Scale-up Growth Lessons Learned

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Scale-up Growth
Lessons Learned
from adding millions of leads, users and revenue.

One of the best things about working for a scale-up
company is you get an opportunity to work on
different challenges.

In my time at HubSpot, we’ve gone from 250
employees to over 2,000.

I joined HubSpot to help grow our international business.
During the time I spent on that challenge, we went from 10 people to …
Wow,
we’ve grown from
10 to 22 people

… a lot of people across several international offices!

THEN …
I joined a small team within HubSpot
who had the mission of turning a free
chrome extension into a freemium
business.
Sidekick

In 24 months freemium has become an integral part of our
go-to-market.
Marketing Hub Sales Hub Service Hub
CRM Free
Paid
Free

It has been one hell of a
roller coaster journey.

Top 3 Growth Marketing Lessons to Scale-Up
From my time growing an international and freemium business at HubSpot
The Effort vs. Reward Growth Matrix is Everything
Lean into Your Strengths to Create Sustainable Growth
Your Product is Your Best Sales Person
2
3
1

The Effort vs. Reward Matrix
is Everything!

1
4
30
A growing team needs to be extremely proficient in how
they invest both their time and resources.
Easy to understand
Impact 
Are people working
on the right things?
14 301

Scale-up matrix
to prioritize
opportunities
Scalable GrowthThe Gold
Black HoleExperiments
Effort
Impact

1. The Gold
The “low hanging fruit.” Hard to find.
Found in companies where marketing is in its
infancy, e.g., start-ups.
For established companies can be found in new
channels with first mover advantage.
Prioritize this quadrant.
Effort
Impact

2. Experiments
The MVT's we run that become our high reward
tactics.
Be careful your team isn’t spending a lot of time in
here with no plan on moving opportunities into
high reward.
Can result in very busy teams that have little to no
impact.
Effort
Impact

3. Scalable Growth
The investments you make that will drive a
disproportionate amount of your growth.
Most successful SaaS companies will excel in one
or two channels in this bucket.
Anything that’s worth doing takes effort,
unfortunately. 
Effort
Impact

4. Black hole
The Growth Killer. Very easy for teams to get
sucked in here.
As a leader adhering to this matrix often means
making tough calls and deprioritizing a teams
work that is resulting in low return.
Your job is to navigate away from this quadrant
continually.
Effort
Impact

Is it ever ok
to be in the
Black Hole?

Fail
Not all minimal viable tests are created equal,
at times you need to swing big.
Same test different resources
High effort,
Low Reward
MVT
MVT Success High effort,
High Reward
Scalable
growth
Success
Resources
Resources
High effort,
Low Reward

Takeaways: 1 2
3
oIt’s easier than you think for smart individuals to get
sucked into the black hole of high effort, low return
work.
oGet into a regular cadence of having the team map
out their tactics against the growth matrix.
oSometimes you need to swing big, and your work will
initially be high effort low return.

Lean into Your
Strengths to Create
Sustainable Growth

HubSpot has grown through
Inbound Marketing.

People will find us when they need educational content or software that
helps them to be better at their job.
Educational Content
(How To)
Courses and Certs
(SEO Course)
Software Review Sites
(Customer Referrals)
Marketing, Sales and
Services Software
(CRM Software)
HubSpot Blog HubSpot Academy HubSpot Website Review Websites

We are always striving to lean harder into that strength.

You need to find leverage that will create unfair
advantages over competitors.

Examples of Finding Leverage
Creating a UGSC Loop
Opening Product Sidedoors
Piggybacking on Popular Apps
Distribution
of Growth
The Growth Power Law
Acquisition Channels
Sustainable
Growth
Sustainable
Growth

RapGenius UGSC Loop
RapGenius was not the first website to
publish hip-hop lyrics, so how did they
manage to grow so fast and become
the third largest lyric site on the
internet.

Their product allowed users to add comments to the lyrics of their
favorite rap song.
RapGenius UGSC Loop

Creating a user generated SEO content loop.
RapGenius UGSC Loop
New users
find content
% create new
content
People search
for content
Google
indexes new
content

Helping them to dominate Google when people are searching
for lyrics.
RapGenius UGSC Loop

PandaDoc Product Sidedoors
Piggybacking on Popular Apps PandaDoc are an all-in-one document management software.
The problem is not many people are looking for that product on
Google.

Piggybacking on Popular Apps PandaDoc created a free business template library to create
sustainable growth from Google.
Great site architecture
Lots of high-quality links

Piggybacking on Popular Apps Each business template is available in PandaDoc's product.

And those templates have created a
LOT of organic signups from Google that
instantly start using their product.

Piggybacking on Popular Apps Providing plenty more opportunities to create sustainable growth
from that tactic.

Piggybacking on Popular Apps Integrations can also be used to attract people from other popular
platforms.

Piggybacking on Popular Apps Products like Grammarly and Loom have grown through
integrations with popular apps.
6.9 million DAU’s 400k+ teams

Adding existing channels to
your growth matrix helps to
visualize current priorities.
Effort
Impact
Virality Events
CRO tests
Paid Marketing
SEO

Takeaways:
1 2
34
o Remember the Growth Power law. The best companies find one or
two points of leverage that propel their growth.
oThat leverage can take many forms, valuable content, a product that
encourages users to create content for it, extending your product to
cover popular use cases, piggybacking on the success of other apps.
oScale-ups need to look for new opportunities to create sustainable
growth
o Adding existing channels to your growth matrix helps to visualize
current priorities.

Your Product is
Your Best
Sales Person

A scale-up needs to take big swings to sustain
growth; they can’t be satisfied with iterating
towards marginal gains.

Prospect / Visitor
Lead
MQL
SQL
Opportunity
Customer
A typical B2B SaaS
marketing funnel is
optimized towards
MQLs.

Prospect / Visitor
Lead
MQL
SQL
Opportunity
Customer
At HubSpot, we built a product funnel to grow revenue
alongside our marketing funnel.
Prospect / Visitor
User Signup
PQL
SQL
Opportunity
Customer
Freemium Content Leads

The product funnel has two key
metrics
NSM (North Star Metric) + PQLs (Product Qualified
Leads) = $$

Your north star metric is measurable product usage that correlates to
better upgrades and retention. It shows the number of users getting
value from your product is growing.

Your north star metric is measurable product usage that correlates to
better upgrades and retention. It shows the number of users getting
value from your product is growing.
For HubSpot that metric is WATs (weekly active teams)

We break the output
metric into inputs. These
make it easier to run
experiments and see
immediate success or
failure.

Gmail Sync
Import Tutorials
Email Templates
Booked Meeting
WATS
Import Data
Close Deal
Inputs Inputs Output Metric
https://www.reforge.com/blog/north-star-metric-growth

PQLs are a combination of product actions (how people are using the
product), and whom that person is (using demographic & firmographic
data).
PQLs

PQLs are a combination of product actions (how people are using the
product), and whom that person is (using demographic & firmographic
data).
Product Actions (behavior) + Who (demographic/firmographic)
PQLs

At HubSpot, we
categorized our PQLs into
different buckets to find
the best opportunities to
grow revenue.
Example data I mocked up
Try before you buy works best

We measured the individual funnel of each PQL, just as we
would for an MQL.
Example data I mocked up

We initially focused on increasing the volume of PQLs by
optimizing for hand raise PQLs.
A hand raise PQL
experiment for users who
previously used a
spreadsheet as their CRM.
It generated a lot of demand
and became a popular
upgrade point.

We optimized how we created hand raise PQLs within the app,
increasing our CVR by up to 50% by experimenting with our in-
app communication channels.

We doubled down on winning experiments, like allowing users to
book time with our reps from within the app itself, increasing our
CVR by a further 20%.

Using previous learnings, we started to experiment with
our GTM. We added user coach availability in-app.
Coaches can help users with
high-value usage actions.
Coaches provide a continual
feedback loop to the product
team.

That continual feedback loop should mean we see more people
onboard via touchless overtime.

Takeaways: 2
o Optimizing towards your north star metric helps to create
sustainable growth based on value.
o PQLs can convert up to 5X to 6X of a MQL
o PQLs can rally the entire team around a single metric;
revenue.
o PQLs don’t have to be a replacement for other lead
types e.g. MQLs, but for SaaS businesses with the
right product and model, are a great addition to the
demand funnel
1 2
34

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