The Growth Show

When Mark Roberge joined HubSpot in 2007, he had never run a sales team. So he stuck with what he knew how to do and created a system of hiring and development that relied heavily on metrics and quantitative analysis (he was trained as an engineer at MIT). Mark grew to serve as HubSpot's SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services until 2013, during which he increased revenue over 6,000% and expanded the team from 1 to 450 employees.

Mike answers your questions on this special episode of The Growth Show — including how his team maintains a startup mentality, the right way to pay marketers, and what he would do with a billion dollar budget. Thanks to everyone who submitted their questions via Inbound.org.

In 2013, Michelle Miller left her job at JP Morgan to write a story about Wall Street and Silicon Valley called The Underwriting. She knew nothing about publishing or marketing a book but knew she wanted to do something different, so she wrote the story and released it on her website, one chapter at a time over the course of 12 weeks.

Imagine wearing a dress shirt that didn’t make you sweat on your commute to work? Launched out of MIT, Ministry of Supply has set out to do just that: create clothes for work that behave like clothes you’d wear to the gym. After the company was started out of MIT, Ministry of Supply set out to raise just $30,000 on Kickstarter. Within five days of launching their campaign, the team not only met their goal but went on to raise over $400,000 and shattered the record for a fashion campaign on Kickstarter.

The concept of growth is a little different when you run marketing for a professional sports team. For Adam Grossman, SVP of marketing and brand development for the Boston Red Sox, success is often dictated by two things he can’t control: wins and losses. But he still has to fill seats, sell merchandise, and drive revenue for the organization. That presents a unique challenge for his marketing team: How do you measure success, exactly?

Brandee Barker was hired in 2006 as Facebook’s first head of communications. While at Facebook, she led the PR strategy around their investments, acquisitions, strategic partnerships and product announcements, including News Feed, Pages, “Share,” “Like,” and Facebook Ads. As an expert in communications strategy, she’s become the go-to PR person in Silicon Valley and has advised some of the fastest-growing companies of this decade including Airbnb, Dropbox, Groupon, Spotify, and Uber.

Des Traynor is one of the best in the business when it comes to product strategy and managing growth. He joins HubSpot’s Meghan Keaney Anderson on this bonus episode of The Growth Show to talk about why product strategy means saying no, the best ways to get customer feedback, and why you should think about a cupcake instead of baking a wedding cake.

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, a marketer, an author, and a speaker. People have called him the godfather of modern marketing and the best marketing brain on the planet. He joins HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe on this episode of The Growth Show to talk about building a business that will last, the importance of trust in hiring, and why you should think about being better vs. being bigger.

Neil Blumenthal and his friends (later turned co-founders) were tired of paying outrageous prices for their glasses, so they did what any crazy and ambitious entrepreneur would: they set out to disrupt the eyewear industry by cutting out the middleman. Warby Parker launched in 2010 and hit their first-year sales goals in three weeks. Fast forward five years and not only have Neil and his co-founders achieved their mission, but they’ve built a socially conscious brand that people love.

Two months ago, Meerkat didn’t even exist. Today, the live-streaming app has over 700,000 active users, including celebrities like Jimmy Fallon and Madonna. Meerkat founder Ben Rubin sits down with HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe to talk about how they grew so big so fast, how they’ve kept growing despite being cut off from Twitter’s graph, the decision to pivot the entire company in just five days, and why we should care about live-streaming.

SoulCycle has evolved into one of the fastest-growing fitness sensations of all-time — the result of a cult-like following that they’ve built that’s been taking over America since 2006. What began as a single cycling studio in New York City then has now grown to 39 studios and in 2011, the company was acquired by Equinox.

Product Hunt started as an email newsletter in 2013 about founder Ryan Hoover’s favorite new products. Today, Product Hunt has become the place to discover what’s next in tech -- everything from new products to apps, podcasts, and even books.

Blue Apron is one of the fastest-growing food delivery businesses. Each week, they send customers a box that includes recipes and the ingredients needed to create high-quality, fresh meals. And these aren’t just your average recipes - Blue Apron meals range from things like Almond-Crusted Cod to Piri-Piri Chicken. Since launching just two years ago, Blue Apron now ships over one million meals every month.

You may not have heard of Philippe Kahn, but you’re definitely familiar with his work: he’s credited with creating the first camera phone and sharing the first mobile photo. Today, his company Fullpower Technologies is behind many of today’s top wearable devices including Jawbone’s UP and Nike’s fuel band. Now he’s helping luxury Swiss watchmakers tap into the smart watch movement -- they’ve created the first watches that look like a Swiss watch but act like an Apple Watch.

Airbnb has already overtaken major hotel companies in terms of its valuation, and their growth could have them on pace to book more guests than hotels over the next few years. On this episode of The Growth Show, Airbnb’s engineering manager for growth Jason Bosinoff joins HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe to talk about what’s behind that growth, why their customers tell the story better than they do, and why they believe it’s better to have 100 people love you than 1,000 people like you.