How to design your startup culture, according to HubSpot

https://www.techinasia.com/talk/design-startup-culture-hubspot

by williswee • 8 years ago

5 1 8 years ago

ethiclub• 8 years ago

This piece appears to be biased (and presumably was paid for by Hubspot). As a contrasting opinion, here is a personal perception of Hubspot (having worked with them as a client employee and a consumer of their output). As usual, this is opinion/perception from the writer only (not the opinion of an organization, and not making any claims).

"HubSpot’s HEART values: humility, empathy, adaptability, remarkability, and transparency."

- Hubspot arguably engage in (and recommend) dark UX patterns. Hubspot arguably encourages SPAM, misleading wording and coercion. This is in relation to current industry opinion on ethical UX, let alone future opinion.

- Much of their blog content promotes manipulative marketing and sales, with little consideration of the consumer's actual needs (see https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/emotions-in-advertising-e... for an article on consumer emotions that ironically concentrates on conversion & manipulation of said emotion).

- Hubspot arguably sells to anyone - The culture appears to be 'traditional aggressive salesmanship'. I.e. they do not consider whether the client can afford or gain value from the product, they just push through the sale. This opinion contrasts with their ethics code (https://s2.q4cdn.com/235752014/files/doc_governance/Code-of-...).

- While Hubspot arguably may not have a moral obligation to prevent it: They appear to be encouraging (or at least facilitating) low-quality content being churned out in the interests of clicks. The platform and mentality does not appear to be conducive to the creation of actual valuable content, nor the maturation of marketing/sales in an ethical direction.

- Hubspot arguably uses the word 'ethics' as a marketing tool, and there is little to show that real ethical considerations have been regularly employed. This is analogous to greenwashing and could be seen as detrimental to real ethical-capitalism.

Personal opinion: Hubspot's existence is detrimental to society.

In the interests of fairness and general industry progression, Hubspot's opinion/response to this is extremely welcome, and further discussion involving them could be very beneficial to many stakeholders.

Here is another angle (which none of the above opinion was influenced by) - http://fortune.com/disrupted-excerpt-hubspot-startup-dan-lyo...

How to design your startup culture, according to HubSpot

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