Boston Common - Niche Media - A side of Boston that's anything but common.
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/385222
photography courtesy of hubspot (Inbound) tech talk HubSpot's creator shares the inspirations behind his bytes and bites. The Thinker: "I take walks in the Public Garden with my dog, Romeo, and we'll look at the George Washington statue and ask ourselves, 'What would George do?' I go to the Boston Public Library in that big, cool room upstairs. I work and think in there. I like to walk around the main building at MIT—I fnd that inspiring." home run: "Fenway Park is always number one on my list—I'm a big fan of the park and the games." navigaTing kendall Square: "I love Meadhall because they have an outstanding collection of Belgian Trappist ales. The Blue Room has the best brunch in Boston." moTTo: "When someone asks me how I'm doing and I'm feeling good, I usually respond, 'Never better!'" HubSpot offers content ma nagement tools for creating and managing blogs and landing pages for midmarket companies; search engine optimization applications that help potent ial customers find those blogs and landing pages; and dashboard tools that analyze how well this process of customer engagement is working. In addition, HubSpot pro- vides consulting services that help managers learn inbound marketing tactics, which aim to attract and engage potential customers instead of interrupting their lives with traditional advertising. For example, say a consumer is looking for beginner yoga classes. If she Googles the topic, up will pop local studios and blogs (which are HubSpot customers) with targeted options—and maybe she'll even receive that perfectly timed e-mail from a studio in her neighborhood. The company also hosts an annual four-day con- ference at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center called Inbound. In late September of this yea r, t he event feat ured spea kers like Ma r t ha Stewart and Malcolm Gladwell. But one of the most popular speeches was by Halligan himself—who packed the room, no problem. "HubSpot is truly a disruptive technology," says Beth Best, a marketing executive at ConforMIS, a manufacturer of customized knee implants. "I see it as a profound game-changer in the way in which we market and engage with our customers. We can see in real time what's happening with all of our cam- paigns, allowing us to make smart investments that effectively target our multiple stakeholders." Halligan's professional vision took root early on. He grew up in Westwood, near Route 128 —dubbed "America's Technology Highway." His dad was an engineer at General Electric and later ran market- ing for BBN Technologies; his neighbors had jobs at local powerhouses like Digital, Prime, and Wang. After graduating from the University of Vermont with a deg ree in elect rical eng ineering, Halligan la nded a sa les job at Pa ra met r ic Technolog y, a Needham-based software company. There—at the age of 25 —he was asked to build up the company's Asian business, first in Tokyo and eventually in Hong Kong. When he moved back to the US, he did a stint at Groove Networks, a software firm that was acquired by Microsoft, and then enrolled in the MIT Sloan School of Management. It was there that he met his cofounder. Recalls Halligan, "Dharmesh—in a moment of uncharacter- istic extroversion—came up to me in a class and said, 'Let's work on a project together.' We just clicked." As students, the pair entered HubSpot in a business plan contest and… drumroll… did not win. But they kept hammering away at the idea each week. Michael Cusamano, a professor at MIT Sloan, taught both founders and has watched HubSpot from the start. "Brian strikes me as extremely thoughtful," he says. "He realizes the world is changing." After they graduated, Halligan and Shah rented a small office at the Cambridge Innovation Center, hired some prog rammers, and began to pitch to potent ia l customers. Today t he off ice features a soda fountain and cereal and candy walls (all free) a nd teems w it h young g raduates, spor t ing f lip - f lops and shorts, who know that at any given time they could find Halligan sitting next to them for the day—working but listening to his staff, too. "We just kept iterating and cranking, and slowly but surely it turned into this," Halligan says, stretch- ing out his arms and looking around at HubSpot's trendy orange-hued offices. "Every day we got a little bit better. That's what we're still doing today." BC clockwise from top left: Part of Halligan's collection of sports memorabilia; Halligan at Inbound 2013, his company's four-day conference; the HubSpot offices. 66 bostoncommon-magazine.com PEOPLE View from the Top