🎙️ This is Episode 2 of the "Built for HubSpot" series, featuring Brian Garvey from Profoundly. Listen or watch the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.
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.
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