The HubSpot Way 2010

The HubSpot Way
A Living Guidebook For Potential & Current Employees
Version: Beta
Feb 28, 2010
Brian Halligan
@bhalligan

The HubSpot Way
Our Mission
People
HubSpotter Grader (i.e. Our Values)
Hiring
Pay and promotion
Location
New ways of working
Extreme experimentation
Agile Scrum
No door policy
Wiki
HubSpot TV
Trust
HubSpot Fellows Program
2

Our Mission
Our mission isn’t just happy talk. We are building a company that will….
3

Transform How The World Does Marketing
Our Mission

The HubSpot Way
Our Mission
People
HubSpotter Grader (i.e. Our Values)
Hiring
Pay and promotion
Location
New ways of working
Agile Scrum
No door policy
Wiki
HubSpot TV
Trust
5

People
When surveyed, our employees told us their favorite thing about HubSpot is other HubSpotters!
To ensure we hire the right people and develop the right things, we set out to define our values, hire for them, and review based on them.
6

HubSpotter Grader (Our Values)
We value MATCHESwith HubSpot culture:
Inbound Marketer
Awesomely Analytical
Totally Transparent
Constantly Changing
Respectfully Humble
EffingEffective
Thinks Scale
7

We are “digital citizens.”
We live and breathe inbound marketing.
We try to be on the “bleeding edge” of ideas and trends in internet + marketing.
We believe that the way people learn/shop has changed and that the marketing industry needs to transform to catch-up.
8
Inbound Marketer
HubSpotter Grader

We live by Edwards Deming’s quote: “In God we trust, all others bring data.”
We behave more like a B2C company (i.e. Amazon, eBay) than a B2B company (i.e. Oracle, IBM)
We yearn for counter-intuitive insights derived from analyzing data.
9
HubSpotter Grader

We believe “sunshine is the best disinfectant.”
We don’t wear “rose colored glasses.”
We strive to be open and approachable.
We exercise a “no politics” approach to interacting with colleagues and customers.
We share freely and widely. We voice opinions and share relevant information.
10
Totally Transparent
HubSpotter Grader

We embrace and thrive on change. We seek opportunities to learn and do so rapidly.
We challenge conventional wisdom and seek innovative ways to disrupt the status quo when warranted.
We champion, design and execute value-enhancing experiments.
We agree with Mark Twain, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, its time to pause and reflect.”
11
HubSpotter Grader
Constantly Changing

We strive to be modest, unpretentious and ego-free.
We believe “hubris kills companies.”
We foster mutual respect and trust.
We try to exhibit confidence without arrogance.
We acknowledge shortcomings and seek to correct them.
12
HubSpotter Grader
Respectfully Humble

We “get s#!t done.” We deliver lots of high quality work output and high ratios of results to effort.
We “make the numbers.”
We are accountable.
We publicly share and honor our commitments.
We exercise sound judgment and take prudent risks to accomplish objectives.
13
EffingEffective
HubSpotter Grader

We are fiercely committed to building a big, remarkable, successful company that “transforms how the world does marketing.”
We strive to minimize complexity and achieve simplicity.
We tend to decide and take actions that support a long-term ability to scale rather than short-term accomplishment of objectives.
Decisions are made through the lens of “will this increase Enterprise Value.”
14
Thinks Scale
HubSpotter Grader

To recap the HubSpotterGrader…
At HubSpot, we value MATCHES with our culture:
Inbound Marketer
Totally Transparent
Constantly Changing
Respectfully Humble
EffingEffective
Thinks Scale
15

Hiring
16
We value capability over experience.
We are open to superheroes who have not necessarily demonstrated their superpowers in this area before.

Promotion and Pay
17
We offer opportunities to rotate around the company and to move quickly.
We vastly prefer promoting from within.
We hire at market rates and offer increases for exceptional performance.

Location
18
Our HQ is in Cambridge, MA and will always be in Cambridge, MA.
We think being in Cambridge gives us unfair access to exceptional thinking and talent.

The HubSpot Way
Mission
People
HubSpotter Grader (aka our values)
Hiring
Pay and promotion
Location
New ways of working
Agile Scrum
No door policy
Wiki
HubSpot TV
Trust
19

New ways of working
20
The TV show MadMen pokes fun at corporate culture 50 years ago. We are trying to build a culture that is in step with the future, not the past. We are not afraid to ignore conventional wisdom in that cause.

21
Consistent with our value of constantly changing, experimentation is happening at all levels within HubSpot.
We experiment a lot and are not afraid to take risks or to “fail fast.”
Experiments come from all corners of the organization.

An implicit process for experimentation has emerged at HubSpot:
Alpha
Project/experiment is done in addition to the day job duties of the employee during nights and weekends.
Beta
The alpha project/experiment goes well and is promoted to beta. The experiment champion is given the project full-time as her new day job.
Version 1
The beta project/experiment goes well and is promoted to version 1. The experiment champion typically will get more resources, including heads, core development or scrum time, etc.
22

Agile Scrum
23
We use agile scrum methodologies not only in R&D, but also in Marketing, Sales and Service.
Each month scrum teams decide what they will work on for the next month from a project backlog list. Teams decide for themselves what they will get accomplished and who will do what.
This self-organizing, de-centralized approach to our work fosters autonomy and empowers HubSpotters to be accountable to one another.

Agile Scrum
24
Rather than formal presentations of scrum team results, we have monthly “Science Fairs.”
Each scrum team has a table where HubSpotters can visit and learn about their latest sprint work.
This more informal approach to sharing results enables HubSpotters to get to know one another better and to interact in a deeper, more meaningful way.

No door policy
We take the “open door policy” up a notch. We have a “no door policy.”
Everybody changes desks every three months.
The CEO and the leadership team sit out in the open with desks situated throughout the company.
We sit in cross-functional “pods,” small groups of 5-6 that include HubSpotters from Development, Marketing, Sales and Service.
25

Wiki
26
We keep no secrets. Everything is out there on the Wiki.
We post board meeting minutes, VC funding meeting minutes, key business metrics and financials (e.g. cash balance in the bank).
Our CEO posts 1-2 articles a week to share thoughts and ideas, ask questions and seek feedback.
HubSpotters from across the company openly and actively comment and engage in the dialogue.

HubSpot TV
27
We broadcast a live TV show every Friday afternoon.
This is a forum for the entire company to come together to share, learn and have fun.
HubSpot TV is open to the public and is distributed as a highly-followed podcast.

Trust
28
“We trust you,” and our actions reinforce that.
We no longer track vacation time – we trust that HubSpotters are using common sense and being responsible about how they spend their time.
We don’t have a dress code.
Employees blog and Tweet their hearts out.
All employees are encouraged to contribute to our award-winning blog.

29
We are experimenting with a HubSpot Fellows Program for our employees.
The Dean of the Program is Andrew McAfee, a Professor at MIT’s Sloan School, best-selling author of Enterprise 2.0, Harvard Berkman Fellow, blogger, Twitterer, and great guy.
The program begins in May with 4 mini-courses that are four 75 minutes sessions each taught after work:
Strategy HubSpot Style
Quantitative Reasoning
Communication Skillz
Negotiation Skillz

Learn More
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You can learn more about our company at www.hubspot.com/blog
You can learn more about how to transform marketing at http://blog.hubspot.com

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The HubSpot Way 2010

by HubSpot All-in-one Marketing Software

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