Feature
HubSpot's time is now. At least for being in the news.
The Cambridge, Mass.-based marketing automation provider has its annual conference next week. It filed for an IPO last month.
It released its 2014 State of Inbound Report this week. It was named a "cool vendor in CRM" by Gartner in April.
Oh, and Shah and fellow HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan just released the second edition of their book, "Inbound Marketing."
Now HubSpot wants to raise $100 million in its IPO filing.
What's on the mind of the HubSpotters these days as they remain hot in the industry? CMSWire caught up this week with Dharmesh Shah, chief technology officer and co-founder of the platform.
Excited About Growth
Asked about the theme of the annual conference this year, Shah pointed to growth.
"The theme is essentially growth," he told CMSWire. "How companies are transforming marketing and sales and how they should be doing that."
HubSpot's Inbound Marketing conference 2013.
Any updates to the platform? Yes, Shah said, but he couldn't divulge with CMSWire just yet.
Growth and HubSpot are synonymous.
In Year 1 in 2006, Shah and co-founder Brian Halligan had been at MIT grad school in Cambridge "noodling on the idea for HubSpot" as they took classes.
Eight years later, HubSpot had 719 employees (as of June 30), up from 304 in December 2011, according to HubSpot's S1 filing. It opened its first international office in Dublin, Ireland in January 2013.
"I think we got the timing right," Shah told CMSWire about getting into the digital marketing space. The demand for marketing technology was starting then, he added.
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Book Hits Streets
This month, Shah and Halligan released the second edition of "Inbound Marketing." The first edition debuted five years ago.
"It's interesting thinking back what's changed in the past five years," Shah said. "It's amazing how different things are."
Google Plus? Didn't exist. Pinterest? Nope. Instagram? Not yet. Search engine optimization has changed, too.
"The changes in the marketing space are fascinating," Shah said. "The update to the book was long overdue."
Shah said the book works ("of course, I'm biased," he added) because it's written to be a "mainstream book," and not for those who are well advanced into the digital marketing space.
"It's for those who are hearing about all this stuff like SEO and digital but haven't really jumped in yet," Shah said. "I think what's most gratifying is that some colleges are using this book as their text on marketing."
Standing by Inbound Marketing
Shah naturally is a big proponent of "inbound marketing," which he calls the "human-centric, empathic approach to marketing."
Reign them in. Don't fish them out. Let them come to you, rather than the classic, "interruptive" approach like a campaign or buying lists. Rather, create value for people with a blog post, for instance.
"People have become very good at blocking out classical marketing," Shah said. "This is how you create value and pull them in. We're addressing that new reality."
