HubSpot vs. Salesforce: A Tale of Two First Decades

If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, you already know one of the most passionate groups on the platform: HubSpot implementation partners. Praise HubSpot and they’ll hype you up. Criticise it - even lightly - and suddenly you’re public enemy number one.

So for this week’s episode, we decided to poke the beehive - by comparing HubSpot’s first 11 years as a public company to Salesforce’s first 11 years. Same starting ARR. Same moment in their maturity. But two very different SaaS eras, funding climates, and market expectations.

The question we wanted to answer:
Is HubSpot on the same trajectory Salesforce was two decades ago - or is the comparison more myth than reality?

Let’s break it down.

A Shared Starting Point: $1B ARR and a Public Listing

Both companies crossed $1B in ARR and entered the public markets at roughly the same stage of maturity. That’s where the similarities start - and end.

• Salesforce went public in a world where cloud software was still a novelty, and the TAM narrative was wide open.

• HubSpot went public into a hyper-competitive, more efficient SaaS environment with higher expectations for profitability and durable growth.

This means the market didn’t judge them on the same terms. And it’s a big reason why their trajectories diverged.

The Growth Curve: One Rocketship, One Slow Burn

When you plot revenue growth side-by-side, Salesforce moves like a rocketship.
HubSpot moves like… a very impressive, very durable, but much more measured burner.

Salesforce’s early years were defined by:

• 40–60% YoY growth

• Aggressive international expansion

• A “land grab” mentality supported by cheap capital

• A still-growing insistence on subscription software

HubSpot’s first decade looks different:

• Growth hovering around the high 20s to low 30s

• More disciplined expansion

• Lower sales & marketing intensity

• A market that no longer rewards “growth at any cost”

HubSpot isn’t slow - it’s simply scaling in an era where efficiency matters more than expansion at all costs.

Macro Matters: Dot-Com Fallout vs. Zero-Interest-Rate Boom

One of the biggest differences between the two stories is timing.

Salesforce (2004–2014)

• Operated through the recovery of the dot-com crash

• Competed mostly against on-prem vendors

• Rode the wave of the first big shift to cloud

• Achieved growth in a world where cloud budgets were exploding

HubSpot (2014–2024)

• Scaled through the ZIRP boom, pandemic surge, and 2022 SaaS crash

• Competed in an already cloud-native market

• Faced more saturated demand and higher buyer sophistication

• Had to balance growth with efficiency far earlier

The numbers only make sense when you understand the environment each was forced to operate in.

Go-To-Market Intensity: HubSpot Is the Efficiency Winner

One of the biggest surprises from our analysis:
HubSpot is significantly more efficient than Salesforce at the same stage.

Where Salesforce leaned heavily into massive S&M spend to dominate the CRM category, HubSpot built a more disciplined acquisition engine, fuelled by:

• A strong inbound motion

• Lower CAC across SMB and mid-market

• Tighter payback periods

• A content and ecosystem strategy that compounds

Salesforce bought growth.
HubSpot built an engine that creates it.

The Market’s Verdict: Two Different Expectations

Even if HubSpot matched Salesforce’s growth perfectly, the market would not reward it the same way - because SaaS investors today are playing a different game.

Salesforce got:

• A TAM narrative with no ceiling

• A premium for being the first pure-play cloud giant

• A decade of cheap capital and low expectations for profitability

HubSpot gets:

• A demand for profitability much earlier

• Lower tolerance for long CAC paybacks

• A market that now understands SaaS… and pushes margins harder

Same motions. Different world.

So… Is HubSpot the Next Salesforce?

Short answer: No. But that’s not a bad thing.

HubSpot is building a different kind of company:

• More efficient

• More durable

• Less dependent on macro tailwinds

• With a stronger ecosystem play much earlier in its life

Salesforce is a generational outlier - one that benefited from perfect timing and category momentum.

HubSpot is carving its own lane.
And in many ways, it’s a model for what a sustainable SaaS company looks like post-2022.

The Bottom Line

The comparison between Salesforce and HubSpot makes for good LinkedIn debate, but once you dig into the numbers, the message becomes clear:

HubSpot isn’t following Salesforce’s path.
It’s writing a new one that reflects the SaaS market as it actually works today.

Uber-growth is out.
Efficient, disciplined scaling is in.

And HubSpot might be the best example of that shift.

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