Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Halligan: Early HubSpot had no HR staff and barred culture discussions

Brian Halligan · Brian Halligan: Building HubSpot into a Multi-Billion Dollar Company · Aug 6, 2024 · at 34:03

HubSpot co-founder Brian Halligan discusses the company's early management philosophy before embracing cultural engineering.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.5s
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“One of the quirky things about HubSpot up until that point is we didn't have any HR people. We didn't allow anyone to talk about culture because we didn't think we could measure. It was too squishy.”

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