Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Billion dollar Success The Unconventional Journey of HubSpot and its Purity in Decision Making

19 Apr 2024 · 0 min

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0:27

A short conversation (YouTube) between Jason M. Lemkin and another speaker about HubSpot’s long-term strategy, patience in product and go-to-market choices (e.g., offering a free CRM), and the company’s later financial success and second-act growth. The speakers highlight decision-making freedom enabled by not needing outside funding, HubSpot’s expansion into multiple "clouds," and a noted personal financing choice by HubSpot’s founder (pre-IPO stock sale to Sequoia).

Questions this video answers

"coming up on 700 million" (as stated in the excerpt).

Five clouds ("HubSpot really has five clouds").

Sequoia ("he actually did sell a bunch of his stock pre ipo, I think, to Sequoia").

And that they both, from day one are like, listen, we're going to build something big or that's it, right? We're not going to. We're going to go long. And the fact that they are willing to go so long, spend years with the free CRM, even though it was going to detract resources from the marketing side, Right, it has to detract resources and wait and wait and wait. And now that they're coming up on 700 million, it's one of the greatest second acts, or second. And HubSpot really has five clouds, but it's one of the greatest second acts of all times because there's almost no synergy to the first act.
I remember Satya and Hunter at Homebrew saying, actually, one of the joys of their partnerships was neither really needed the money, honestly, coming into it and actually meant they had a lot of mental and creative freedom around decision making and purity around decision making, which one wouldn't have if it was really about the money in a lot of cases.
Yeah. Money is complicated. Brian. Brian did an interview recently where, you know, he actually did sell a bunch of his stock pre ipo, I think, to Sequoia, and he said it was the most expensive decision he'd ever made.