What does it take to grow from an app to a #platform 📈?

A quick breakdown of HubSpot’s journey from a marketing app 16 year ago to one of the most valuable B2B SaaS platforms today.

✔️ A few observations:

They were ~ doubling revenue every 2 years

While launching a new product every 3 years

43% of revenue is driven by #channelpartners (solution partners)

🎯 At the time of IPO in 2014

they focused on 1 stack - marketing

for companies of 20-200 people

🚀 Today they cover 5 stacks

Marketing

Sales

Services

CMS

Operations

for companies of 2-2000 employees

🎬 In our YouTube, we discussed their platform journey with Scott Brinker, VP of Platform #Ecosystem in HubSpot, including:

Top 3 lessons from transforming HubSpot into platform

Mindset shift that the transition to platform requires

💬 Today HubSpot strives to become one of the ecosystems that like the Apple App Store, where you can plug an app seamlessly.

"If you think about the iPhone or an Android phone, and you just go to the Apple Store or the Play Store, and you're like, "Oh, I think I'd like this app" and you pick it and it just comes on your phone, and it just works. It's going to work, it's not going to destroy your iPhone, it's not going to cause problems with the other apps you have on that phone…

I think that is the aspiration we would like to get to in business software. And even if we never quite reach that ideal, it should be just much easier. And people should be able to have much greater confidence, when they're plugging in these specialized apps into a platform, it just works for the thing they want and they don't have to worry about all these other aspects of getting the two things well integrated. Previously, we had to do it entirely on our own. Now they happen a little bit better, but they will get better yet."

[Source: HubSpot investor deck]