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Dharmesh Shah

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2024-04-04
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2024-04-04
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  1. “the early early early days literally days is transparency and so one of our kind of mechanisms by which we implement transparency is we've had this thing that does all information within hubspot Is equally shared with every one of the company”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, I think this is, and Bezos exemplifies this, I think, the best, which is just because you're a public company does not mandate that you do certain things. All that's necessary is the kind of transparency that says, here is what the company is doing, here's what we're about, here's what we're solving, and he had this with his very first annual shareholders letter, which he obviously writes every year, which is this is what Amazon is about. We're solving for the long firm or whatever. And he didn't say this in a starky way, if you kind of reread the letter. It's like, but if you read between the lines, it's like, if you don't agree with this approach, you should not buy Amazon shares, right? It's like it's a completely optional thing. You don't have to buy it, but this is the way we're going to run the business. And he stayed true to that. And you can continue to do that. I'll tell you one quick story. This is once again the anti-dissuade founders that might be reluctant to go public. So one of the core values that HubSpot that's been part of the culture.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “That first billy of market cap creation, a very small number of people got to participate in. The rest of the $29 billion in market cap, everyone, every public investor got a chance to participate in. And so I like the idea of, okay, well, you believe in your company. There's lots of people that believed in HubSpot. Nice to let them kind of participate, our customers, our partners, our well wishers, and they can sort of now have the upside. And you don't get that in the private markets because it's a very closed. You can't just buy shares in every private company you like. I wish that existed, but it doesn't. So it's a way to let the market at large participate in your growth earlier.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “But here's the other kind of social reason why I think founders should go public, which is so, in HubSpots, and I hadn't thought about this, so I'm not going to take credit for being this generous, magnanimous person, is that in our first pre-public years, I think we were eight years old when we went public, we had created roughly a billion dollars in market cap, give or take. We hadn't been a unicorn, so it was slightly below when we went public. So Hummes thought it was never a unicorn because that's privately held company over a billion. In the subsequent years, we went from a billion dollars in market cap to 30 billion.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Mark to market, right? Like this. Now here's sort of what the valuation is based on what someone's willing to kind of fund the company at. One of the nicest things, and this is underappreciated, is that we know right now what the market values HubSpot at. I can tell you that any business day of the week, right? Like that's, and there's a niceness to that. And this is the other thing I kind of tell folks within the company is that the valuation, which is we're in a relatively efficient market, like the public stock market is a relatively efficient by the economic definition of the term inefficient market. So the valuation will oscillate around the value. So if you kind of focus on creating values, like here's what we're actually building, valuation will sometimes be higher than you deserve, sometimes will be lower than you deserve, but over the full list of time, those two things will kind of move in lockstep, right? That's been demonstrated. That's what happens. That's almost a definition of an efficient market is that information kind of moves and then the valuation catches up with the actual value.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “A couple of things. One, let's, since we are publicly traded now, and this doesn't get talked about enough, I'm going to go and get this out there and use this as a platform to get this message out, which is, I think, too many founders, you know, once they get to it, they are very apprehensive of going public and going through the IPO process and being a publicly traded company because they think, I mean, that's like the beginning of the end. It's going to like change everything and my life isn't going to suck. And I think they're over indexing on what they think it's like to be a publicly traded company. In my own personal experience, and Brian, my co-founder would attest to this. And yes, there's certainly a tax or things we have to do now as a publicly traded company that we didn't have to do as a privately traded company. But there are actually benefits. For instance, if you're kind of venture back in private, let's say, you're sort of at a little bit the whim of the market and how VCs perceive your category and all these things, whatever. And you get every now and then when you're out raising a round of capital, you sort of get more.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, it's amazing what you can get away with in terms of shaping the universe you're liking. I think people automatically assume that things have to go a certain way, especially founders and first-time founders. You should at least try it. It's like, okay, well, I want to do it alternative. I'll give you another kind of tactical example. Both my co founder and I are night people, not warning people. That just happens. I didn't pick him because of that. We learned that later. And so we made it just like from the early days of UpSpot, in the early years at least, we're like, no meetings before 11 a.m. That was it. And then we adjusted it, I think, maybe three or four years, and we're like, all right, we can have meetings before 11 a.m. You just can't invite one of the co-founders to it.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Have it. I don't. And so I get all the upside with very little of the downside of scale, and that's what kind of keeps me engaged and energized and happy at Upspot. So I think it's been both productive for HubSpot and good for me.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “There's going to be a time in the company. It was like, oh, our VP of engineering just would just be interim something or whatever and have this team report to you until we find it. It's like, we're going to have those things and you're going to have to promise me we're not going to do that. It's like, I am not going to have direct reports. And we had that kind of heart-to-heart conversation. And it was one of the best decisions I've made both for myself and for HubSpot. Had I not made that decision, I'm a startup guy. I don't know that I would have survived at a company at HubSpot scale. And right now I can honestly say I'm having a better time at HubSpot. Now it's 7,000 people than I was having at 70 people. And the reason is I get all the upside of scale, which is I can make big bets, we can have long-term things and plans, whatever, and plan for global domination, without the downsides of scale, which is, oh, you're having to manage all these people, all the kind of mechanics. And that's hard, right? It's a hard skill to have. I appreciate other people that.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “As soon as I had kind of had that win behind me, it's like, okay, well, I don't want to be CEO. Brian wanted to be CEO because he'd never done it before. I'm like, okay, that was easy. And then I said, oh, and by the way, I don't want to have any direct reports. It just popped into my head as an idea. I had not pre-planned it or anything. And I sprung it on him. And the reason I was like, okay, well, and the reason is because I have learned that I suck at management. I'm a reasonably smart person. I think I could become passively okay at management with some training, with some coaching or whatever. I don't want to spend 10 years of my life becoming passively okay at something. I would rather take those same calories and take the things that I'm good at that I actually enjoy. Those things are highly correlated. You tend to be good at the things you enjoy. You tend to enjoy the things you're good at. It's like, so, and Brian was like, yeah, sure. And then I'm like, no, no, Brian. You don't understand. Then I was like.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, I mean, I'll tell you the quick story as to how this came about. My co-founder and I had the kind of founding meeting for HubSpot. This is like the week where we've decided we're going to do this. And then we have this list of questions or topics for the kind of founders discussion. One of them, and this, I think I've published a list. These are questions all co-founders should ask each other in that kind of early period. One of the ones is like, okay, well, who's going to be CEO? This was an easy one because I had been CEO twice before and had figured out I'm not that good at actually suck at that. And one of the reasons I suck at that is that part of the CEO role is being good at managing people. It's not just about leading and having a vision of whatever you actually have to do kind of the management as a craft. And so that part I already had in my head. I think Brian, my co-founder, already had it in his head, that's how this conference, that was a very quick conversation. And in the moment.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I have this notion of what I call soloware. And soloware is exactly what it sounds like it's software built for exactly one person. In my case, that one person is me. And so I've been doing this thing for like 30 years right now. I just build things that I would myself find useful. And the nice thing about one of the many nice things about it is that the UI is only for one person. You don't have to do a whole lot of testing because it only needs to work for one person. And the most important thing is that because it's only for one person, if it stops bringing utility, you can just turn it off. You should stop using it. Versus if you have users, even 10 users, and you put it out there, and then people would be disappointed if you took it down for whatever reason, that's kind of hard. So anyway, so that's the calculus I go through is like, is this useful enough to enough people where it's worth the calories of kind of making it non-solo where making it even microware? I just made that up. But yeah, so.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Yeah, two plus is hard for a business talk, right? Because Stamp comedians, the reason they can do it is that's all they're really kind of solving for is LPM. In business talks, you actually have another agenda other than just being entertaining, right? You actually have a message you're trying to promote something, promote an idea, promote a product. So anyway, in my mind, for like most normal circumstances, even if you can get above like a 1.25, you're in the top decile in terms of talk generally given by non-professionals.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “The investment you've already made in establishing context and scene, and then just squeeze more humor into the end of it in kind of punctuated fashion.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Then you have to stop talking. And the reason you have to stop talking is the audience needs about a half a second to react, and then they want the permission to laugh. And if you're continuing to say words, it's going to make them feel awkward and it's going to be less funny. So even if like moving a phrase in the sense that you're about to say, it's like, well, that sounds kind of weird to put those set of words at the end of the thing, do it anyway, even though it's awkward because it will actually work better. So that's kind of tip number one. Tip number two on LPM generally is that have a story such that you can kind of spend the time setting up the story, but then have multiple funny bits, multiple punchlines, because you've already made the investment. I've said $75 words in order to kind of set up this context. Say something funny that's amusing, that's whatever. Say some more things. You already have the con and you'll see the stand-up comedians do this all the time and then say something else. That's funny because you just, because a laugh is a laugh doesn't really matter that it was still the same story. So kind of leverage the.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So, one of the kind of tricks of the trade in humor, and you learn this particularly in standup comedy, but just any comedy, and I just hadn't thought of it this way, is that, and this is very tactical, but it works, and it's a very easy thing to apply. So let's say you're looking at, and most of us in the, you know, we're not stand-up comedians, we're not going to tell jokes in a classic sense, right? And even stand-up comedians don't tell jokes, right? Like they actually have stories and they happen to have a punchliner too. So two tactical pieces of advice. One is when you're telling the story, whatever the funny bit is, those have to literally be the last words of that particular segment, right? So once you deliver it,”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Is to decrease the number of words between laughs, right? So one of the things the software measures it gives me a visual map, it's like, here's the entire talk broken down with a little square per minute of talk or 30 seconds. And it's like, here's what they laughed. It's like, oh, here I went one minute and 17 seconds and nobody laughed. So I have to do one of two things. Shorten that segment if there's nothing funny that can be said without being over over overt about it. Or I have to say, okay, I'm going to find something funny to try to inject into this and kind of break it up. Anyway. And that's a long way of saying if I can get up on a public stage and learn that particular skill, anyone can learn just about anything. It just comes down to practice and measurement and just getting incrementally better over time.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Actually, audibly laugh. That's the only way it counts. And this actually, and it comes down to this metric that stand-up comedians use called LPM, laughs per minute. And there's actually a benchmark that you can say, oh, well, and stand up to medians have a very, very high LPM. Business talks have a very, very low LPM, like the most popular TED talks. There's a high strong correlation between the most popular TED talks and high LPM. So I have a goal. I'm going to have a minimum. I want to improve. And so I have software that will calculate for last per minute. And so then you learn these little kind of tools of the tricks of the trade. So like, okay, if you're solving literally for that ratio of last per minute, there are two ways to improve it. One is to add more laughs.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I will have my talk. I will do practice runs. I will have increasingly larger actual live audiences that I will practice in front of. I will record those talks. Everything so far, nothing unusual yet. I will have the talks transcribed. I have custom software that I've written that will say, okay, here are the points at which the audience laughed.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Then you break that skill down just like an engineer would do. It's like, okay, well, there's humor writing, there's humor execution, like on stage, whatever, there's stand-up comedy, there's like, okay, so how do you put all these pieces together? And along that journey, I came up with this, and I've always had this, I'm a very kind of data-driven quant-based person. I'm like, okay, well, how will I know whether something is actually funny enough or not, or whether I'm losing the attention or not? And so in preparation for one of these kind of high stakes keynotes that I do every year”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “In order for me to be a pretty good public speaker, what are the underlying subskills required in order to accomplish that? Okay, skill number one, you have to be able to stand up on stage and not pass out. Like, yeah, that's kind of the bare minimum, right? And so what I did over the years is to say, okay, I'm going to functionally decompose this skill of public speaking in what I call like high-stakes speaking. I've got to actually hold the audience's attention. That's part of success. So it doesn't matter what the message is. Nothing else will matter if I lose their attention, which is increasingly easy to do now in kind of short attention span society. And every year I will pick a different part of the public speaking skill set and say, oh, I want to learn about slide design and visual expression, not the actual design. I'm not a designer. But then the one thing that I came up that has had the most impact is humor.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Talk my way out of it. And so I'm a big believer talent versus skill, right? So we all understand talent. It's like someone has a talent for music. Someone has a talent for athletics, whatever happens to be. And that's true.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “That's very true. Public speaking is not something that comes naturally to me. So we're going to start there. We can talk a little bit about the copywriting other things that are sort of related. And one of the, and I tried to not do things that I'm not good at and don't enjoy, what are the rare exceptions that have snuck through is the need for me to get on stages as founder when we have our annual HubSpot event, our conference, which at the time when we did our first one, it was like 150 people at the Marriott, right? And then it steadily grown since then. And so now it'll be like 10,000 people in the live audience and hundreds of thousands online, right? But as I kind of came to this realization that I was not going to be able to kind of talk my way out of it, and I kind of saw how where this was headed, I'm like, okay, this is something I'm going to have to actually learn because I can't delegate it, can't.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yes, I had promised her I would not do star. I had to kind of hang up the proverbial entrepreneurial hat. Best lead plans and all that. I met my co-founder in grad school, which is that was the plan, was, oh, I'll go back to grad school and go find myself. And then the plan was to go eventually teach, not do another startup. My co-founder there, and one thing led to another as these things go.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Some of the best startup advice I've heard is startups should focus on one thing and be really, really exceptionally world class at that one thing. And one of our early zigs is we are going to do exactly the opposite of that. You have no direct reports, and I don't believe you've ever had direct reports at HopSpot. I could become passively okay at management with some training, with some coaching. I don't want to spend 10 years of my life becoming passively okay at something. What was that process like to define the culture? My co-founder and I were having one of our founders meetings and he said, oh, Dermsh, I hear this culture thing is really important. By the way, can you go do that? I'm like, okay, Brian, all the people and all me is like, I am like the worst possible person. It's not that I don't like people. I just don't like being around them a whole lot. Something that's really unique and interesting about you is you're obsessed with comedy and keynote crap. It comes down to this metric that stand-up comedians use called LPN laughs per minute. I have custom software that I've written that will say, okay, here are the points at which the audience laughs.”

    2024-04-04 · Lenny's Podcast · Zigging vs. zagging: How HubSpot built a $30B company | Dharmesh Shah (co-founder/CTO) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source