Dharmesh Shah

Founder and CTO at HubSpot. Helping millions grow better.

Career startup guy.

Author of the book &quot;Inbound Marketing&quot; (http://InboundBook.com)

Specialties: Entrepreneurship, Software Development, internet marketing,SEO

Founder and CTO

Founder of HubSpot, a venture-backed software startup.  HubSpot offers the industry's first inbound marketing system for small businesses.  The software is available as a hosted service (SaaS).

"Why should companies pay for SaaS (HR/CRM/ERP/etc.) when they could just vibe code them?"

I get variations of this question or comment with some regularity (granted, it's sometimes just me talking to myself). 

Here are some biased (but hopefully, well-considered) thoughts:

1) I am a big proponent and user of vibe coding (what I call "agentic coding"). I do it every day, 7 days a week, including Sundays. It's amazing.

2) My company, HubSpot is a software company. We have hundreds of professional engineers -- just about all of them use AI for product development too. They are brilliant and know how to build production-grade products.

3) Even with this powerful army of talent, the number of internal, core SaaS applications that we have replaced with a vibe-coded variant is exactly ZERO. The number of applications we plan to replace is also exactly ZERO. 

4) It's not the absence of talent that keeps us from rolling our own SaaS apps, it's the presence of focus. It would be silly to try and replace our HR, team collaboration, expense tracking and 100+ other SaaS apps we use when we can just buy them. Just doesn't make sense.

5) That's us -- as a software company at some scale. If you're a non-software company it makes even less sense for you. Doesn't matter how good the AI coding tools get. Let's say you *could* vibe code a replacement for that SaaS app you're using, who's going to maintain it? Who's going to keep up with industry trends? What are you going to do when the 20-something genius that vibe coded it over a weekend leaves the company?  Who do you call when there's a major bug? 

6) If you're a Fortune 500 company at some scale, perhaps you could pull this off for some discrete use cases and the tradeoffs are worth it. You have an IT/Engineering department that is larger than the population of some countries.  You can take on the pain in return for the positives.

For the millions of others, my advice is:

Spend every calorie possible on creating value for your customers.

Never spend more time debating the priority of a product improvement than it would take to actually go ahead and do it. 

Small improvements add-up and they're morale boosters for both customers and the team.

In the early times at HubSpot we had something called "daily delights". Basically, every day, the product team would *ship* at least ONE small improvement to the product that was noticeable by customers (and hopefully delight a few of them).

We're bringing a variation of that idea back whereby we find and fix those minor annoyances in the HubSpot product and drive some customer delight. I'm thrilled. 

Sometimes companies have a tendency to overthink things and undervalue the compounding value of seemingly inconsequential improvements.

BREAKING:  OpenAI launches GPT 5.2 and boy is it smart.

I got immediate value out of it.

I was struggling with getting Codex CLI to work through a tricky coding (actually deployment) issue I was running into.  I was going back and forth with the coding agent for almost a dozen rounds -- to no avail.

Was even desperate enough to try Claude Code with Opus 4.5.  No luck.

Then, saw the news about GPT 5.2.  Switched to it.  It took a couple of more rounds of prompting -- but it solved the issue.

Look forward to digging in more tonight with a late-night coding session for a major overhaul of one of my popular agents. 

Thank you OpenAI!

I build a lot of AI agents for myself, which I increasingly also share with others. 

I don't build AI agents to make people unnecessary.

I build them to make people unstoppable.

The latest McKinsey State of AI 2025 report just dropped and I'll cautiously say it's pretty good. (Cautiously, because I'm a bit leery of reports from big management consulting companies -- they're often very mega-enterprise focused and I'm a startup/SMB guy.)

Some quick takes and insights:

1. Most companies are still “AI-curious,” not “AI-capable.”

Eighty-eight percent are using AI somewhere, but two-thirds are still stuck in pilot mode. Translation: lots of glitter, not much gold.

2. AI agents are the new interns.

Sixty-two percent of organizations are experimenting with agents, but only 10 percent have them doing real work at scale. Early days—but the ones that figure it out first will have an army of tireless digital doers.

3. High performers think beyond cost-cutting.

The top six percent of companies don’t just use AI to save money—they use it to reinvent workflows and drive innovation. They’re not trimming fat; they’re growing new muscle.

My advice:
Experiment and play with AI. That's how you learn.
But don't stop there.
Lean in and truly leverage it.
Even if it's for small, discrete tasks.

The next frontier isn’t “using AI.”
 It’s working with AI.

At HubSpot we're investing in helping millions of SMBs make this transition -- just like we've done in the past. Everything from our featured agents like Customer Agent and Prospecting Agent all the way down to simple, task-oriented agents on Agent.ai.  

We're not interested in high-falutin', performative AI.  We focus on the practical: What can AI actually *do* for you?

What's the difference between a company's mission and vision?

Here's how I think about it...

A mission states who the company is, what it is pursuing and why.  It's describes what is (hopefully) happening *today*.

A vision describes where the company is going, what direction it's moving and where it aspires to be in the *future*.

For example, HubSpot's mission is to "help millions grow better". So, everything we do can be connected back to that mission. The products we build, the underlying platform it uses, our partner ecosystem, HubSpot Academy, our free tools, Agent.ai, our INBOUND conference...everything. It's all in service of that core mission of helping millions grow better. 

So, what's our VISION? Candidly, we're currently iterating on it. With the advent of AI, we think we can be more aspirational and set a higher bar in terms of what we can accomplish.

neuemotion

Chief Customer and Communications Officer (fractional)

Operational Excellence: Developed and implemented a comprehensive operational structure for customer onboarding, enhancing the customer experience and reducing onboarding time.

Customer Satisfaction Leadership: Established and optimized Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) and Quarterly Business Review (QBR) processes.

Thought Leadership & PR Strategy: Spearheaded PR initiatives, securing coverage for neuemotion and team members in prestigious publications such as Forbes, Digiday, and Content Marketing Institute, as well as securing podcast appearances and speaking engagements to enhance brand visibility.

Audience Intelligence Development: Designed and executed a detailed framework for building customer profiles and performing audience intelligence, enabling data-driven decisions and targeted marketing strategies.

Chief Customer Officer (fractional)

HeyOrca

Creation:
- Co-create the social media version of the Community Canvas
- Co-design the Social Media Community Foundations and Community-Led Content Strategy Academy courses

Customer and Community Experience:
- Incorporate customers as experts and thought leaders into HeyOrca's content
- Develop strategies for improved social media and community interaction
- Find PR opportunities for the team and community

Chief Community Officer (fractional)

- Advised on the creation of the HeyOrca Stans program
- Advised on community building and advocacy

Advisor

Women in Tech SEO

Advisory Board Member

Kogan Page Publishing

Author | Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships

Pocket CCO

Offering Chief Customer Officer services and strategic consulting for agencies and startups.

Founder

SlapFive: Customer Marketing

CustomerX Community

Lead monthly office hours that focus on CX topics.

Connector, Early Adopter 

Adweek

Covering marketing, social media, customer experience (CX), and branding.

Contributing Writer

B Squared Media, LLC

Chronically Opinionated

The home of Fan of the Fans and the Woman's MBA podcasts. 
Your go-to source for all of Christina Garnett's thoughts on fandom, women in business, and so much more.

Founder | Podcast Host and Writer

Fractional CCO + Advisor | Building Brand Affinity at the Intersection of CX, Social Media, & Community | Award-Winning Leader | Featured in Adweek, Forbes, The Next Web, PR Daily, Entrepreneur, and Digiday

Christina Garnett is a fractional Chief Customer Officer and advisor known for enhancing customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. Her expertise ranges from Fortune 500 companies to startups, covering sectors from agencies to small businesses. Christina specializes in problem-solving, program optimization, and boosting social media and community engagement to create genuine connections between brands and audiences.

Her mastery in social listening, customer experience, and community building is featured in courses by HubSpot Academy, Semrush, and HeyOrca. Christina's practical insights have been shared at INBOUND, Digital Summit, and numerous podcasts. Her thoughts are featured in Adweek, Forbes, The Next Web, PR Daily, Entrepreneur, Campaign US, and Digiday.

Her book, Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships: Use Emotional Connection To Build Loyalty, will be released in September 2025 by publisher, Kogan Page.

Christina Garnett, EMBA

If you're a social media manager who is struggling to explain that your work runs on vibes, do this exercise. 

Replace "vibes" with "sentiment," and collect audience sentiment and social listening data that shows what the vibe/sentiment actually is. 

The truth is, great social does run on vibes, but you need to translate that to leadership.

CCO + CX Advocate + Author of Transforming Customer-Brand Relationships | @ the intersection of CX + Social Media + Community | Featured: Adweek, Campaign US, The Next Web, Forbes, PR Daily, CMSWire

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