Seventeen Years at HubSpot and Seven Lessons Learned with Dan Tyre & George B. Thomas
This is a YouTube video titled "Seventeen Years at HubSpot and Seven Lessons Learned with Dan Tyre & George B. Thomas" recorded in early 2024. It features a conversational interview between George B. Thomas and Dan Tyre, discussing Dan's extensive 17-year experience at HubSpot. The conversation covers topics such as company culture, decision-making frameworks, customer retention, scaling strategies, and the evolution of HubSpot's business model including freemium products. The dialogue includes interactive elements with other participants contributing via chat, reflecting a dynamic and engaging discussion about lessons learned in business growth and leadership.
We're gonna go ahead and get started. So first of all, this is not your average bear. I'm not gonna do an intro. We're literally just gonna jump into this because the amazing humans that are here are here for a journey, for a story for 17 freaking years of being an amazing human, doing many of the things that be. Before we hit record, you were talking about Dan and servant leaderhood, creating the thing of lions, the boot camp, everything that you've been able to do and some lessons learned along the way. Dan, where I want to start with this is I want to go ahead and ask you what is one memory, One memory that you'll never forget when working at HubSpot.
Can I do. There's so many, right? There are so many. When I was thinking about this, I remember doing a one on one with Mark Robert at 6am in Swampscott. I actually knocked on his door and his wife answered. She's like, who are you? I'm like, dan Tyre. I'm doing a one on one with your husband.
Right?
That didn't go so well. So we only did it once. I speaking at eight inbounds with some great subject matter. Oh my goodness. Speaking with Leslie Yee and Tanya Caton. Amazing. Starting the HubSpot partner program with Pete Caputa that will be inedible in my brain. Sharing a desk with Jen Snyder that's up there running the HubSpot International division. Ryan Ball, Katie Ng, Mac. I love that. Working with Joe Sharon in sales, recruiting. Such a nice guy. I tell the Katie and Mac story, which I told for 10 years and then she was kind enough to take me off stage and say, you got some of the facts wrong, which may happen again in this webinar. How many people put in the chat bin if you remember the HubSpot NASCAR. Anybody remember the HubSpot NASCAR in. Where was it? It was in Kansas City in 2000.
Do you remember Rob?
Rob, you remember the HubSpot NASCAR, right? Put it in the chat pane if you remember it because that is a frigging wild ass story. Chuck was on that. Yes, that's true. That's right. There was a HubSpot logo on a nascar, right? And it's amazing story that I may have time for today running the inbound organization. Spider Monkey. Any Spider Monkey grads here? Raptor, Diamondbacks, Sloth Panthers, Right? That was amazing. Scaling hugs with Sarah Killian's invention of smarketing. You guys know I invented smarting. Lecturing at Tufts, the University of Chicago at Harvard Business School. Amazing. Starting the mentor program at up Spot that was. Was that called Cephalopod? You know I didn't name that one, right? I named Panther, and it's what the hell is a cephalopod? But, you know, and then speaking with Megan Anderson at the House of Blues, I did a keynote in San Paulo, did my first five slides in Portuguese. Amazing.
That's the thing, Dan. I said one thing, one memory. You know, how many humans couldn't say half of that? A fourth of an eighth of that? Like, the amount of impact and value that you've added to the community is so amazing. And that's what I want to dive into. I want to dive into the seven lessons that you would like to pull out, share with the interwebs. Because, of course, yes, we're recording this. Yes, it's going to be out everywhere that you think will make the most impact. Now that you've kind of taken a little bit, I'll call it a break. Because I know you're still on fire. You're still doing things. But. But sometimes when you own a business or you're an employee of a business, the journey doesn't feel smooth and easy. It's a little bumpy, and there's potholes and hurdles. Dan, what are some lessons that you learned around this concept that I know happens in life? For many of us, you take one step forward, and holy crap, it seems like you're taking two steps back as a human or as. As a company when you're working at HubSpot, talk us through that one step forward, two step back concept.
Okay, so first of all, great opening question, and thank you for keeping me on time. I tend to go down tangents, and I had like 15 or 20 more minutes of my top three things. So now we're back on track. It's interesting because everyone has the impression that everything in HubSpot is just like a fairy tale. And I see Sharon Moynihan and Jill Fradiani and Jen Schneider going, what? But everybody outside of HubSpot, right? Or if you're not familiar with the partner program, they think it's all smooth sailing. They think that we started HubSpot and people just faxed, like, for those of you under 30, a fax is an old, like, connection where you used to get your po and then it just worked, right? And Jen and Sharon and like, Debbie smiling, right. Because nothing is further from the truth. And there's a couple of things that HubSpot did really. Right. Number one, we always hired the right people.
Right?
And we refined it through a process where we got really good at understanding who would be able to like bring their best self. Number two, we work together pretty well. And as you know, being an entrepreneur is hard. Doesn't matter if you're in the manufacturing or the SAS manufacturing business or a partner or whatever scaling a company. It's like kind of like a rock and roll band, right? People think they want to do it until they actually have to like get up at 3 o' clock in the morning, sit in the back of a van and load the drummer's kit into the back of a beat up old pickup truck. Number one, there was always incredible pressure to perform, right? HubSpot went 27 and the first 27 months, right, without missing their number. And so. And it was hard, right? People work very, very hard every weekend, right? Late at night, right? It's just you didn't leave until you got your quota. Number two, everybody was doing multiple jobs, right, because they're in that very early state. And even as we move to a scale up, I think I even ran HR for 30 days, although it was only 30 days. And they said that's not going to work. And in these hypergrowth, fast paced environments, you're guaranteed to make a lot of mistakes. And HubSpot always had this very interesting philosophy that we followed called the Lori Norrington Decision matrix. And have you ever heard of that, George?
I have never heard of that, so this is awesome.
Who knows who Lori Norrington is? Put in the chappie. Quick, quick, like lion buds. Come off mute. Sharon, explain who she is. Is she not one of our shareholders or. She's on the board of directors. Directors, yeah. She's also on the board of directors like 15 other companies. And she is brilliant. And I was sitting down when I was writing Inbound Organization with JD and he's like, I'm like, how do you manage all this stuff? He's like, we use the Lori Norrington decision matrix. I'm like, what the hell is that? He's like, you don't know the Lori Norrington decision matrix? I'm not, no. That's why I asked you. He's like, call Laurie and ask her. So I did. And she's so nice and thoughtful. She's like, all these decisions, right, boil down to just four quadrants. And I'm like, I like this Lori. Only four things to remember. She goes, if it's an easy decision and easy to make, do you make it or don't make it? Put in the chat pane, whether you make it. If it's an easy decision. Easy to make. Come on, quick, quick, like lion bunnies. Let's go. You make it, of course, this Tracy, right? Very, very good.
Right?
You just make it right. If it's an easy decision but hard to roll back.
Right.
What do you do? Put it in the chat bank. It's an easy decision. Easy decision, but hard to roll back. Okay, Dan says pause. That's reasonable. You make it because it's an easy decision. It's easy.
Right.
If it's a hard decision, but easy rollback, do you make it or don't make it? Come on, quick, quick, quick. Yeah, Trigger's got it. You make it right because it's easy to roll back.
Right?
Where you spend all your time is if it's a hard decision and hard to roll back. And as soon as I got, I'm like, that is frigging brilliant. What's the benefit of having that kind of format when you're making a decision, George?
Oh, man. It makes decision making easy.
Like, it does make it easy because they're still especially. But you spend your time on stuff that really makes sense. Yeah. And you walk around going, okay, George, if we have this webinar and you don't show up on time, is it easy to roll back? And you're like, no, you got to be there on time. Tyra, I'm putting 15 minutes in your buffer. And it helps you give a framework for decisions that are very, very valuable in an entrepreneurial kind of scenario. So I always said that, first of all, HubSpot had brilliant founders, entrepreneurs, and senior leadership. Second of all, they spent their time on the right priorities because we followed Lori's very easy to remember and use decision framework, and we gave ourselves a break. So we knew not everything was going to work out.
Right.
And all of the hubspotters, Jilly Frat, and all of our great partners, Dan and Rob, you know, like, we didn't do everything right, Right. There's a million twists and turns in the partner program. And Jilly Frat, you and I go, what the hell is going on? And we're like, yeah, that probably wasn't the best thing. And then we had a roll it back. And we just say, okay, right. With a track record of making decisions over now 17 years. Right. That are largely the right decisions.
Right.
We just have to give ourselves a little bit of grace to understand that evolution is going to happen, that that's part of being an entrepreneur.
Right.
No one bats more than, I don't know, 65%. And if you can do the right thing in that Laurie Norton quadrant, you're going to be really good to go.
I love that so much. I also love in the chat pane that Joe Rando says bias towards action. Debbie, who by the way is the best helper when it comes to boot camps. Fast paced and adaptable. And Deanna says, get a ton done. So much good stuff. Dan, I want to rewind a little bit in the words, the knowledge that you just gave us because you, you made two statements at the beginning of that question. You said, you mentioned people and their best selves and you mentioned that working well together. And that struck a chord with me because the next thing that I want to talk about is how important is culture? Like, what amount of time should we be spending thinking about it? What lessons did you learn about culture while at HubSpot? Like unpack the, the bookshelf of information in the Dan tire brain on culture for us.
Okay. It's going to take a long time and I know I only have 10 minutes for this particular question, but I do a public presentation called Culture and Growth, which I started about a year ago because I got hired by Five Elms Venture Capital Company and they're like, all of our companies are scaling. What's the two things that you can teach these guys in an out? I'm like, that's easy. They're like, it's easy. I'm like, yeah, it's culture and growth. Everybody wants to grow. Unless you are from Italy, right? For some reason, when I go to Italy and I say, you want to grow? They're like, maybe. And I'm like, what? In the United States, if you don't grow, you're like, your hair's on fire. In Dublin, if you're not growing, people are looking at you like, what's happening in Italy? I'm like, what happens if you lose your customer? We'll get another one. I'm like, okay, it doesn't work in Italy, but every place else, growth is like a foundation of what's going on. The second part is culture. And the reason this is such a good question, George, is that people don't understand that it's one of the two essential skills for a modern company. But it's complex and it's hard to plan for and it's friggin effing difficult to deliver and it's expensive, but it's essential for scale because the people, the companies that get all the best people will win. And if you don't have a Good culture, you're at risk. The people you hire are going to get you to the next level. I have a famous chapter in the inbound organization book that I wrote with Todd Hockenberry, by the way, the best co author in the history of books. And we asked everybody, all the senior executives at UMSbot, what's more important, your customers or your employees. And put in the chat pan, you webinar listeners, about what's more important, your employees or your customers. Julie Rosenberg always gets it right. Oh, my good. They're both equally like. The answer's okay, Rob, do you love your wife? Do you love your mama? Right? But the answer is actually employees. Because if you don't have happy employees, you will never have happy customers, right? And that has changed, right? We'll talk a little bit about solving for the customer, but that has changed. And having happy employees. Easier, hard. In 2024, all you business owners out here put in the chat page. Easier, hard to have happy employees. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Yeah.
It's frigging hard. It's like pushing a huge rock uphill. They're never happy. So easy. Oh, look at that, Jen. I like that.
All right.
I know we come into 2024 after three years of the global pandemic, where it's just a little bit different, where everybody expects and has a higher level of expectations than ever before. I heard a great speaker, Johnny Taylor, said this is the first generation where there's actually five generations in the workforce. So first time in human history because we used to only live till like 45 in the 1400s. And then right in the last generation, we only lived to 65 now, right? There are five generations. So a seven year old, like person has to understand what's going through a 22 year old person's brain, right? Do you think that's easy? No. So culture is hard. So a couple of things in the culture and growth. By the way, if you want me to give it to your company or to your association, I'm happy to do it. You can book me out@dantire.com Number one, have a chief people officer, right? And HubSpot had the best chief people officer I've ever worked for, Katie Burke. Amazing. Incredible, right? And I always, I'm like, what's a chief people officer anyway? And she's like, it's the voice of the employee. And I'm like, okay, I need one of those. She's like, you don't really need one of those, but everybody else does, right? And she was always our Advocate and amazing. The program that she put together over 10 years. Number two, a culture code. Who's familiar with the HubSpot culture code. Put it in the chat thing, right? Our culture code is hart, right? H E A R T. And it's the shared values that we share. And you don't have to have the same kind of culture code that we do, right? That's just a beautiful one, right? Stands for humble, empathetic, adaptable. R is remarkable. And T is transparent. And I always thought it was an amazing way to identify good people who would be a good fit for the company and the shared values that we operate on. And many times people would say that doesn't sound like you're incorporating heart into that decision. That's a big wake up call. Because values are critically important for any company. Then good leadership, right? Which not every company has, can be trained. Good leadership, good management. It's especially challenging in hyper growth companies where you're hiring a lot of new people. That means you have to train them, teach them what people management is all about. You have to have effective feedback loops put in the chat pan if you know what ENPS is. Enps. Well, look at all these people know. Hart. Very, very good enps. Joe. It's Employee, nps, Net Promoter, store, right? And twice a year HubSpot goes out to every employee and asks us to grade their culture experience, right? And senior executives listen to every, they read every single comment, right? And so they're constantly looking for the feedback loops of what people like and what they don't like. And it changes year to year, right, with requirements and what's going on in the world, right? And they read it and they understand it, they report back on it, right? And so that's super important. And then there is diversity, inclusion, belonging, right. Which Katie Burke brought to HubSpot, which is hard. I don't know if you know, but if you're going to sell the people of color, you probably should have people of color on your board of directors. HubSpot has four women on our board of directors. On their board of directors, has two people of color on the board of directors. Which is amazing, right? That diversity, inclusion, belongings hard, especially when getting started. Katie Burke, power lady, said, all right, we're going to post our diversity statistics even though they stink in 2015. And we did. And then they've been, they've improved every year, which is kind of amazing, right? And then a learning environment where people can be their best selves, where they can invest in growth and develop, where they can try new things.
Right.
Some of the people in this webinar have had four or five jobs. I'm looking right at you, Jilly Frat, who just got promoted to west coast corporate rep. I know, I know. It's like a million people on LinkedIn all congratulating her for her incredible HubSpot run and the fact that she's taking a new job that everybody's happy about. There's also a wiki, which the HubSpot people like. Okay. Rolling their eyes. Because the wiki is kind of large these days, but many companies don't have a central repository of putting information where everybody can see it. Part of transparency, Right. And then ergs, Employee resource groups. Amazing, right? And everybody's like, that's a lot of stuff. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, that could be expensive. And I'm like, yeah, okay. But if you want to have a great culture, if you want to lean into making sure that your employees are happy, right? You got to actually do stuff. In the old days, you're like. It was like, slide nine. Yeah, we're gonna have a good culture. And you didn't do right today.
Right.
It's got to be on the forefront. And if your employees see that, they'll know. And if your employees are happy, they'll produce.
Right.
And if they produce, you'll have happy customers. All right. Did I make a good argument that employees are more important than customers?
Oh, without a doubt. And there's. There's a couple things that I have to pull out, Dan. First of all, my brain shot to. Yeah, but the amount of bad culture will cost your organization. Oof. Will probably far outweigh the cost you'll put to create a good one. The other thing that amazes me, Dan, is still the amount that you use when talking about HubSpot. The words our and we. My brother, you are still entwined with the brand inside of your mind.
I know, I know. My goal. My goal is to be the best HubSpot alumnus in the history of the company. J.D. sherman and Brad Coffee are going down. Forget.
There you go.
I'm out there talking. It's the greatest company in the world. I have such appreciation for the people. Amazing, right? I'll be friends with Jen Snyder for the rest of her life. Sharon Murnahan invites me over to her house. Her husband cooks me dinner in this little oven kind of thing. Amazing, right? And anywhere I go, I see and meet people that I'm very appreciative because there nice people trigger the Same thing bites me to his opera company. Who does that? Who knew Trigger had an opera company? But he does, right? And those connections are amazing. Those people.
Right.
Far more important than everything. Number two, everything I learned before 2007 as a business person went right out the window when I started working for mark Robert. Right. 2007 was seminal in the SaaS growth, and I learned how to scale a company.
Right.
I had scaled four companies previously, but not like HubSpot. HubSpot went from zero to a hundred million when 100 million was real money in seven years.
Right.
On the hard work of half the people who are in this webinar, including our partners. Right. That was amazing. And it was because Mark planned out the growth strategy like a scientist. He was the greatest vice president of sales ever, because he wasn't really a vice president of sales. He was a frigging scientist, an engineer. And he engineered the recruiting program, he engineered the training program, he engineered the growth program.
Right.
And then. Amazing. And I'm appreciative of learning all that because Tire angel is my investment company designed to grow great companies and great leaders. And I use everything that I learned at HubSpot. One of the things I learned is everything changes all the time. And for the spider monkey people in the group, Right. You know, when Allison Ellsworthy saved the company in, I don't know, 2010 or so.
Right.
We had a pivot again.
Right.
And then in 2014, we had a pivot again. And in 2017, we pivoted a freaking third time. Unprecedented in my business career. And then, of course, the global pandemic was that easy or hard? Yeah. A whole different model. And then post pandemic, what I learned is that it always changes. You definitely need to be on the ball. You always need to find a way to grow, and you need a way to put that in. Into your culture.
Yeah, there's. I gotta pull out the fact you talked about pivoting or transitioning. It has been a superpower in my own career, being able to do that when it needs to happen. And so many businesses could learn from that. But once again, I want to rewind to kind of some of the things that you said at the beginning of that question and during that question, because you said the people you hire, employee. And of course, we have to do a caveat of that of, like, the proper employee mindset. And you even said values are critically important. And one of the values that HubSpot has been spitting for years and that I'm definitely bought into is this idea of solving for the customer or the customer is key. But we all know if I asked to put that in the chat pane, is solving for the customer easy or hard? What people would start to put. So what lessons did you learn, Dan, about solving for the customer that might help us on our business journey ahead of us while you were at HubSpot for 17 years?
Awesome. Awesome. George, have you had a great customer experience in 2024 so far?
I would say probably yes.
Who was it?
Well, I just got off a 10 day cruise, my friend, and it was absolutely fabulous.
All right, and why was it so fabulous?
Because people were waiting on us. They, like, knew we needed stuff before we knew we needed it. And there was free ice cream. Let's just throw that out there.
So, all right, that seems like a fairly high bar of customer satisfaction, right? And in most cases, when I asked that question to an audience, right, Three hands go up at a thousand people, right? And I'm like, all right. I call them and say, what was the customer experience? And they say, my friend Jen drove over to pick me up so I could see a new house, and I ultimately bought from her. She took me to a hockey game and then I went ahead and decided to do business with. And I'm like, okay, that's pretty good, right? The problem with solving for the customer is it's frigging hard. It's complex, it's hard to plan for, it's difficult to deliver, it's expensive. But it's essential to scale. And those pesky customers, right? Entire angel. We invest in startup companies, right? And everybody has this beautiful business plan of how they're going to scale like a hockey stick, and it's all going to go smooth, right? And then if I show that to Sharon Moynihan in Dublin, she'd be like, oh, my goodness. I'm not really sure that's the way scaling a company goes. There's a few twists and turns once you get customers right, and they just don't know because you don't know how your customers are going to react. You don't know what the level of expectation is other than in 2024. Prospects and customers have a very high bar that you have to jump to. So through 17 years, everybody thought I was like the king of HubSpot and that I could wave a magic wand and then make issues go away, which is not the case.
Right.
But I was always a good advocate for everyone who needed a voice, right. So whenever anyone complained, right, I always called them, like on the phone, right? Not a text, not an email, which may be generational and is easy thing. I called them on the phone, right? I left a voicemail, right? Voicemail is the things that you all have on your iPhone that is full and you never check, right? And I. But I wanted to do it because I wanted to make sure they understood that I was personally involved. And I'm like, send me the details. I want to know all the details, right? And they would. And some of them were a little scarce, some of them were a little sketchy, right? But I still wanted it, all right? And then because, like, for the last, I don't know, for the first five years, I could sometimes influence it. But for the last 10 years, there wasn't a lot I could do other than to go into Slack, find out who their account team was and send it to the accounting.
Right.
100% of the time, right? The account team would grab it. They would say, amazing, thank you very much, Tyre. I would say, all right, do you understand what the problem is? They would either say yes or not quite. And we'd say, okay, let me respond with the questions you have. We'd get good problem definition. So we'd understand exactly what's. What's going on. Number two, we'd ask the customer, how. What is a good problem resolution for you for this? Like, what do you want to happen? So that we get their interpretation of what would need to happen, which was seminal in, like, outlining solving for the customer. And then I'm like, okay, I got no juice. It's not my decision. It's your account team's decision.
Right?
But let's see if we can work this through. And in a hundred percent of the cases, the great customer service, onboarding people, senior management, everybody at HubSpot, they're like, yep, it's probably like 90% of the customer's fault. But there was mis expectations. The brand is important. We're trying to solve for the customer. Unless it was like, criminal or a harsh violation of our specific legal terms. They're like, nope, this is an edge case. And I was so proud all the time. All these, like, great. And then I would get all the credit. People would send me the emails, like, tyre, you're brilliant. I'm like, all I did is, like, do the problem that I didn't do squat, right? Which is pretty much. For those of you know, I've been married to Amy Tyre 37 years. She does the same thing. She does all the heavy lifting, she does all the coordination. I get all the credit, right? And solving for the customer requires you to understand it's going to be hard, complex, expensive. You're going to have to make these tough decisions where it wasn't your fault, it was a customer's fault. But like if you want to have the brand where you're solving for the customer, you have to do all of these things. Sometimes those account teams would make the decision that would impact their compensation. It would like they would lose money and they would. 100% of the time the Hubspotters did it. Which always made my heart swell with pride.
Right.
Because solving for the customer is easy to say as you scale a $2.2 billion company is. And hard to actually implement it. And overall, the HubSpot employees were always really good at doing.
I love this idea of putting the humans first. And the fact that something can make Dan emotional does not surprise me. But I love that you had those moments in time where people were making the right decision, even when it might not be the right decision for them, but was the right decision for the customers. And, and Dan, I want to, instead of rewinding this time, I want to drill down into something.
Hold on, let me just say one thing. George, can I interrupt you for a second?
Absolutely.
But there's something that HubSpot named for that. It's called EV Enterprise value. And there's a variety of like formal accounting terms for enterprise value. Your debt plus your equity.
Right.
But ev, solving for ev, we talked about it very early, is one of the kind of quasi values. And lots of times people at HubSpot, Julie Rosenberg, would have to do things even though it wasn't in her best interest and it was just the way you scale and solve for the customer. And she just had to do it. And we'd say, we're solving for ev. This is very, very important. This is a value based decision that we need to make. And a majority of people understood that, realized that and were up for doing the things that were necessary, even if it wasn't in their vested interest. And it's one of the things that makes HubSpot one of the greatest companies in the world. Because solving for EV was friggin hard.
Right.
But it was an acceptable value within the organization.
I love it. And Jilly Frat, I love that you have in the chat pane. Doing the right thing is always the right thing. I totally agree with that. So let's drill down because one of the three words that just kind of punched me in the cranium was essential to scale. And Dan, one of the things that I noticed when I started with HubSpot and inbound and as I've been training folks along the way, I've seen seen when they get started with a HubSpot and inbound, a scale, the word scale equals. As sales, they're chasing prospects and as marketers, they're chasing leads. So I want to take the time to have you dive into this word retention and talk to us about how important is retention or retaining current users, customers, whatever the heck we call them for our business model. What lessons did you learn about retention in 17 years at HubSpot?
Okay, so another great question. And you're right, that's what I thought. I am a career salesperson, although now I'm a smarketer. Everybody knows schmarketing. Sch Marketing. I know, I know. You say it better than I do. Yeah. Jen Schneider, you're a schmarketer now. Yes. Come on, Fran, you're a smarketer, aren't you?
Right?
Sales and marketing pushed together. I invented that term. That's one of the stories that I didn't get a chance to talk about. But like many of the people on this call, they were early salespeople and they were essential to the growth of HubSpot. But I think it was around 2010 I realized in the SaaS model that you have to add new customers, right? But if you don't keep your customers, right? And if you don't have more than a hundred percent retention, that means the customers you have buy more stuff, right? You're going to go out of business. And I'm like, wait a second, Brad, coffee. MIT Sloan guy is like, no, let me explain to you the unit economics. I'm like, what the hell is that?
Right?
We're going to go sell more stuff. And he's like, okay, but more importantly, you got to sell the right people because if they don't retain right, we're going to go out of business. I'm like, no, we're not. We're $30 million. We're not going out of business. He's like, let me show you the math, right? Which I'm like, holy cow, you are right. And so this retention becomes more and more important. And old school was all leads and MQL and in 2024, it's not the holy Grail, right? It used to be you could scale with a world class sales team and you still can do that, right? The problem is right today, the marketers and the product marketers need to lead the charge. Competition is intense. Our Buddy Jonah Lopin at Crayon says that 90% of companies say there's more competition today than there was a year ago in 2023, right? The average company, I googled it last night. I think it was 87 competitors, right? I don't know if that's US or worldwide. Right? But does that pass your sniff test? The average company has 87 competitors. That's insane, right? And so everybody has this like expectation that your product is going to work. And in the old days you stuck around with, you know, your provider because there were only four and they all knew each other and it was no better than the next one today, right? If I can't download that app, if it doesn't open, if it's not know who I am and autofill kind of stuff, you're there. Jen's like, you're gone, forget about it.
Right?
If you don't make my first three pages on my iPhone, you're dead to me. That's just the way it works. And so selling is kind of easier. I never want, that's a mis phrase. Selling is never easy, right? But selling is easier than getting people to actually use the product. And that's why UX and design is so critical to success. Because I'll give a little bit of like leeway to ugly app. I don't really care if it's like beautiful or thing, but it gotta work, right? If it doesn't work, I get an error message or something like that, it's getting deleted in a second. And I, I, it needs to be like intuitive, right? For some of you that are over 40, we used to have these things called product manuals. Anybody remember product manuals? Where are you, George? You're not that old. You don't remember a problem, brother?
I'm 52, man. I remember product manuals like it was.
Yesterday and you grow that mustache, you drop 10 years. Amazing. There you go. That product manual used to be 300 pages, a little tiny 10 point type which would tell you what to do, right? When's the last time you guys saw a product manual? It doesn't exist. If the app doesn't work like intuitively, then the app sucks. We'll move to something else, right? That's the expectation that people have. So now you got to understand what keeps people sticky.
Right?
From your very first. This is a whole flywheel concept from a sales perspective, right? One of the things that HubSpot has so great is this flywheel component where people love HubSpot because all of the reasons the values, the product, the productivity, the results, all those kind of things. But one of the things that HubSpot does amazingly well is we have all the data of what it takes to retain customers and how to, like, lead them through so that use multiple products at each category so that they're going to retain. And then you have to engineer your onboarding process, right? Our partners are amazing at this, right? I bet you every Golden Elite partner, everyone that I've always worked with, they're like, no, this is what you got to do. And with a big heart, they walk people through the process to ensure that they understand what they're doing, why they're doing it. This is the step. This is how you get support if you need to, right? It's so that they can get off to a fast start. Because if they start getting bitter and mean, right? Then you have to work twice as.
Hard to get them, right.
Then you make sure everybody knows both the customer, the partner, the salespeople, the marketing, how the customer gets the most value, right? I'm a limited partner in Marco Robert Stage two Capital, right? And he's big on product LED growth, right? And he's like, it's not just like having a pretty ui, it's like making sure everybody's on the same page with the way the customer gets value. And if your app or product or whatever it is isn't giving three times the value, what people are paying for it, you are at risk, right? If you're given three or five or 10, then you have an opportunity to be an innovative and great company, right? But that value and understanding how people get the most value is hard to figure out. But essentially. And then there's all kinds of great things you could do. I'm a huge fan of HubSpot Academy. I spent my last three years at HubSpot in HubSpot Academy, run the bootcamp program. Thank you, Trigvy. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you for all the people who participated. Thank you, George. Amazing. And I never understood why there were not more like other academies out there giving away free education to people's prospects and customers. Because it was amazing idea. Mark Killens, Paul Aduchet, Courtney Sembler, right? In managing and providing like this great resource that made people feel great about the brand, helped people understand who HubSpot was and would help with retention because they know a little bit more about the product. I gotta throw out a shout out to our friend Kyle, who knows Kyle Jepsen. Put in the chat pane, if you know Kyle Jepsen. The orange hat. Now he's got a top hat.
I'm sure the chat is going to go on fire right now.
I know everybody knows Kyle and he realized early on his own accord, right? I got to get out there with these videos with these TikToks because people need this kind of support. And he is the father. Is he old enough to be the grandfather? No, he's the father of the super admin boot camp, which Debbie and George are the instructors. And that's a perfect example. That is this generation's HubSpot Academy short form video of going out there and helping people use the product that they're incredibly appreciative of that helps everybody get more value from their HubSpot. Therefore be better customers. Therefore be help the core company grow.
Yeah. So good. I gotta look at this chat pane around product manuals. Joe Rando says I'd read them before bed. Deanna says, spiral bound. And Dan says, yeah, Dan Moyle says, I still need them. So they're still rocking and rolling, I guess.
Download them. You can download them. It's all on YouTube now. Don't get a product manual unless your desk needs like one of the legs is shorter than everybody else. It's like yellow pages. Anybody seen the yellow pages? Any place but your grandma's cabinet in the last 10 years. Julie Rosenberg used to sell for the yellow pages. Oh my goodness. Incredible. I love it. Never forget that.
So let's keep driving down in on scaling. You even mentioned the math. You even mentioned in that last segment, product led growth. So if we think about scaling and the math and product led growth, for the longest time, when HubSpot first did this thing launched freemium, I thought, how is freemium even a viable growth option like HubSpot? Do you know what you're doing right now? HubSpot has leveraged this idea of freemium over the past few years for growth. What lessons, Dan, have you learned around the topic of freemium and products? And how could other companies or even agencies lean into this idea for themselves for growth?
Amazing. You were skeptical of freemium at the beginning.
At first I was like, you can't give it away and grow.
But Tracy, did I see some skepticism on your face as well?
I mean, I was wrong, but that.
Was where Put in the champagne. If you like free stuff, put in the chat.
Oh, I do like free stuff. Okay, don't get me wrong.
Let's get. Let's crowdsource it. Trigvy's love free. Megan is yes, Love free. Everybody's loves I'm walking the dog with my wife today. And she's like, hold on there, cowboy. I like it if it adds value. I'm like, okay, that's valid.
Yeah.
But many times in around 2012, when we were scaling HubSpot, Halligan and Dharmesh were like, damn, we did it wrong. I'm like, what do you. What do you mean you did it wrong? You're like, we shouldn't have hired a sales organization, which is a little bit like. I felt a little bad because I was part of the sales organization they hired. And they're like, no, no, no. What we should have done is the west coast office. I'm like, what the hell is that? And they're like, google, Facebook. You create a technology and you give it away for free, right? And then people come in and they actually use it. It actually adds value. And then there are other people who want to utilize it. Therefore, your sales organization is upselling, not just selling a product. I'm like, I like that west coast offense. They're like, yeah, everybody does. And guess what we're going to use. I'm like, what do you mean we're going to use it? So what year did the HubSpot CRM come out? All you hubspotters and HubSpot partners? I want to make sure I'm accurate on this. Yeah, I think you're right. No, it wasn't 2006. The company wasn't even around in 2006. It was, but there was only three employees. I think it's around 2014, 2016. Somebody Google it and say, this is the. Anyway we're looking at. It was essential because the smarketing thing had already been established and we are looking for a competitive advantage. Somebody just asked me that. I was interviewed in the Arizona State Press, which is the newspaper for Arizona State, the largest university in North America. And they're like, how did you differentiate the HubSpot CRM when you first came out? And I'm like, we gave it away for free, Right? You can pay 16 grand for whatever it is for Salesforce or all these others, or you can get a free quality CRM and it'll always be free. And people were very skeptical, just like you, George, at the very beginning. But it was brilliant, right? And people liked it. And they're like. Like all of the salespeople there sometimes. Did you say, the CRM is free? People would look at you like you smell bad. They're like, really? Is it really free? Like, you were going to bait and so it's free. It's always going to be free. And the way we make our money is we like, if you use a little bit more value, then we upsell, right? Then you have to pay $25 and then you have to pay $100, then you pay $800 and all the way up to $25,000, if that's the value that we're providing. And it was brilliant because now it's a funny story. I walk to airports. People want to take TikToks with me. I'm like, why? They're like, you're Mr. HubSpot. I'm like, not anymore. I'm Tyrangel now. They're like, yeah, but you were there for a long time. And they feel bad. I'm like, why do you feel bad? And they're like, I've been using HubSpot for eight years and we've never paid you a dime. I'm like, okay. Do you tell other people use HubSpot? They're like, yeah, all the time. And do you like, tell people that it's a good application? They're like, all the time. I'm like, thank you very much. That's what we're going for, right? So freemium works on so many great levels. Number one, we give the people what they want. Number two, it's a high value product.
Right.
But it's somewhat limited. Number three, HubSpot has, I don't know, billion and a half dollars on its balance sheet, right? As startup companies don't have that kind of money, the best thing for the universe is to support these scale ups. That's HubSpot for startups.
Right.
Program we started in 2012, which was amazing, where people get a little taste and then as they bump up, as their company grows, as they get a little bit more opportunity, they're like, okay, right? One of our portfolio companies for Tire angel is called Navati and Amelia Wilcox, who is a powerful woman leader in Utah.
Right.
When she first started, I was in the small business division and she should have started with a marketing version of HubSpot. And she decided to start with the $250 version, the basic, I think we called it. We weren't really good at naming applications back then, but it was the basic kind of thing. And she's. I'm like, you really should start with the. The marketer. And she's like, no. And but three 90 days later, she came back and you're like, you're right. Now I'm ready to go to the next level. Because she just blew it up. This lady, she's a massage therapist. She's now the owner of a scale up SaaS company called Navati. They do mental health apps. It's amazing, right? And she ran the largest corporate massage company in North America. She would get these purple chairs and people would come to your office and they would rub your back. Do you like your back rubbed, George?
I love a good back rub, brother. And I know Amelia. She's awesome.
You know Amelia?
Oh my gosh, I do, I do.
Okay. She took the inbound process and she rocked it out. It was amazing. She had six of the top 10 SEO organic links on the front page. She owned a corporate massage. She had. We had 69. I was on the board of directors and I was an advisor to the company. We had 1600 part time physical therapists all around the country.
Right.
If you had wanted to have a conference or you wanted to tell your employees you appreciated them, you hired in corporate massage. And it was amazing. That business went down during COVID to zero, by the way. I thought we were going to put a fork in it. And Amelia, being incredibly resilient, with lots of grit, decide to hack a mental health app, which is now Novati and which is now incredibly successful. And if you're looking for a mental health app, she's a tire portfolio company and a great person and a great hubspotter. Oh, this is a good one. She. So the freemium. Sorry, I went on a little tangent there. The freemium makes sense, right? For a couple of reasons. Number one, it's the right thing to do. Number two, everybody in the zoom likes free stuff except Tracy. It has to be free stuff with value. Right, Tracy? Did I get that right? Yes, yes, yes. Which is perfectly legit. Number three, you don't want to pay for stuff that you don't need. Right? So why do it?
Right.
And you want to move at your own time. You don't want to push. Anybody want a pushy salesperson to call you and say you need to upgrade to the professional or enterprise. No, you do not.
Right.
And being that guy for 50 years, right, it's not a lot of fun on the other side of the phone, right? Either.
Right.
We want our customers decide, right. Based on the value we're providing, that now it's time to scale it up. And it works so well. So we urge everybody, if you don't have a freemium offering, put in the chat pane. If you have a freemium offer. Yes, Fo. No fo.
Yeah, you had to think about that one, didn't you? What you're gonna have them put in the chat pane. So here's the thing. We're gonna try to squeeze because I feel like we could do webinar 700 lessons in 17 years but we're going to try to squeeze two more in here in the next 8ish minutes. So I want to dive into because all a lot of the people on this call, a lot of people that will watch this when we put it out on the Internet. Leaders leadership, Leadership principles. Dan, just unpack your brain for about three to four minutes on lessons you learned around leadership principles while you're at HubSpot.
All right. So I wrote a book about it. Everybody should know you can go to inbound organization. I already gave a shout out to my good friend and incredible innovator Todd Hockenberry. Runs top line results, works specifically with manufacturing companies, introducing them to the inbound process.
Right.
And I always thought right from the early days that inbound was more like of a value to salespeople, right? Because in the early days Jen and I and Sharon cold call, right? Don't tell anybody because that's not really the brand. But we did because we didn't have any friggin inbound leads. And then I know. And Jen was like, you just want me to call in the yellow pages? I'm like, well yeah, pretty much. And like it was the early days of Google so it was hard to get like lists and things like that. But like the next stage of that was when we started to get those inbound leads, right. It was very, very clear to me that it was of a value to sales because it made our prospecting time reduced by hey, call people up. And you're, you'd be like, what were you looking for help with? Anybody remember who invented that line? Who invented that line? So I'm spotter still at HubSpot after 18 years. A great place to spend an entire two decades that you should know. Julie. Do you know Julie wasn't G2. It wasn't Dan Tyre. I'm not that smart. It was Catherine Fisher. I know. She's like, okay, we call people up and say I saw you on the website. And she's like, what were you looking for for outposts? And I freaking fell off my chair. I'm like, that's brilliant. How did you think that up? And she's always saying brilliant stuff. So that's the way it was. I know, I know, I know. Just amazing. Anyway, I started. I do did a Lot of public speaking. In 2014, I moved from running the BDRs to taking a territory. Worked as a territory for HubSpot from Arizona. It was the early stages of having people in the field. I was the first remote employee for Hug Spot, which is kind of interesting. And my wife got tired of me traveling to Cambridge every other week. I was on the road 100% of the time for seven years. Right. My beautiful wife deserves all the credit. Sometimes my kid would be like, dad, you got to go to Cambridge. And sometimes my kid would be like, dad, when are you going to Cambridge? Which kind of sucks, right? When you come in a nine year old is giving you a little bit of friction. But like, that's part of the thing. And so I was looking for some extra credit stuff that I could do. So I started my speaking career and I've done some unbelievable. I did a great show with Julie Rosenberg. I've done some stuff with Jared Moran, Olivia Kirwan in the uk. Anyway, I started talking about inbound and then smarketing, right? And then I started talking about the leadership principles that underlined the inbound process. And does anybody know, number one, I'll buy your breakfast sandwich if you know attribute number one of the inbound leadership principle. It's page 16 on the inbound organization book.
Any.
Any takers for that breakfast sandwich? Okay. It's treating people like human beings, right? Which, George, you're really good at. Lots of people are good at that. Does it surprise you have to remind people to treat people like human beings in 2024. If it surprises you, just look at my Twitter feed, right? Which is like just a trashy little, like he said, she shed. It's like my junior high school crazy, right? So number one, you treat people like human beings. Number two, you help before you sell. Which all of these great hubspotters, right? Incredible. And the HubSpot parties, you always do that. It's in your veins. The reason why we are great companies. We always. It's what Halligan says. It's not what you sell, it's how you sell. And we always lead with helping people. Now, you don't want to help too much, but like to the extent of helping people. And everybody can help. There were some people who didn't have a free offer, like get a checklist, the 10 things to do before you start HubSpot or the 10 things you do when you're an architect or the 2024 guide to whatever. Like you and chat spot AI can get that done in like an Hour and a half. And you can put it as something that people can download. And helping before you're selling is a good way to go. Number three, you solve for the customer. And we spent 12 minutes on that. Number four, right? The customer experience is your only sustainable value, right? It used to be you bought a product for its features, right? And now everybody has the same feature, right? If like Salesforce has a feature that HubSpot doesn't have, will have it in two days, right? It's just the rate of development, right? Some of you, old school, old. Oh, geez. Know. Remember when HubSpot didn't even have an email? Anybody remember when HubSpot didn't have email?
Oh, yeah.
T shirt. I got a T shirt that says, we're your mofu, right? I'm like, I can't wear that out. That's like offensive. And they're like, no, that's mofu used to be middle of the funnel. I'm like, okay, right? And like, amazing. In the old days, it took you three years to build a feature. Now it takes a weekend, right? Give it to somebody in Romania and the next thing you know, boom, you have product feature parody. So the only thing that like really differentiates you is the way in which you offer Freeman is stuff. The way you market to a specific demographic, the way you engage as a salesperson, the way you incorporate AI into the value of what you do, right? So that's the nearly last one. The fifth one is look at the data, right? Which HubSpot has always been amazing at showcasing the data, what needs to be. And the last one is ensuring that you're building your ecosystem, which once again, one of the greatest companies in the world of incorporating partners, of incorporating app developers, of incorporating great content creators, boot camp instructors. Just amazing, right? Those are the leadership principles found in Inbound Organization, the book I wrote with Todd in 2008.
Love it so much. Well, with four minutes to go, we're going to bounce to some quick questions. Real quick.
How did I do? Rate that session?
Oh, yeah, George, you know how this rolls 1 through 10, rate the session. Okay, Dan, ready? We're gonna do. We got some 11, some hundreds. So we're gonna do some rapid fire questions. Are you. And if you are, what book are you reading?
Right now I'm reading three because I'm a classic overachiever. I just finished John Irvine, my best author of all time. He wrote his last novel called the last chairlift. It's 800 pages, so it's a big commitment. My brother in law has a book called Pictures in the sand, which is amazing. And one of our portfolio companies, Vance Rouse, person of color who runs overflow.com, wrote High growth Fundraising in the Silicon Valley way. It's all about generosity. Amazing guy, wrote a book about generosity. I strongly urge you to get it if you want.
And now that you're just sitting around eating bon bons, I jest because I know that's not your life. What's your favorite hobby now?
All of them. Is that an effective answer? I walk the dog. I play bass, I play tennis. I root English football. I'm going to India on a pilgrimage. Anybody here ever been to a pilgrimage? My wife is like, we're going on a pilgrimage. I'm like, what's a pilgrimage? She goes, you go to sacred sites and you try to heal the world. I'm like, I want to do that. Oh, good, because we're leaving on the 24th, right? So now I got to learn a Sanskrit poem, right? Anybody here speaks Sanskrit? I didn't even know it was a language. It's an ancient language, Tracy. Did you say yes? If you said yes, Tracy, I'm buying you a friggin breakfast sandwich because no one in the world. I only know the terms you use in yoga class. Okay, What's a Sanskrit word? So like namaste. That's a Sanskrit word? Yes. Oh, I speak Spanish and a Sanskrit now. I thought it was a whole lot harder than that. Unbelievable. Tracy Graziani adding value everybody, everywhere she goes.
That's funny. I love too that Jennifer says, bigger question. What book are you writing right now? That's a bigger question.
You know, the first time I wrote Inbound Organization almost killed me.
Right?
I should have taken a few months off and actually done it because writing a book is not like talk. Right. It's easy to talk with George B. Thomas because I'm such a fan and he's such a good moderator and I'm pretty good at talking. Writing a book is much different. You got to write the book, then you got to write the book again, then you got to write the book. I don't have that level of discipline, so I bet you'd be great. You just need a transcriber surviving the funnel after many years in sales. But I feel like there's a negative context to that, so I'm thinking about it. Schneider and Tire. You want to want to collaborate on that for some reason you heard it here first. Okay. Like I've written the foreword for. I think it's eight or nine books. For some reason, people think that two pages of Dan Tire is going to accelerate their book sales, which I'm highly dubious about. I did one in Italian, wrote about Inbound in Italian. And he's like, I want you to write the Ford. I'm like, me, there's no other person. And they're like, yeah, we want you to do it. I'm like, okay, I love it.
I love it. What do you miss most about working at HubSpot?
Well, it's been about, I don't know, 17 minutes, so. And I have more hubspotters on my calendar than when I drew a paycheck from. I love HubSpot. I love HubSpot is amazing. Anybody needs to get on my calendar, just send me as dan tire@gmail.com. i'll send you my new scheduling link.
Right.
Www.dantire.com runs on HubSpot. I paid for it. I've been a HubSpot customer twice, right? People said that you. They made you pay for it. No, I'm like, I'm a proud customer, right? I want to give them money because of all the great stuff that they do all the time. I don't want to give them a lot of money because I'm a cheap guy, but I want to give them money. And I love talking to Tracy and Trigby and Fran, who's part of our mentor program. Anybody who wants a little gun tire time. Other than if I'm in northeast India or on a speaking engagement, I love to mix it up. The best people, amazing mission. The whole Yamini era is amazing. Doing more good for the universe is my tagline and completely synonymous with the partner program and HubSpot.
All right, well, I know people are going to have to run in here in a second, so I'll ask the last question after this last question. Just let people know where they should go to actually reach out to you now. But what are you most excited about in the future?
A Tire angel is amazing, right? When you don't have to work 60 hours a week for us, but there's all these other fun things you could do, right? And so investing in companies, scaling companies, advising companies, helping some partners with executive coaching. I'm all about doing the most good for the universe. And that's what I'm going to do for the next, I don't know, 20 or 30 years.
There you go. And where should people reach out if they want to get in touch with you?
I put in the chat pane dan tire gmail.com or www.dantire.com awesome, Dan.
Thanks for your time. Everybody give Dan tire round of applause. It's 201. Go to your next meeting and we'll see on the next event. Thanks everybody.
And thanks to you too, George. That was super.
Thank you.
You bet.
