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Published · transcript-backed

Brian Halligan: belief

15 Feb 2026 Lenny's Podcast Sequoia CEO coach: Why it’s never been easier to start a company, and never been harder to scale one | Brian Halligan (co-founder, HubSpot)

“The founders are seven days a week, they're always on, I [inaudible 00:48:40] on Sunday nights, it's full contact. And I think what's going on there, particularly now, is people just see this massive platform change, massive opportunity, they don't want to waste the opportunity.”

— Brian Halligan

Source trail

Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Brian Halligan
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
belief
Recorded
15 Feb 2026
Publisher
Lenny's Podcast

Transcript context

…Do you feel like too many people start companies just like... When someone comes to you like, hey Brian, should I start a company? I have this idea. Do you often just like, no. You have no idea what you're getting into, this is going to be much more painful? Yes. Yes. I heard Jensen Huang say that. "I wouldn't have start started Nvidia if I had it to do over." If someone asked me that question, I would start HubSpot over. It was very hard, there were a lot of sacrifices, it wasn't glamorous at all. But in the end of the day, I'm incredibly proud of it. And on my deathbed, I can look back and really enjoy it. And the Dalai Lama's got a good expression like, "Live a good life so you can live it again on your deathbed." And I'm really glad I did it. But I do talk a lot of founders out of it. The obsession is real, you have to be deeply obsessed. And all these founders and CEOs I talk to, people talk about 9-9-6, it's way more than that. The founders are seven days a week, they're always on, I [inaudible 00:48:40] on Sunday nights, it's full contact. And I think what's going on there, particularly now, is people just see this massive platform change, massive opportunity, they don't want to waste the opportunity. So, I think that mindset's right. But people today are much, much more hardcore than they were in my year. I worked hard, and I was probably, I was 60 to 70 week hours a week the entire time, never really turned it off. But that's kind of how I thought about it. It's different now. People are much more focused, and I think Elon's inspired people. I had a start back in the day, nowhere near as successful as HubSpot, but the way I thought about it is, let me just give it everything I have and see what I can do. This is the shot, this is my chance, let me just give it all. Forget balance, just go for it. Seven days a week for a while. And then you scale back. And it's just such an empowering thing to do for a while, just like, let me just try. This won't be forever.…

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