Google Invests in HubSpot

Google Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Give HubSpot $32M

[pageoneresults]

We agree with HubSpot’s belief that search engines, social media and mobile devices have fundamentally changed how businesses should market themselves,” said Rich Miner, a partner at Google Ventures and a co-founder of Android Inc. (which Google acquired in 2005), in a statement. “We’re thrilled to support their efforts to help thousands of small and medium businesses reach potential customers.”

Google Ventures, Sequoia, Salesforce Give HubSpot $32M
[blogs.wsj.com...]

[weeks]

Hub who?!?

Anyone use this service?

[micklearn]

After exploring some of the case studies that I read on their site, almost all of them mentioned major reductions and even the elimination of spending money on CPC advertising altogether. An odd investment by G? Or is there some data or $ to be discovered/realized?

[weeks]

But, after looking at that, aren't you still kind of confused? What is it?!?

I got an invitation to try it and I might. But, the deal is that smaller businesses have become everyone's new best friend; they are spending more and more on the web, so we're going to see more and more folks saying, "Use me, use me." (Having wasted much too much time in Cambridge, MA, during ending gasps of the dot-com boom-bust, I'm leery of anything coming from that area. People there are not suffering from low self-esteem.)

I do b2b stuff (mostly), which means first and foremost keeping your nose clean, paying attention to the basics. Few businesses are going to get into bed with my clients via Google. But, they check out my clients reading their websites, signing up for their email newsletters, and doing a little google research after they have been introduced.

So, Hubspot is, like, well, maybe...

But, what has gotten my attention is Ariba. They have been around for years and getting some traction in the hard goods area, but they seem to be catching on in the services as well. Maybe even legal services.

[chewy]

Play with hubspot for a while and report back here. Smaller providers using it and doing the analysis are saying it does pretty well.

I suspect that is in the B2C space. Not something that interests me.

Personally, I dislike the whole operation, but hey, one has have to respect these guys (some from MIT) - who found an interesting way to leverage things - and they got a big vote from big G and the VC community.

watch this space. I've been watching it for years.

[jessicalh]

A company I used to work for actually uses this service and has seen great improvements with search visibility and leverages HubSpot's reporting tools to make improvements to the site or even help creating reports for the higher ups. For a small or medium company that can't afford the top of the line reporting systems, HubSpot is a fairly good alternative.