Of course I was excited to see HubSpot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah speak at #INBOUND17. Last year's talk was inspiring and informative. This year, they decided to split their keynote, each focusing on their strengths (but with enough thematic overlaps and joint references that they still felt like related talks). I was also glad to see the return of the Brian & Dharmesh puppets on-screen. :)
As I said in a previous blog post: I hadn't originally planned to grow my company, but now that is absolutely part of my plan. I don't ever plan to become big like HubSpot, but I was still thrilled to hear lessons on startup mentality vs. scale-up mentality, and the important things to absorb or remove from each. His journey from starting HubSpot, through its exponential growth, and general commentaries on companies and marketing in general was engaging and on-point.
My favorite quote wasn't able to fit fully into a tweet, but I've found it:
"Netflix didn't disrupt Blockbuster; their late fees did that. Apple didn't disrupt the music industry; buying the whole album did. Then Uber, they didn't disrupt the taxi industry; waiting outside in the rain did."