Ellie Mirman was the first marketer hired by the CMO of HubSpot, the Boston-based marketing software startup that IPOed in 2014. Below, she shares lessons learned from the earliest days of marketing the company and how this has translated to her second startup role as VP of Marketing at Toast.
NextView Ventures: Thinking back to before anyone knew HubSpot or the company was headed towards an IPO, where did you even start to market the company? When you were flat-footed, what did you to gain initial traction?
Ellie Mirman: When I came in, Mike [Volpe, HubSpot’s CMO] had a to-do list of the things he wanted us to do, the top one being to start a webinar series. That was our first stab at some kind of gated content that was educational and meaty enough to get people to convert on our site on a lead-gen form.
Marketing Your Startup: A Billion-Dollar Company’s First Marketer Reflects Back
