HubSpot's founders thought the cold call was dying. Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah met at MIT and noticed that people had stopped answering ads and sales pitches. Buyers searched, read blogs, and made up their own minds. So the pair built software to help a business get found online and turn readers into leads. They called the idea inbound marketing and preached it everywhere. When HubSpot filed to go public in August 2014, it sold that idea to thousands of small and midsize companies.

Two Classmates in Cambridge

Halligan and Shah founded HubSpot in June 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Their first product put the pieces of online marketing in one place: a blog, landing pages, email, search tools, and reports on what worked. The customers were small and midsize firms that had no marketing department. HubSpot charged a monthly subscription. Later it added a free customer database and sales tools, so a company could run its whole funnel from one login.

Thirty Dollars by Close

HubSpot priced its IPO at $25 a share on October 8, 2014, and began trading on the NYSE as HUBS the next day. The stock rose about 20 percent and closed just over $30, valuing the company near $900 million. HubSpot then grew into a full suite of marketing, sales, and service software. Yamini Rangan became CEO in 2021. Google looked at buying the company in 2024 and walked away. Revenue passed $3.1 billion in 2025, and HubSpot still trades as HUBS.

Cover: York Harbor, Coast of Maine, Martin Johnson Heade. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a quiet harbor (inbound: ships coming to you).