We met Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot and MIT Sloan alumni (he says that he majored in beer drinking), during the Mass Tech Trek.
Hubspot provides an inbound marketing system/web marketing software (SW as a service model) for small and midsize businesses. They also provide the free SEO tool Websitegrader.com that measures the marketing effectiveness of a website and provides a marketing report of your URL. Many of my friends have started using it.
Brian started the company in 2006 and they received $5M in July 2007 from General Catalyst Partners. Currently they employ ~30 people and they have nice offices next to my apartment in Kendall Square (MIT).
Some comments he made about entrepreneurship:
- He recommended us not to syndicate VCs since it brings down the valuation. It is better to let them compete
- Number of founders: 1 is a negative signal to investors; 4-5 too much split and decisions take a long time with disruptive ideas
- Business Plan: you loose a lot of time updating it when you start talking to people. So make it simple and easy to update
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