Brian Halligan
30 statements across 5 episodes · 15 bullish · 0 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Mar 7, 2019 by Brian Halligan · said 50 times in 26 episodes since 2017 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Brian Halligan's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Jason Lemkin (34), Yamini Rangan (5), Mark Roberge (4), Pat Poels (2), Ryan Bonnici (1), Michelle Benfer (1), Katie Burke (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2026 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2025 18 mentions in 9 episodes 2 per episode
- AI, Sales + GTM in 2026: This Changes Everything with Jason Lemkin and Owner CRO Kyle Norton
- AI and The Future of Sales, Marketing & CS with HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan
- Is The Classic GTM Playbook Really Dead? with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- AI, M&A, and the Future of SaaS: Lessons from Marc Benioff, Salesforce CEO, Co-Founder and Chair
- The 2025 SaaS Vibe Check: What Founders Need to Know Right Now with SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin
- 9 Things You Can Do to Grow Faster This Year with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- AI and the Death of the 2021 Sales Playbook with SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin
- The 10-Point Checklist For When You Sell Your Company With Founder Collective's Dave Frankel
- 1 more episode that year, every mention in 2025 →
2024 8 mentions in 6 episodes 1 per episode
- How to Train Your Sales Leaders: Key Learnings from HubSpot and BILL’s Head of Sales Michelle Benfer
- From Outbound to Channel Partnerships: Your Burning Sales Questions Answered by Jason Lemkin
- The Future of AI and Sales in SaaS with Henry Schuck, CEO of ZoomInfo and SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin
- Why Vertical SaaS is Booming, And How to Get 110% NRR from SMBs, with Jason Lemkin + Mangomint's CEO
- Fundraising from VCs and Hiring VPs in 2025: AMA with Jason Lemkin SaaStr CEO
- Forget the SaaS Gloom and Doom. Just Build. with SaaStr CEO and Founder, Jason Lemkin
- every mention in 2024, scene by scene →
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 12 mentions in 2 episodes 6 per episode
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2019 2 mentions in 1 episode
2018 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2017 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Brian Halligan, oldest first
Mar 7, 2019
Halligan: Every software purchase at HubSpot starts with bottom-up employee adoption
“Everything we buy, our CIO buys at HubSpot, starts with a little project at the edge of the organization. Some developers tinkering with something, couple salespeople, couple marketers, and then it ends up on the CIO's desk is, boy, we're using this stuff, we …”
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Halligan: Modern startups disrupt incumbents by removing buying friction, not altering products
“The thing that fascinates me the most about them is they're all effectively selling the same exact product as their predecessor that they've disrupted. The product's basically the same thing. It's the same music. It's the same cards. It's the same razor. It's …”
Mar 7, 2019
Halligan: HubSpot averages a 5:1 LTV-to-CAC across small, mid-market, and enterprise
“Approximately, on the two to 20 employees, it's about a thousand dollars to acquire a new customer, and it's about 5000 dollars in value we get over time from that. In the mid-market, the 20 to 200 employees, I'm gonna guess again, it's this rough, it's probab…”
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Halligan: Software flywheels should reduce human touches from 80% to 20%
“If today, 80% of the touches inside your business, inside your flywheel, are human-based touches and handoffs,
In the future, I think it should be more like 20%.
Automation, bots should do more and more of that work for your prospects and customers.”
Mar 7, 2019
Halligan: HubSpot merged its chat and coaching teams to cut customer handoffs
“We had an ISC organization.
That ISC organization was the organization that responded to chats on the website,
Inbound phone calls.
Of which, of both, there's a lot.
And then we had a coaching organization.
What the coaching organization did is if you're a fre…”
Mar 7, 2019
Mar 7, 2019
Mar 7, 2019
Halligan: A founder's control-freak mindset becomes kryptonite when scaling a company
“Most entrepreneurs are control freaks. We like to make a lot of decisions, control the boundaries of those decisions, and your greatest strength really as an entrepreneur is that you're a control freak. But that turns into kryptonite and a scale up. Your great…”
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Halligan: Customer experience and GTM advantages are more sustainable than product moats
“You want to build a great company today, you've got to have a customer experience that's 10 times better than the competition. It turns out on the product side, it's harder and harder to create a moat, a competitive advantage. It's so easy, relatively today, t…”
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Halligan: SaaS hiring must shift from I-shaped specialists to T-shaped generalists
“Today your profile is I-shaped.
I'm going to hire a BDOR, they're going to be very aggressive, they're going to be a cold caller, they're going to be an absolute shark, and they're going to optimize the numbers, and they're going to have a sales rep to a diffe…”
Mar 7, 2019 positive
Oct 18, 2022 positive
Halligan: HubSpot improved its net dollar retention from 75% to 110%
“Like if you look at HubSpot back maybe in 2012 when you wrote that article, like our customer dollar retention was probably 70%, and our upsell was maybe five, so we were 75% total. And now that seventy's gone to plus or -90%, and so the customers are much hap…”
Oct 18, 2022
Halligan: Scaling SMB SaaS requires ultra-low CAC and multi-product expansion
“You, there are two tricks to it. You need to keep your CAC low, which is a hard thing to do, and you can't do that with like Major advertising budgets. Yeah, you need some sort of viral marketing, freemium motion, product like growth. You need to really get go…”
Oct 18, 2022 bullish
Halligan: The mid-market software segment remains massive and underserved
“There's a huge, huge market in the M and the M think of it like 10 employees to 2000 employees. They have money. They have pain. The small business products don't solve it. The enterprise companies don't solve. It's too expensive, too hard to put in.”
Oct 18, 2022 positive
Halligan: HubSpot's $50 COVID starter bundle drove massive customer influx
“The first week of COVID, we have, we had a starter edition. It was kind of expensive. And then we said, you could now buy, it was maybe 253 hundred bucks. I can't remember. But we said, we're going to lower the price. If you buy the whole suite, sales, marketi…”
Oct 18, 2022
Shah: HubSpot founders debated exit and burnout scenarios before launching
“The week before we actually officially found the company, we went through this kind of series of really hard questions that we kind of asked each other.
It's like, okay,
so what do we want out of this?
What if next year someone comes offering fifty million, a …”
Oct 18, 2022
Halligan: Co-founders use a 'lay on the tracks' rule for disagreements
“If we both agree on a given topic, of course we do it.
If one of us feels really strongly and is willing to lay on the tracks on a topic and the other person's like, I kind of disagree with you, but you feel strongly.
We go with the lay on the track person.
If…”
Dec 27, 2024 bullish
Halligan: Enterprise SaaS incumbents demonstrate exceptional durability over decades
“These SaaS companies They last. You look at Adobe and Salesforce, both were, I don't know, I haven't looked recently, but three, I call it three or fifty billion. Oracle, you gotta take your hat off to them. It was like, oh, they're gonna die. They're gonna sl…”
Dec 27, 2024
Dec 27, 2024 positive
Dec 27, 2024 positive
Halligan: HubSpot board meetings target 50% speaking time for board members
“The other change between me is that a typical ward meeting, 90% of the words that come out of people's mouths are coming out of the CEO and the management team. And 10% from board members. We have really smart board members that work hard to recruit and they'r…”
Jan 3, 2025 positive
Halligan: HubSpot Required New Sales Reps to Build a Real Website
“One of the things we did, I don't even know if we still did it at HubSpot, is when we hired a new rep, their training, what's in sales training, then training wise, okay, you gotta learn HubSpot. Pick, start your own small business, buy the main, build a websi…”
Jan 3, 2025
Jan 3, 2025 neutral
Halligan Sent Salesforce Quarterly Decks for Years to Nurture Strategic Ties
“After we met Denny Off and everybody in there once a quarter, I put together a backbed, a PowerPoint deck of It was going on HubSpot, four or five slides, you know, economics, hockey stick, and I'd send it to him. Just keep in touch. Things are going well. Her…”
Jan 3, 2025 neutral
Halligan: HubSpot Evaluates Target Startup CEOs Like VP Hires During M&A
“In the cases, those three acquisitions are decent sized acquisitions. That's why the CEO, the founder and the CEO mattered. And we wanted to keep and retain that founder CEO. Like interviewing a VP. It's very similar to that. Is it a culture of fit? We think w…”
Jan 3, 2025 positive
Halligan: Hire Spiky Executives Instead of Candidates Lacking Weaknesses
“And my lesson is, and he didn't work out for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons is we hired for a lack of strength. Not for, we hired for Lois Tomlin in our area. We didn't hire for someone who's spiky and I think you should hire for somebody spiky.”
Jan 3, 2025 neutral
Jan 3, 2025 positive
Halligan: Executive Hires Fail Without an Internal Sponsor Committed to Them
“It needs to be at least one person around the table. That is, I put up, I gave this person a four, five. I'm going to make this person successful. And if it's all threes, everyone's like, ah, Somebody else will worry about them.”
Jan 3, 2025 positive
Halligan: Modern Tech Founders Work Harder and Longer Than Past Generations
“Founders today are tireless. There are a hundred, a lot of them are like, well, spend about 20 hours a week. I know I don't have any life, like they, and it's, and I think it's a lot of it's Elon. And he's like a new template for how you do this kind of thing.…”