Founded in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at MIT, HubSpot was built to help small and medium-sized businesses attract customers through content, SEO, and social media rather than intrusive cold calls and spam emails — a philosophy they called inbound marketing. The company pioneered this approach and built one of the most comprehensive and user-friendly CRM platforms in the market. HubSpot went public on the NYSE in October 2014 and has grown to serve over 205,000 customers in 135 countries. The company generates over $2.6 billion in annual revenue and has expanded from marketing tools into a full CRM suite covering sales, customer success, CMS, and operations. HubSpot is widely considered the best CRM platform for companies that cannot afford or do not need Salesforce's complexity.
Active Founders
Brian Halligan
Founder / Executive Chairman
Brian Halligan is the co-founder and Executive Chairman of HubSpot. He studied at MIT's Sloan School of Management where he met Dharmesh Shah and co-founded HubSpot. Brian co-coined the term inbound marketing and co-authored the book Inbound Marketing, which became a seminal text for an entire generation of marketers. He served as CEO of HubSpot for 15 years, taking it public in 2014 and building it into a $20 billion company before transitioning to Executive Chairman in 2021.
Dharmesh Shah
Co-Founder / CTO
Dharmesh Shah is the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot. He is a serial entrepreneur who sold his first software company, Pyramid Digital Solutions, before pursuing his MBA at MIT Sloan where he met Brian Halligan. Dharmesh is the creator of HubSpot Culture Code, a 128-slide deck on company culture that went viral in the tech industry and has been viewed over 5 million times. He is one of the most respected voices on startup culture and product development on the internet.
