting some legal flag or something, but very much so, we are thinking through a vision of what that might look like for a monetization strategy for all of the marketplaces that sit there today.

I think the philosophy that HubSpot has consistently brought to this ecosystem, and this comes like this was from Dharmesh, this was from Brian. Their vision always for this is in everything HubSpot does, we look to add value before we get any value extraction on our own. And so like anything we're looking to do in our ecosystem, we're like, okay, well, what's going to add value to the partners? What's going to add value to customers? I think if you look at how people acquire products, we look at that whole experience and we're like, yeah, there's probably ways moving forward we can make that a better experience for partners and for customers. But whatever we do there, it's going to be through the lens of how do we make this a great experience for what the customers actually want.

With only 1 minute left, do you guys want to have a last word on the future platform ecosystem?

Sure. I mean, maybe within 10 seconds. I think the one thing that I'll just leave you with is a bit of a story, but it would be a short one. My last interview at HubSpot a little over four months ago was with Dharmesh and we spent almost an hour debating a platform, which excited me. And then we got to the point where we really understood that I'm just probably the most insignificant piece of that platform. The product itself, it is the partners, it's the customers, it's the people around the ecosystem that I'm most excited about, which is why I'm not afraid to give you my email address. So what I will leave you with is trust in it, believe in it, be inspired by it, and help help inspire us to build more for you.

And I just want to close by saying thank you to all of our partners who are here, both those of you who are, of course, sponsoring and exhibiting. We're so grateful for that. But those of you even like just connecting one on one with customers. This is like now six years here at HubSpot for inbounds. This is by far the most exciting inbound for me and seeing how the ecosystem is really coming together. So thank you for all your support, and it's onward and upward from here.

Thank you. Thank you.