Mike Volpe, VP of Marketing at HubSpot
Founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006, HubSpot, Inc, provides an all-in-one marketing software platform for small and medium-sized businesses. The suite of tools helps businesses get found online, convert visitors to leads, close those leads, and make smart marketing investments. Mike Volpe has been the VP of Marketing at HubSpot since early 2007.
Hi Mike! HubSpot just received $32 million in the latest round of financing with Google being one of the key investors. That brings the grand total of investor funding to $65 million to date. What kind of momentum does that create for the business?
Co-founders Dharmesh Shah, CTO and Brian Halligan, CEO
Certainly the funding announcement itself created a lot of buzz in the market, especially because of the high quality of the investors. This is the first time these companies have invested together, and the first time Salesforce.com has invested in a marketing software company. It is a very exciting time for HubSpot not only because of the funding, but also because two multi-billion dollar players in the marketing industry have validated the concept of inbound marketing.
We are one of the fastest growing companies in the SaaS (software as a service) industry and have over 4,000 customers. Our revenue grew about 150% in the past 12 months, and we expect this type of fast growth to continue. There are millions of businesses worldwide that could use HubSpot, so we think we have just gotten started on our quest to help all of them transform their marketing.
And how will the recent funding be used?
Unlike most companies that tend to take funding and put it exclusively into sales and marketing, we’re going to put the majority of the investment to work towards enhancing our product and platform. We have a really broad vision for how marketing is changing, and we need to continue to build out our software to help marketers do more of these tasks. Beyond functionality in the product, we are opening up the system to allow partners to develop applications that work with HubSpot through our API and platform. In addition, we are considering some strategic acquisitions in the marketing industry.
HubSpot web interface example
HubSpot provides online tools that help businesses leverage the Internet in order to generate more leads and gain more customers. Is there much of a learning curve in using the HubSpot tools effectively?
Many customers get up to speed very quickly. Compared to marketing automation systems which tend to be quite complicated, HubSpot and inbound marketing are simple to use. We have coaching and training available, and we also offer a free trial. Most other software companies don’t offer a free trial because it is too hard to use the software. You can get started and become proficient with HubSpot very fast.
HubSpot TV - weekly video podcast covering inbound marketing news
However, as you get deeper and deeper into inbound marketing and using HubSpot, I think you find that there are more and more tips and tricks to learn and implement and you start to get a grasp for more of the subtle and advanced concepts. You can think of it as taking a couple days to learn, but a lifetime to master. I am still learning new things, and I have been doing inbound marketing since 2003.
What advice do you have for businesses on how they can get the most out of the HubSpot application?
The data is clear. Looking at our 4,000 customers, the ones that use HubSpot more often get a lot more out of it. We have proven that our inbound marketing methodology works, time and time again. The path to success is clear, just follow our methodology. If you are active and follow the methodology, the average HubSpot customer gets 4 times more leads after 6 months.
Should every small and medium-sized business use HubSpot?
HubSpot presentation to user group
Of course! Actually, there are some businesses where HubSpot is not a good fit. When you think about it, there are 3 ways to make money on the internet. First, you can sell products through ecommerce, like Amazon.com. Second, you can generate leads that you close with a sales team, like Oracle. Third, as a media company, you can monetize content through advertising, like AOL.
HubSpot is a fantastic fit for companies doing lead generation. We have thousands of customers and tons of case studies for this type of customer. For ecommerce businesses, we have an emerging set of tools and use cases that are really helpful and we are seeing some nice success. For media companies however, we are not a good fit. So if you’re not a media company, you should check out HubSpot for sure.
Does HubSpot use HubSpot? Assuming yes, how has the application impacted your business?
Yes. We are our own best case study. We have always eaten our own dog food or drunk our own champagne; however you like to say it. Using inbound marketing has been critical in our huge growth, and we use our own software extensively.
The HubSpot Support Team
Our blog (using the HubSpot software) has 42,000 subscribers. We have over 600 landing pages (built in HubSpot) and have generated over 500,000 leads (all in HubSpot). We track our over 1 million website visitors (using HubSpot). HubSpot is the primary hub for all our marketing activities. It is the spot where we go to do marketing.
The HubSpot platform is currently available in 31 countries. Is it difficult to roll it out in other languages?
The concept of inbound marketing is universal, but HubSpot has not yet become a truly global company. We have a growing international use of our software, and yes we are in 31 countries so far. It is still early in our international efforts, most of the companies using HubSpot outside North America are thought leaders and innovators trying to stay way ahead of their competition by being the first to adopt HubSpot. One customer I met in the Netherlands was one of the first Dutch businesses to launch a website in the 1990’s, and now they are one of the first Dutch businesses to implement HubSpot, and they see themselves as innovative marketers. In the next 2-3 years, I expect a lot of our growth will come from companies outside of North America.
Mike Volpe addressing HubSpot user group
As the VP of Marketing at HubSpot, what’s your biggest challenge?
For a company like HubSpot, the big challenges all relate to growth and scale because of how fast we are growing. So even though we generated 35,000 leads last month, I worry about how we can double that to 70,000. I also worry about how we can grow the team and organize the team members as we grow and hire more people. If we were not growing, I actually would not have too much to worry about. Things are going well! I only worry about how to grow faster.
What’s one thing that everyone should know about HubSpot?
Over 4,000 customers use HubSpot to generate and manage over 5 million leads.
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