What We’re Building with Starter Story

Again in 2017, a software program engineer named Pat Partitions was burning the candle at each ends. His first startup had simply didn’t get into Y Combinator. He was spending his days at work and his nights making an attempt to construct one thing that might stick—a narrative most entrepreneurs know all too effectively.

Refusing to surrender entrepreneurship, Pat began a facet venture — one thing low-cost, scrappy, and constructed from real curiosity. He wished to understand how actual founders truly constructed their companies from the bottom up. So he began calling them up and asking.

Let’s zoom out for a second.

The media panorama is shifting in ways in which entrepreneurs really feel day-after-day. Natural site visitors is getting more durable to earn. Paid acquisition prices preserve climbing. Viewers consideration is scattered throughout extra channels than ever. The playbooks that labored 5 years in the past — key phrase stuffing, algorithmic content material at scale, banner adverts — are more and more hitting diminishing returns.

What’s working? Trusted, creator-led manufacturers that audiences actively hunt down. Manufacturers that folks subscribe to, share, and are available again to — not as a result of they had been served a retargeted advert, however as a result of the content material is genuinely price their time.

That‘s what HubSpot Media has been constructing towards. Slightly than lease consideration via paid channels, we’re investing in media properties that personal it. The Hustle, Mindstream, and now Starter Story are all a part of that very same thesis: if you wish to attain the individuals who matter most to your online business, construct (or purchase) the media they already love.

Starter Story suits this technique exceptionally effectively due to who it reaches. The Starter Story viewers is made up of early-stage founders — individuals on the precise second they‘re deciding which instruments to construct their companies on. Pre-seed via Sequence A, they’re evaluating choices, transferring quick, and forming opinions about which manufacturers they belief. That‘s a core phase for HubSpot, and Starter Story reaches them of their component, after they’re actively studying and making selections.

It‘s not a demographic match. It’s a mindset match. And that makes all of the distinction.

We do not make these sorts of strikes calmly, and we’ve the outcomes to again up why we preserve making them.

HubSpot’s media community now drives over 50 million engagements and tens of hundreds of leads every month — a quantity that displays real viewers conduct, not inflated impressions. On YouTube alone, HubSpot’s channels collectively pull in over 20 million views monthly.

The Hustle, which HubSpot acquired in 2021, is a transparent proof level. It‘s remained editorially unbiased, saved its voice and group, and continued to develop. The identical goes for Mindstream. We’ve discovered easy methods to be good stewards of the media manufacturers we spend money on — including assets with out including interference.

With Starter Story becoming a member of the community, our mixed YouTube subscriber depend rises to 2.9 million. That is an actual, engaged viewers of people that need to construct issues.

There‘s a model of this story you may inform about media technique and acquisition multiples. We’re not going to say to that model.

The model we care about is that this one: there are tens of millions of individuals around the globe who need to construct one thing. Some are just a few months right into a facet venture. Some are watching a clean Notion doc, making an attempt to determine what to make subsequent. Some have launched and are grinding via the messy center. And Starter Story has been some of the sincere, most beneficiant assets accessible to all of them.

Attending to spend money on that — and assist it develop — is one thing we’re genuinely happy with.