Question: Who's the hidden decision-maker that can kill your HubSpot app deal?

Answer: "A lot of times an admin's job is veto more than anything else. They're the guardian of the CRM. If we can build deeply in a way that when they get looped in and look at the screen, they're like, 'yep, looks good to me' - that's all you need."

In this newsletter & podcast episode:

• The journey from HubSpot solutions partner to app developer

• Why most integrations fail to capture value (and how to build differently)

• The hidden power of agency partnerships for bootstrapped SaaS

• Building for the admin: The stakeholder who can veto your deal

• How to validate demand before writing a single line of code

The Built For HubSpot series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to work seamlessly with platforms like HubSpot without having to manage the complexity and tedious maintenance that comes with integrations at scale.

Why deep integrations win: From agency pain to product solution

Harris Kenny's journey to building OutboundSync started hands deep in agency work: "We were in the portal with the customers, seeing how other apps worked, seeing how apps like Arrows worked, and then comparing that to other apps that we tried where the integrations were just really bad."

The pain point was clear: teams were using tools like Smartlead for outbound campaigns but needed that data in HubSpot for revenue attribution, handoffs, and compliance. The existing solutions? Nonexistent or poorly executed.

"It was like, wow, what is even the point of installing this app at all? And so seeing like, okay, there is a spectrum of quality here. And that's up to the developer to decide what kind of app they wanna build."

What separates a checkbox integration from one that actually drives revenue? Harris learned it's about building for how HubSpot admins actually evaluate apps:

Timeline Events Matter: "There's a lot of stuff that if you build for HubSpot it enables, but it's not obvious."

Forward Compatibility: "Because we integrate in a way that's conscientious of HubSpot's data model, our integration is forward compatible. As new features come out, I'll refresh the UI and be like, 'oh yeah, turns out OutboundSync supports that’”

Build for the Veto: "A savvy HubSpot admin will get it. In a single screenshot, they can see all the integration filter properties and know what they'll be able to do with it."

The HubSpot admin: Your hidden stakeholder

One of Harris's most valuable insights is about who really makes integration decisions:

"An admin, RevOps admin, super admin, a lot of times their job is veto more than anything else. They're the guardian of the CRM."

This persona isn't necessarily your buyer, but they can kill your deal. The solution? Build so deeply that when they review your app, their response is simply: "Yep, looks good to me.”

Why agencies aren't just a stepping stone to growth

While many SaaS companies view agencies as temporary partners that drive pipeline, Harris fundamentally disagrees:

"Some people talk about agencies as like a stepping stone, 'oh yeah, we worked through some agencies, found some traction and now we're moving on.' For us, I fundamentally disagree with that."

The reason? Agencies have superpowers that most SaaS companies can't replicate:

• Specialized Knowledge: They have very specific insights about how things work in their clients portal.

• Access to Power Users: The agencies are general doing the best work, finding the fastest growing companies and iterating their playbook across them.

• Trust Transfer: Agency clients generally trust their recommendations on tooling to achieve the outcomes they want.
  

OutboundSync's agency strategy reveals a counterintuitive truth about ecosystem growth. By partnering with agencies who already understood advanced outbound strategies, OutboundSync could focus on building deep HubSpot functionality rather than educating the market on the outbound maturity curve.

"We eliminated the Smartlead requirement basically. These were companies wanting to move up that outbound maturity curve to level three or four, having multiple domains, using multiple data providers, using AI and dynamic personalization."

Bootstrappers mindset: Singles and doubles

Harris's transition from agency owner to app developer meant confronting harsh economic realities:

"I was running my solutions partner agency where I'm getting HubSpot implementation projects, multiple month, four to five figure contracts. So then to be like, 'okay, well now I'm gonna go try to sell a single seat of OutboundSync for a couple hundred dollars a month'... it was really difficult."

The solution? A Moneyball approach:

"We're hitting singles and doubles. We're not swinging for the fences. When we write code, it needs to work. When we write docs, people need to read 'em. When we onboard someone, we wanna retain that customer."

The most powerful validation of demand came from unexpected user behavior:

"We found users were using HubSpot's Salesforce data sync to get the data into Salesforce. I got a customer service ticket with a screenshot of a contact record in Salesforce and they were like, 'Hey, why is this happening?'"

This organic demand, users hacking together solutions to get OutboundSync data into Salesforce validated the need to expand beyond HubSpot.

The Built for HubSpot series explores the stories behind how the best products and companies are winning by going deep in the HubSpot ecosystem. The series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to integrate seamlessly and scale fast.

Question: What's the most critical thing HubSpot ecosystem partners need to focus on right now?

Answer: If you're not thinking about how Customer X or Industry Y can leverage AI to transform and grow, you're not doing your job. If you're not obsessing about where things are headed on behalf of your customers and prospects, that's a problem.

In this newsletter & podcast episode:

• Why clearly defined missions ultimately drive ecosystem scale

• Lessons from scaling ecosystems at AWS and HubSpot

• The urgent AI transformation window for HubSpot partners

• Evolving from "doing work" to "designing systems"

• The critical value of partners to a growing ecosystem

The Built For HubSpot series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to work seamlessly with platforms like HubSpot without having to manage the complexity and tedious maintenance that comes with integrations at scale.

"Meaning Matters": A foundation for scale

Why your mission ultimately determines ecosystem success

Brian shared a lesson that's carried through his journey from AWS to HubSpot to Profoundly: "I really believe that meaning matters. And what I mean by that is like an organization's mission really makes a difference. It's deeper purpose, it's reason for being and so on."

This isn't about feel-good corporate culture, it's about defining your “why” so your customers, partners, and team know where you’re trying to launch the rocket to:

"I think that really has an impact on the organization's ability to truly scale. I think that's because people do their best work when they can identify with what it is that the underlying platform and organization is attempting to accomplish."

Brian’s personal Mission Examples Across Ecosystems:

• AWS: Transforming cancer research through cloud compute power

• HubSpot: The "helping piece" in helping millions of organizations grow better

• Profoundly: Helping customers and experts thrive together

The takeaway is clear: when people see themselves in the mission and understand their personal "why," it drives the commitment and creativity needed for massive ecosystem scale.

Companies Don't Scale. Ecosystems Do.

Brian's second lesson challenges how most companies think about growth:

"Companies don't scale, in my opinion. The platforms that grow exponentially are the ones that really go out of their way to empower others to build on top of them."

At AWS, this meant asking interview questions like "How have you changed your industry?" to find partners who could think at ecosystem scale. At HubSpot, it meant recognizing that partners drive innovation and retention well beyond the initial deal and building internal programs to support them.

What makes ecosystem partners uniquely valuable is their depth of focused:

"When we would go out and recruit industry experts, they knew every crevice of that industry. They knew the metrics that mattered. They knew how to speak that language... somebody incredibly bright waking up every day and ending every day obsessing about what's gonna happen in an industry."

This level of deep industry focus is almost impossible for any single platform with aspirations of hyper growth to replicate across multiple industries and segments simultaneously.

Beyond pipeline: The true value of ecosystem partners

Brian revealed that the biggest unlock at HubSpot wasn't just recognizing partners as lead sources, but understanding their broader impact across the customer journey:

"It wasn't until the organization said, oh, partners are about more than sourcing opportunities. They get customers using what they bought, optimizing their investments, growing, identifying new ways to leverage HubSpot."

Partners as aggregators of customer sentiment

Even more valuable:

"Partners were aggregators of customer sentiment and customer needs. If you talk to one partner, it's like talking to dozens of customers because they're talking to customers each and every day."

This aggregation of insights and context across clients means partners can often articulate customer needs more effectively than customers themselves, helping platforms understand what to build next.

The AI transformation opportunity

Brian delivered an urgent PSA about AI's impact on the HubSpot ecosystem:

"I hope everyone is paying attention... I'm shocked every day at the customers that I talk to who are not using it. I don't even know how that happens at this point."

For partners, there's a brief opportunity to help companies adapt:

"There's this opportunity for partners and experts right now to be one of the organizations that helps those customers rethink things like workflows and building agents and embedding AI into their daily operations... but I don't think that that's measured in years."

The reason? AI will soon make much of traditional implementation and configuration work intuitive and automatic.

From "Doing Work" to "Designing Systems"

The fundamental shift for partner value

Brian outlined the most significant change facing HubSpot ecosystem partners:

"The ecosystem's gonna have to evolve and figure out if that's (implementation) not what customers are gonna need anymore, how do I refactor for what they need? And so I think it's gonna be more about going from doing the work like we had, right? Do it for me, sort of services to how do you design the systems that do the work for the customer forever?"

This shift from execution to system design represents a fundamental change in how partners create and capture ecosystem value.

The AIOps evolution

DevOps for the AI Era

Brian drew parallels between the current AI transformation and the cloud and elastic compute transformation he witnessed at AWS:

"I remember at AWS when the concept of DevOps kind of emerged... Being in the room when those concepts were flushed out in frameworks and like how transformative it was... refactoring for the cloud and now like refactoring for AI."

Brian sees "AIOps" (referenced in a recent Dharmesh Shah post) as the next framework for how organizations structure teams to scale with AI tools. An evolution of RevOps that puts revenue leaders who understand the business context, their customers, and AI as a trusted authority for growth.

Three strategic imperatives for HubSpot Partners

Based on Brian's ecosystem experience:

1. Get Clear on Your Why

Organizations with meaningful missions scale exponentially because they inspire the best work from people who can see themselves in the purpose.

2. Help Customers Refactor for AI Right Now

If you're not obsessing about how AI is transforming your customers' industries, you're failing at client service. This window won't last long.

3. Evolve from Execution to System Design
The future of partner value is designing systems that work forever, not doing repetitive work that AI will soon automate.

Takeaways for the HubSpot ecosystem:

• Meaning-driven missions are strategic advantages, not just culture initiatives

• Ecosystem partners succeed through deep industry obsession that platforms can't replicate

• AI transformation is urgent—partners must help customers adapt now or lose relevance

• The shift from "doing work" to "designing systems" is fundamental to future partner value

• Good client service in 2025 means obsessing about customers' AI transformation

The Built for HubSpot series explores the stories behind how the best products and companies are winning by going deep in the HubSpot ecosystem. The series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to integrate seamlessly and scale fast.

Question: Is it better to build a standalone product or integrate deeply with HubSpot's platform?

Answer: Where are your users doing their work multiple hours per day? And can you ergonomically meet them there? If that is in the CRM, then strongly consider that. Do it because it's better for the customer. Do not build in a platform like HubSpot or Salesforce with the expectation that it's a magic unlock for distribution.

In this newsletter & podcast episode:

• The strategic decision to build deeply for HubSpot vs. a standalone product

• Why betting on a platform isn’t only about your product

• The myth of "marketplace distribution" and the reality of ecosystem partnerships

• How AI is changing the CRM landscape and integration strategies

• Best practices for evaluating if a deep platform integration the right play

The Built For HubSpot series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to work seamlessly with platforms like HubSpot without having to manage the complexity and tedious maintenance that comes with integrations at scale.

"Going Deep: Why Arrows bet on HubSpot"

The Big Decision: Product-First or Platform-First?

Three years ago, Arrows made a bold decision that dramatically reshaped the business: “We launched in the HubSpot marketplace for Arrows, and we made a big bet to delete a big chunk of Arrows and focus on the CRM.”

This wasn't just adding an integration, it was reimagining their entire product and go-to-market strategy around HubSpot's platform. Instead of building a standalone product that pulled data from HubSpot, Arrows decided to build a collaborative layer on top of HubSpot that enhanced what users were already doing.

“We really were looking at the product we had built and wondering if we built it today from scratch, how would we build it? And we realized it would be a very CRM-centric, CRM-first product.”

This choice forced difficult tradeoffs:

• Deleting the Salesforce integration

• Removing dashboards and standalone features

• Rebuilding core elements to work natively within HubSpot
  

The "Better Together" strategy

What made this approach successful wasn't just technical integration, it was creating a narrative where Arrows and HubSpot were better together than either product alone.

“What is the unique value we provide? Arrows is the collaborative space for your customers. We don't need to manage any of the commodity data layer, consolidating all the activity and email communications and reporting and automations layer. We don't need to build all of that. That is done very, very well by the CRM, specifically HubSpot.”

By focusing on collaboration, something HubSpot doesn't natively offer Arrows has been able to build a complementary product that solves a specific painful problem while leveraging HubSpot's existing strengths.

"Most people still wouldn't want to log into Arrows for that. I am the CRO, I'm the CEO, I'm the VP of success. Where do I want to go look at reports about what's happening in my onboarding process? I'm gonna wanna look at the CRM."

The distribution myth vs. reality

One of the most surprising revelations from Daniel was about distribution expectations versus reality:

“I think our expectation, and it's still true, was that there would be a stronger distribution within the platform. Most of our distribution comes from doing marketing kind of outside of the platform, outside of the app marketplace.”

The hard truth: HubSpot just does not have a mechanism to match the customers that are using HubSpot for onboarding with an app like Arrows that would make that more valuable to them.

Three key questions to ask before building for HubSpot

Based on Daniel's experience, here are the critical questions to consider:

1. Where do your users spend their time? Where are the actual users doing their work most of the time, multiple hours per day? And can you ergonomically meet them there? A native integration can mean less clicks, less tabs, and deeper adoption.
   

2. Will the depth of your integration create better customer outcomes? Do customers need the UI your product provides to receive value or are they better served to continue using the tools they already know and gain new capabilities through your integration.
   

3. Are you betting on distribution or increased customer value? Do not build in a platform like HubSpot or Salesforce with the expectation that it's a magic unlock for distribution.
   

AI in the HubSpot ecosystem: Reality vs. Hype

Daniel offered a grounded perspective on AI's current state in the HubSpot ecosystem (with a lot of perspective from building with AI at Arrows):

“The marketing is far ahead of the capabilities of the product in terms of AI and agents. The talk about it is far ahead of what's possible and what people are actually doing.”

When asking teams what AI tools they're actually using day-to-day:

• Call recorders with AI note summaries

• ChatGPT for writing assistance

• Limited use of AI assistants for specific workflows

The real opportunity isn't in flashy AI features but in embedding AI capabilities directly into existing workflows:

“Most people don't care about AI necessarily. They'd like to use it more, but I just want to do my job better, get the outcome better. I want it to be easier. I don't want to think about the query. I don't wanna think about the prompt, and I don't want to think about refining it. I just want the result.”

Deep integration bets that change company culture

A fascinating insight from the conversation was how going all-in on HubSpot changed every aspect of Arrows as a company:

“Every aspect of our company understands CRM, how to use it pretty well. What's possible, what's capable, the pros and cons of the data that's accessible, how you would set up reports and workflows and pipelines, and how do you demo around it and do content around it. And that just filters through everything we create and put out there.”

From product development to sales demos to marketing content, the deep integration with HubSpot shapes how the entire company thinks and operates.

Takeaways for building in the HubSpot ecosystem

Whether you’re a founder, product leader, or ops team considering tooling:

1. Focus on customer workflows first, meet users where they already work

2. Don't expect magical distribution, partnerships require long-term investment

3. Consider the "better together" narrative, how does your product enhance HubSpot?

4. AI should solve real problems, not just be a marketing checkbox

5. Be prepared for organization-wide impact—a deep integration strategy affects every department

The Built for HubSpot series explores the stories behind how the best products and companies are winning by going deep in the HubSpot ecosystem. The series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to integrate seamlessly and scale fast.

Throughout the series, we'll dive into the stories behind how those solutions came to be and how the companies building them are winning by going deep in the HubSpot ecosystem.

The Built For HubSpot series is presented by Ampersand, the deep integration platform that enables the best startups and AI agents to work seamlessly with platforms like HubSpot without having to manage the complexity and tedious maintenance that comes with integrations at scale.

For HubSpot users, this means discovering tools that feel like natural extensions of the platform they already love. For founders and product teams, it means a blueprint for standing out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Join me as we explore the companies and innovators who understand what it truly means to be Built for HubSpot.

Find the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and all your favorite players.