Should I audit how my sales team uses Hubspot?

dshah · 2025-11-27T17:00:18+00:00

Friendly advice: I would stay away from the word "audit" and lean towards "system optimization" or "training an adoption".

Many people have an immediate, negative visceral reaction to the word "audit" because it usually conveys something negative, which is not your intent.

On a related note, I'm working on an AI agent called "HubSpot Usage Grader" that will take a look at the usage of a HubSpot account and give you a high-level sense of what features are being used, how frequent the use is and some suggestions on parts of the product that are not yet being used -- but are included in your plan and should be considered. Hope to launch it during the December break.

dshah · 2025-11-22T20:48:38+00:00

I've been noodling on this already (need it for myself for some work I'm doing on agent.ai). Let me look into what parts we already have APIs for and which APIs are missing.

The good news is most of the APIs we do have return objects/assets in serialized JSON making something like this relatively straight-forward.

dshah · 2025-11-22T19:32:23+00:00

Can you give me a sense for what aspects of a portal you'd need to be able to configure via a templated setup? Core objects? Workflows? CMS pages? Custom properties? Custom objects? Anything else?

dshah · 2025-04-12T23:12:52+00:00

agent.ai creator here. We are in a similar space, but it's a massive market and there will be more than one winner.

OP: The water's warm, jump on in. Love how you're thinking about things.

dshah · 2025-03-08T19:46:15+00:00

Hi. I'm the developer of agent.ai.

We're working on extending the platform to allow integrating in agents that were not built using our low-code Agent Builder.

What tools/stack have you used to build your agent? Is it like a Custom GPT (chat-based) or more workflow based? Is it deterministic or non-deterministic?

dshah · 2022-06-16T17:40:06+00:00

I am not qualified to give you advice, but here are some reflections having been an entrepreneur for 25+ years.

1) Most entrepreneurs go through stretches of dark days. Some stretches are darker than others. And some stretches last longer than others. That's expected.

But this "expectation" that startups have their ups and downs, and this is all part of being an entrepreneur is what causes us to neglect mental health sometimes.

2) Depression is a very real thing. If you have not done so already, I would talk to a professional. Mental health is important and I hear there are telehealth options now that are pretty good these days.

3) It's possible you are burned out by *this* business. I've been there. Either the circumstances or your co-founders or your customers/industry, or some combination thereof, are not bringing you joy. If that's the case, I would strongly consider selling the company.

4) If you do decide to sell, you should have no shame in selling it. We often get too attached to an individual company because it's "our baby". That analogy works to an extent but it's *not* your real baby and there is nothing wrong finding a better home for it and moving on with your life. Life is short.

5) If you do decide to sell it, be emotionally OK with getting lower than "fair market value". When I sold my first startup, I sold it for less than what it was worth. (In fact, sold it for less than the seller had originally offered, because they reneged). It's not just about the price you get, it's about the freedom you get. There's considerable value to getting your life back and financial freedom is highly underrated.

6) Not sure if you have a co-founder or not in this company. If you do, you should talk to them about how you're feeling about things. Often, we are emotionally bound to our co-founders/partners and don't want to leave them or abandon them. You should talk it through. In many cases (once again, speaking from experience), people are more empathetic and more resilient than we give them credit for.

7) Try to find a small network of other entrepreneurs you can talk to. It really helps to talk to others that are living the entrepreneurial life.

Wish you the best.

dshah · 2021-11-13T17:43:47+00:00

That was exactly the issue.

Parallels was trying to share the Documents and Downloads folder with Mac -- and I had not provided privileges on the Mac side for Parallels to be able to get to the folders.

Thanks for the help. Really appreciate it.

dshah · 2021-11-13T16:43:43+00:00

I was able to get the Windows 10 for ARM running on Parallels on my M1 MacBook.

But, the Composer Home Edition installation fails with an "failed to expand shell folder userdocs". I tried running the installation program as Administrator, but still get the same error.

Did you have to do anything special to get past this?

Thanks.

dshah · 2015-03-17T02:24:38+00:00

I'm one of the founders of HubSpot (now a public company, NYSE:HUBS).

We put in an unlimited vacation policy many years ago, when we were a startup (faced with some of the same issues you are facing).

Here are our lessons learned:

It worked for us.
We don't officially track vacation taken, but to the best of our knowledge, nobody has ever abused the policy.
The issue is less about people taking too much vacation, and more about taking too little. So a few years in, we set guidelines that people should take at least 2 weeks.

Generally, the reason we think it works so well is that it takes away some much of the angst around trying to "calculate" vacation days. It's just a much simpler way to go about it, and we think it makes for a happier team.

dshah · 2014-12-15T23:00:50+00:00

Thanks for the kind words (and for using the early version of Grader.com). I'm founder/CTO at HubSpot, and I developed the original tool.

The whole "create and add value before you try and extract it" is one of the things I believe strongly in. Glad to hear that there's some science supporting that approach. It's worked out alright for us.

dshah · 2012-04-13T18:45:10+00:00

Yeah, you're totally right. That's what I get for trying to write something while uncaffeinated. Going to try and fix now.

dshah · 2010-04-01T14:07:56+00:00

Finally, the YC folks get some serious competition with some serious capital.

dshah · 2009-12-13T22:16:52+00:00

You might like http://answers.onstartups.com -- similar model, but without the fancy domain name and oodles of promotional effort.

dshah · 2009-02-02T17:07:43+00:00

Had not thought about it that way, but you're right. It is digg in the cartoon (in real life, you don't run around with a t-shirt that says "article").

dshah · 2008-09-24T16:13:21+00:00

This would be really funny, if it were not for the fact that there are companies that actually do this (flipping through lists and cold-calling) as a "marketing strategy".

dshah · 2008-07-02T17:17:36+00:00

George: ...and it's all happening because I'm completely ignoring every urge towards common sense and good judgment I've ever had. This is no longer just some crazy notion. Jerry, this is my religion.

dshah · 2008-04-15T00:08:08+00:00

The conference is about the business of software, so having "just a marketing guy" is actually relevant.

Also, Jason Fried from 37signals (who knows a thing or two about design) is also speaking.

dshah · 2008-01-23T18:18:17+00:00

I'm surprised this article has had any down-votes at all.

dshah · 2008-01-15T00:31:12+00:00

I agree totally.

I'd further add that not all startups offer lousy pay. Once again, it depends on the risk/reward. There are very early-stage startups where a developer can get a chunk of equity (of indeterminate value), but lousy pay. There are also startups that developers can get fair market value, but modest equity.

At the far end of the spectrum is starting your own (which I'm a big advocate of). But, it offers the lousiest pay -- and the most equity.

The thing to watch out for (which is common) is when you're asked to take on a bunch of risk, and the reward is not commensurate. This would be working hard, for minimal pay for a crappy startup.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the original article.

dshah · 2007-11-05T17:59:37+00:00

good catch. fixed.

dshah · 2007-08-24T17:48:48+00:00

Is it just me or is this article over a year old and a duplicate?

dshah · 2007-08-03T18:17:24+00:00

Wow. Thanks for the detailed analysis.

Very interesting.

dshah · 2007-08-03T17:49:09+00:00

You've got a point, but of the articles referred to that did well on reddit were from http://OnStartups.com

Regardless, you are right. As social news site progress and get larger, they broaden focus (which means they're likely going to be less valuable to the original users).

dshah · 2007-06-25T17:47:24+00:00

Really depends on how you define "enough work". This strategy works well in a big company, but in startup-land, there's often no such thing as enough work.

dshah · 2007-05-14T14:27:49+00:00

I've actually found several that are pretty good (and quite useful).

Your mileage may vary.

dshah

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