Chris Miller: belief

Transcript context

…Kind of along those lines, but going even broader. Without disclosing trade secrets of how HubSpot works, how would you describe the loop of growth of HubSpot? In the words of, you mentioned Brian Belfor and Fareed, what is the growth loop of HubSpot either now or recently? Just a simple way to think about how HubSpot grows. Our loops are less tactical. In fact, if I'm being brutally honest, I think loops are kind of hard to achieve in B2B SaaS. I think there's some examples of that, but I think some of the best loops come from UGC, user generated content. I think a lot of B2C community focused platforms can do loops really well. I think if it's B2B SaaS, it's hard to find things that get loopy. And it is me going, I think all my Reforge [inaudible 01:08:40] are going to be upset that I said that. But I think that's the truth. When I think about the flywheel of HubSpot, I think it's more of a macro flywheel. And just to kind of lean into our own lingo, it's really attracting gage and delight. And so, one of the principles that guides our thinking and our strategy is give value before you extract value. And I think that was at the core... Give value before you extract value, and I think that was at the core of inbound marketing at its inception, that outbound marketing was asking for something from customers or prospects before giving anything. And so at its core it's like, okay, yeah, if you give a little for free, people who are interested in sort of hearing the rest of how that album sounds are going to come and stick around for more. And so in our pre PLG days, it was content marketing and white papers and listicles and eBooks and things that people had to download that were really filling the top of the funnel. And that is just taking another form with PLG. And so we intentionally put out a lot of free software. And the idea is that this software is not sort of gimmicky. It's not designed to run out of value on day one. It's actually designed so that our smallest customers can get some value out of it in a sustainable way. But if they're engaging with it deeply enough, they're going to run into the limits of what that value is. And if we've done our jobs and delivered what we believe we were supposed to deliver, then the decision to purchase becomes a no-brainer. And if they're delighted with the experience of being a customer, they're going to become advocates, and they're going to become promoters, and they're going to tell their peers. Because what we also know is that a lot of small business owners and even medium-sized business owners take a lot of guidance from their community of peers. And sometimes that's a digital community, sometimes that's not. And so anytime we win an advocate through delivering an excellent customer experience, they bring more people into the top of the funnel. And so it's a really honest, and I would say an honest macro loop in the sense, but that's the way we think about our flywheel. Oh man, this could be a whole other hour of a podcast just diving into this stuff. This is so good. You shared this interesting story that I wasn't aware of. So HubSpot's kind of known for content and SEO. You search for anything and there's always a HubSpot article about it. And so is what you're sharing here, essentially that was a big part of the early days, SEO, free content that drove people to the site and the product wasn't free, is what I'm hearing. And then it shifted to now it's a free product that anyone can use and that's what drives the top of funnel.…

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