Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah grew their inbound marketing software business (founded in 2006) to an IPO in 2014 at $25/share (now around $450).
They are the 2nd fastest SMB SasS company to IPO
If you’re a SaaS entrepreneur, you need to study Hubspot
Here are the inbound strategies they used to grow from 0-100M+ users📈
A thread: 👇👇
Founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah grew their inbound marketing software business (founded in 2006) to an IPO in 2014 at $25/share (now around $450).
They are the 2nd fastest SMB SasS company to IPO
Part of this shift was due to the internet/Google. People now had the power to do their own research to find products that could help solve their problem
They learned conversion rates from inbound/organic leads compared to outbound/paid were more than double. It was cheaper to acquire traffic and resulted in higher quality leads. 75% of their lead gen was inbound, focusing on blogs, webinars, free tools
They share resources/tips/steps to improve your inbound marketing. They drew people to their posts, provided value, and added a unique CTA related to the topic at the end to capture the lead.
The blog resulted in 20% of their organic leads and 3x their leads
They created over 50 pieces of content/week, targeting popular keywords related to inbound. In 2009, they ranked first on Google for phrases like “website leads” and “grow email list.” After a few years, any search related to inbound, Hubspot would appear
Today
In 2008 Hubspot started creating webinars, and it became one of their strongest lead gen tactics.
They attracted a lot of people by providing value in this form. They used webinars to educate users, generate buzz, attract website visitors, and grow leads
1. Educational
2. Software Demonstrations
The conversion rate on the product demo’s was really high (10-20% signed up would buy) but lower for education, however they generated much bigger audiences for the educational webinars
For webinars they used Twitter as a discussion tool, allowing people to ask questions, chat, and engage with each other.
More than 5 of their webinars were global top 10 trending topics. One of their most popular webinars had 13000 sign ups.
Hubspot created free tools that generated tons of organic leads. The most popular was their free Website Grader. Anyone could enter a URL and get insights about the sites performance. Between 2006-2011 the tool graded more than 4 million websites
This was early when business owners were still trying to figure out the ultimate value of social media.
2 key sites were https://t.co/31q4r1dbgK (hub for marketers to connect, learn, find jobs - over 200k members when launched 2013) and https://t.co/KvzKfvxrnz (medium publication launched in 2015, reaching 160k views/month).
This built a strong community
In 2013 they launched their first conference called Inbound, running interactive workshops where guests could get a certification. It attracted 500 marketers in year 1 growing to 26k in 2020. The conference generated buzz and hasn’t stopped growing
Inbound marketing is a long term growth strategy, however once the effect truly kicks in, it can lead to steady exponential growth. Hubspot's growth from 2006-2009 was impressive but still relatively slow compared to 2010+
It’s a worthy investment.
- $1B+ ARR
- 100k+ Users
- 21B market cap
Key to growth:
- Strong understanding of inbound marketing
- Value based approach through free tools/webinars/blog
- Producing tons of valuable content consistently
- Optimized for SEO
Subscribe to my Substack for a more in depth breakdown on Hubspot
https://t.co/ZmIRez6hGD
And follow me on Twitter for a new thread like this every week!
More from Startups
There are some amazing founders and indie hackers that have made 🤯-worthy progress this last year.
The stuff you can do in a year is seriously astounding 👇
👉 @TransistorFM reaching $22k MRR in one year: https://t.co/BuKmXEeEtH
I was one of their first customers and the progress @mijustin and @jonbuda have made working mostly part-time has been crazy.
Now both are full-time. Follow them on @buildyoursaas
👉 @talk2oneup reaching $10k MRR in one year: https://t.co/SOoGkKA19r
@daviswbaer joined as a co-founder and through many different marketing tactics, pricing changes, and product updates, they've managed to carve out a niche market in a really competitive industry.
👉 @hostifi_net $9k MRR in one year: https://t.co/TknroGZWoK
After getting fired from his full-time job, @_rchase_ embarked on a year focused on building products to replace his salary in a year.
The dude seriously SHIPS and even took investment from @earnestcapital
👉 @ClosetTools $11k MRR WHILE WORKING FULL-TIME AND WITH A FAMILY: https://t.co/pKQ7pFvpZY
With a strong product, continuous improvement, and SEO, @unindie has really been inspirational.
There are no excuses.
The stuff you can do in a year is seriously astounding 👇
👉 @TransistorFM reaching $22k MRR in one year: https://t.co/BuKmXEeEtH
I was one of their first customers and the progress @mijustin and @jonbuda have made working mostly part-time has been crazy.
Now both are full-time. Follow them on @buildyoursaas
👉 @talk2oneup reaching $10k MRR in one year: https://t.co/SOoGkKA19r
@daviswbaer joined as a co-founder and through many different marketing tactics, pricing changes, and product updates, they've managed to carve out a niche market in a really competitive industry.
👉 @hostifi_net $9k MRR in one year: https://t.co/TknroGZWoK
After getting fired from his full-time job, @_rchase_ embarked on a year focused on building products to replace his salary in a year.
The dude seriously SHIPS and even took investment from @earnestcapital
1/ "Hardcore Year" (https://t.co/cjx7HfGeEK)
— Reilly Chase\u2601\ufe0f\u2601\ufe0f\u2601\ufe0f (@_rchase_) July 31, 2019
MRR in July:
\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593\u2593 $9,109 of $8,333 goal (109%)
Totals@hostifi_net $8,463@ghostifi_net $361@locklinnetworks $125@captifi_net $147@patreon $13
I reached my goal for the year! \U0001f942\U0001f37e
Details in thread \U0001f447 pic.twitter.com/cUEeiADDAk
👉 @ClosetTools $11k MRR WHILE WORKING FULL-TIME AND WITH A FAMILY: https://t.co/pKQ7pFvpZY
With a strong product, continuous improvement, and SEO, @unindie has really been inspirational.
There are no excuses.
This year is flying by. How am I doing a July report already? Here it is: Closet Tools' July open stats:
— Jordan O'Connor (@unindie) August 1, 2019
MRR: $11106.28 (+11.43%)
Organic Search: 3958 (+20.45%)
New Trials: 154 (-8.33%)
Less trials, more revenue (churn is going down!). The focus for July was feature stability. pic.twitter.com/4YRpkPvKxo
1/ If you want to find out what is in the Y Combinator S19 batch, @Golden has compiled (using public signals) a near complete list of truly exciting companies.
If we are missing any or you want to help improve the data you can edit the topics.
https://t.co/9QGLiEPsn3
2/ Here is the direct public query if you want to check it out:
https://t.co/aqb8qYN4y9
[Note: no off the record cos are in here unless they have been publicly launched already]
3/ Also, here are 2,000+ other YC companies we have generated information
4/ We used the Golden Research Engine to generate this information, which you can find out more about here and ping me if you want a
If we are missing any or you want to help improve the data you can edit the topics.
https://t.co/9QGLiEPsn3
2/ Here is the direct public query if you want to check it out:
https://t.co/aqb8qYN4y9
[Note: no off the record cos are in here unless they have been publicly launched already]
3/ Also, here are 2,000+ other YC companies we have generated information
4/ We used the Golden Research Engine to generate this information, which you can find out more about here and ping me if you want a
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