21 Awesome Facts About HubSpot Founder and CEO Brian Halligan
His inbound marketing and sales software company has raised more than $100 million in funding, gone public, and brought in $82.3 million in total revenue in Q1 of 2017.
That man is entrepreneur Brian Halligan.
Check out these amazing facts about the co-founder and CEO of HubSpot:
1. Halligan met HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah when they were grad students at M.I.T. The two set out to create an online marketing platform, driven by the flagging success of direct mail and other old school marketing tactics.
2. Halligan earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Vermont and his master’s degree from MIT in 2005.
3. Prior to founding HubSpot in June 2006, Halligan was a venture partner with Longworth Ventures, then a VP of sales at Groove Networks, which was later acquired by Microsoft.
4. Before the HubSpot market product was even written or launched, Shah and Halligan started the HubSpot blog. They used it to position their software as an inbound marketing solution before it existed in the marketplace.
5. He and Shah founded HubSpot in July 2006. The company is based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts.
6. In 2008, he allowed a sales representative to start selling HubSpot’s core product to third parties, so they could then sell the product to their customers. This innovation was a huge success for HubSpot and led to the company’s Alpha, Beta, and Version One program.
7. In 2011, Halligan received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2011 New England Award. This award is given to people who have grown a company from a concept and become an industry leader.
8. He wrote more than 20 articles for Inc. between 2011 and 2015.
9. In 2012, HubSpot launched Inbound, a conference for marketers and HubSpot customers and partners. It attracted 2,800 attendees its first year. Last year’s show was huge — attended by more than 19,000 people.
10. Halligan talked about how to create an “inbound culture” and creating an inspirational mission in a TEDxUMassAmherst talk. “It’s not about money, it’s about mission,” he said. “They care about the mission. They want to be inspired.” Watch the full talk here.
11. As of 2016, its 10th year of existence, HubSpot reported having 1,597 employees, 23,226 customers, and $271 million in revenue.
12. Like his co-founder, Shah, Halligan is an active angel investor.
13. Halligan is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management where he teaches Designing, Developing, and Launching Successful Products in an Entrepreneurial Environment.
14. Halligan has authored two books: “Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead” (with David Meerman Scott) and “Inbound Marketing” (with Dharmesh Shah).
15. After selling 25,000 shares of company stock (worth $1,618,750) on June 15, the CEO now owns 806,787 shares of the company’s stock (worth about $52,239,458.25).
16. Earlier this year, he paid $1.9 million to buy a guitar owned by Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia.
17. Halligan calls himself a “huge nap guy.” Some of his most brilliant ideas have come either falling into a nap or coming out of a nap. That’s why HubSpot HQ has a nap room.
18. Halligan’s two keys to work-life balance: work from home every Wednesday, and spend more time thinking about things rather than working too much (e.g., meetings, phone calls, email).
19. Advice for entrepreneurs: “Risk seeing is important. Conservative behavior gets you nowhere. When you make conservative decisions, it increases your unlikeliness to succeed.”
20. He often uses a bus analogy when looking at HubSpot or leaders on his team. It goes like this: “A leader has 3 responsibilities that are akin to a bus. First, the leader must have a clear set of directions in mind on where the bus is headed. Second, the leader must have the right people on the bus who are excited about the direction and work well together. Third, the leader must have enough gas (cash) in the tank to get to their destination.”
21. What is Halligan’s definition of success? “Success is a delighted customer: there is nothing better.”
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About the Author
Larry Kim is the CEO of MobileMonkey — provider of the World’s Best Facebook Messenger Marketing Platform. He’s also the founder of WordStream.
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Originally posted in Inc.com
