Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah met at MIT in 2004, two years later they created HubSpot.
Today their market cap stands at $6.6bn.
Though this may have not been the case if they didn’t adopt a freemium model in the past few years.
Why?
This posts explains…
The HubSpot product suite spans sales, marketing, and customer success, though they all sit on top of one CRM platform: that you can now use for free…
And on your way in, of course, HubSpot asks you to provide details:
Details used to customize outreach from their sales teams later down the line.
Though as I start using their free software and gain value from the tool, I would probably want them to reach out to see how they can offer more value.
Wes Bush calls this “product-led growth” in his recent Amazon Best Selling book: Product Led Growth.
He says that three tidal waves are coming that will impact how SaaS businesses sell:
1. Acquisition costs are rising
2. People prefer to self educate
3. Product experience is now part of the buying process
HubSpot is clearly aware of these trends as if they didn’t move to Freemium…
Someone would have, eroding their market share with a disruptive strategy:
Fast forward 3 months of using HubSpot free CRM and I have:
1. Been a pretty cheap customer to find (no salespeople needed)
2. Self-educated myself on their product
3. Experienced the product and prepped the business case to present to my manager
I’m going to buy…
Well done HubSpot.
What did we learn?
Do you currently hide your precious product away because people must pay before they can unlock the value?
Maybe try breaking out a core part of your product and going free, before your competitors do…