Influencers Who Inspire: Hubspot’s Mike Volpe
Just a little over a year ago, Christine Perkett won a guest spot on Hubspot TV with Mike Volpe. Christine received 40% of the vote and had the privilege of guest hosting with Mike live from their Cambridge, MA offices. We’ve always had a huge appreciation for Mike here at PerkettPR, and appreciated him welcoming Christine so warmly and making her guest spot a really fun and rewarding experience. We were psyched he agreed to do an interview for our blog and to be a part of our Influencers who Inspire series.
Mike is the Chief Marketing Officer of HubSpot. He joined in early 2007 as the company’s fifth employee and currently serves as Chief Marketing Officer. He heads HubSpot’s lead generation and branding strategy through inbound marketing, including blogging, search engine optimization, video marketing, and social media. Since Mike joined HubSpot, the company has grown from 10 to 5,000 customers, expanded from five to 300 employees, and raised $65 million in venture capital. Under Mike’s leadership, HubSpot’s marketing has won more than 30 marketing awards and has been featured in over 20 marketing and business books. Mike is a cutting-edge B2B inbound marketer who speaks at numerous conferences, hosts a weekly live marketing video podcast on HubSpot TV, is one of the 100 most popular marketers on Twitter, consistently posts on blog.hubspot.com, and appears as a marketing speaker at industry conferences. He has also guest lectured at Harvard Business School, Babson University, Carnegie Mellon, TCU, Boston University, and MIT Sloan School of Management.
You wear many hats at HubSpot. How do you manage it all?
The truth is that I don’t manage it at all. I have a great team. At this point in our growth, there is little I can do as one person directly that has a huge impact. The impact I can have is by setting the right strategy and playbook, making sure we have the right people on the team, and mentoring the team members to help them grow.
What do you love about your role at Hubspot? Anything you dislike about your role or would like to change?
I love marketing. Call me a marketing geek, but I love thinking about marketing problems and talking about marketing. Doing marketing at HubSpot is like a triple dose of marketing because we’re marketing our marketing software to marketers. There isn’t much I would change – I’d love it if we had a gym in the office or had a chef cater our meals, both of which we are considering for our next space.
If you could golf with anyone in particular (celebrity or athlete), who would it be and who would win?
I love to golf, and Tiger Woods is the natural choice because his raw talent is a level above everyone else. But I don’t think it would be much fun to play a round with him, it would be too intense and he’d probably get really frustrated with me really fast, and it just would not be fun. So I’ll go with Bill Murray. He is a good golfer and hilarious – nothing could be more fun than to play 18 with him.
What topics do you enjoy speaking about the most?
Is there something to speak about besides marketing? I actually don’t speak a lot anymore, but when I do, I prefer to speak about my own experiences in marketing. That is what I know best and I usually hate it when some “guru” is up on stage talking about marketing, yet they have not worked in marketing at a real company in years.
What is next for you in 2012? And, for HubSpot?
In 2011 my wife and I had our first child, sold our condo in the city, moved to the suburbs after we renovated a house, hired a nanny and my wife went back to work. So we’re looking to have a less hectic year in 2012.
For HubSpot though, I think 2012 will be a huge year where a lot of the groundwork we have done over the past couple of years starts to pay off in a big way. I am more positive about the next 12 months than I have ever been in the history of the company. There are so many things to be excited about, most of which are not ready for prime time yet. All I will say is make sure to join us at Inbound 2012 for an amazing event and some big announcements.
