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President, CEO, and Board Member at HubSpot, the agentic customer platform that helps…
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Yamini Rangan shared thisSo… what’s it like being a “post-AI CEO?” Sangram Vajre always asks me the best questions. Well, there’s almost no part of your company that you can’t change. It’s a moment that requires a different mindset. In the past, we could get away with being “map readers.” We knew the destination, the route, and the playbook for getting there. Our experience showed us the path. Today, we all have to be explorers. Three traits matter most: A scientist mindset. With change happening all around us, you need to get comfortable having a hypothesis. Comfortable being wrong. Comfortable with moving from failure to running the next experiment. Closeness to the ground. That means talking to customers. Watching how people really use your product. Because you can't transform what you don't understand in detail. Curiosity and outcomes orientation. AI is the tool, not the point. The point is solving something real for your customers. Can you ask the right questions of your customers to get to the right thing? Work backwards from there. If you're wired to follow a prescribed path, the next few years are going to be hard. But if you're wired to experiment, stay close to the ground, and ask better questions than anyone else… well, this is your moment. A “post-AI CEO’s” job is not to have every answer. It’s to build a team that knows how to find them.
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Yamini Rangan shared thisThere is a gap between what is happening with a customer and what your CRM knows. Every call changes the deal. Every email adds context. Every meeting reveals something new. But unless a seller stops selling to update the CRM, much of that context stays in their head. That creates two problems. Sellers spend too much time on administrative work. And sales leaders make decisions based on an incomplete view of the pipeline. For years, companies have tried to close that gap by asking sellers to enter more data. More fields. More reminders. More process. But what if instead of you updating the CRM, your CRM updated you? That’s the idea behind our new self-updating CRM. It captures information from calls, emails, meetings, and notes as work happens. It surfaces recommended updates for sellers to approve, and moves deals to the next stage on its own, so teams know which prospects to prioritize. That means sellers can stay focused on the customer. Managers get a more current view of the pipeline. And agents have fresh context to help both drive outcomes. It’s the CRM I wish I had back when I started out. To win more deals, you need fewer distractions. The CRM is no longer one.
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Yamini Rangan shared thisWhat am I up to after UNBOUND? Playing around with GPT-6 Sol and Opus 5.5. (Yes. My calendar is a little less crazy this week.) They’re both incredibly capable models. And at a cost that has the potential to open up entirely new GTM use cases. But remember… No matter how smart the model is, to succeed in the Outcomes Era, you have to focus on building your foundation first. AI needs to understand: Your business: your brand, products, positioning, and processes Your customers: their history, needs, conversations, and sentiment Your team: their roles, goals, workflows, and approvals The magic is in the context. That’s how you drive the best outcomes in go-to-market.
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Yamini Rangan shared thisOne insight that resonated deeply last week at UNBOUND. Context is a must-have in the AI era to drive outcomes. We looked at AI outcomes across 300,000+ HubSpot customers and found something I didn't expect: The same AI model, with bad context, produced worse results than using no AI at all. MQLs down 28%. Deals won down 27%. Meetings booked down 49%. But with good context, the same models drove MQLs up 264% and deals won up 197%. That gap is the story of the next era of software. For the last few decades, software delivered features and people delivered outcomes. AI changes that relationship because software can now help deliver the outcome itself. But intelligence alone doesn't get you there. Context does. I wrote about what we're calling the Outcomes Era, what good context actually looks like, and why smarter models won't compensate for bad ones. https://lnkd.in/e-pCt3TB
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Yamini Rangan shared thisThe first UNBOUND was incredible! 14,000 attendees. 1,300 partners. And three unforgettable days filled with ideas, conversations, hugs, and more selfies than I can count. I spent a lot of time in the lead up to UNBOUND thinking about what makes this community so special. It comes down to the people. Partners build things we hadn't imagined. Customers share feedback we hadn’t thought of. And speakers from inside and outside of HubSpot teach us things that we can take back to our teams to drive growth. Our industry is at the beginning of an exciting new chapter. Businesses' goals have not changed. It’s still about building demand, winning deals, and delighting customers. But now, AI can deliver those outcomes when it has the right context. That's what we're focused on at HubSpot – helping customers grow in the Outcomes Era. I’m leaving Boston full of gratitude for our customers, partners, team, and everyone who made our first UNBOUND so special. Thank you 🧡
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Yamini Rangan shared thisOne of the most common questions I hear from GTM leaders is: Which AI use cases drive the most impact? On stage at UNBOUND, I mapped over 50 of them on a scatter plot. (Yes, I love scatter plots 🙂). We found that the most popular use cases actually drive the lowest value, when they don’t have the right context. Producing content. Sending emails. Preparing for meetings. These are all super popular use cases. They're fast. They're easy. But they aren’t differentiated. Your competitors can produce similar outputs with just a few prompts. Now, what about the high impact use cases? Analyzing campaigns, prioritizing pipeline, and analyzing customer feedback all stood out. What do they all have in common? They all require knowledge about your business. They are data and context rich, and that means your competitors can’t replicate them. Driving outcomes with AI comes down to your data and your context. That's your advantage.
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Yamini Rangan shared thisWe held a Battle of the Builders at UNBOUND, showcasing what some of our most innovative partners are building on HubSpot. Congrats to Rebecca Harris and Huble on the win! (And the $100k prize.) Huble built a multi-agent qualification system for Rommelag, a global manufacturing company serving some of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical brands. The problem: their sales process required them to assess over 60 technical data points and relied on engineering support. It was taking them an average of 15 days to get back to prospects. Huble’s multi-agent solution, which they built mostly with out-of-the-box HubSpot features, reduced the process from 15 days to 15 seconds. That's saving Rommelag 525+ hours of engineering time per year, and now they're getting back to prospects much faster. Thank you to everyone who participated in Battle of the Builders. Excited to see what our partners and customers build on HubSpot next!
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Yamini Rangan shared thisAt UNBOUND, I shared what we’ve learned from studying thousands of businesses navigating the shift to AI. The biggest takeaway: AI adoption is everywhere. AI transformation is not. Roughly 90% of companies are using AI (not surprising), but only 6% say they’re seeing transformational results (very surprising). Those companies are 4x more likely to hit their revenue goals and 3x more likely to hit their efficiency targets. So what separates the 6% from everyone else? 1. They solve for outcomes, not optics They start by focusing on go-to-market outcomes: build demand, win deals and delight customers. Transformational companies work backwards from outcomes. And across the use cases we studied, the highest-performing companies focus on only four or five on average, and do them really well. 2. They’re purposeful about building the foundation first High-value AI use cases depend on accurate data and rich context about your business, customers, and team. With good context, AI stops acting like a generic assistant and starts behaving like an expert on your business. Transformational companies get this and they start by building good context before scaling up with AI. 3. They’re purposeful about their people AI is making it easier for everyone to build. That makes human judgment, creativity, and critical thinking even more valuable. Transformational companies do not pick between humans and AI. They know that the highest value use cases rely on combining the strengths of both. We found that transformation happens when you stop asking what AI can do and start asking what it should do. You can watch my full keynote at the link below. More to come from UNBOUND!
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Yamini Rangan posted thisOur mission at HubSpot has always been to help scaling businesses grow. In the AI era, that means giving them the same shot at transformation the biggest companies have. That's what our partnership with OpenAI has been about from day one. Earlier today at UNBOUND, we shared three big steps we’re taking together: First CRM connector for ChatGPT, now with even more capability. We built it in mid-2025 so teams could bring their customer knowledge into the tool they use every day. It's now the #1 CRM connector in ChatGPT. Today, we're expanding what you can do with it. You can build ad briefs based on customer insights, create landing pages, and track which leads are progressing, all from inside ChatGPT and all powered by your context in HubSpot. First CRM to integrate with ChatGPT Ads. More buyers are researching and making decisions in answer engines. Now you can build, launch, and measure ChatGPT ad campaigns directly in HubSpot, alongside every other channel you run. Because it's built on your CRM context, targeting is smarter from day one, and you can trace a closed deal back to the campaign that started it. That level of attribution is only possible when your CRM and your marketing platform are the same system. And HubSpot is now the only platform that brings paid and organic AI search together. First CRM to partner with OpenAI on an exclusive bundle for SMBs. The new AI Growth Bundle gives scaling businesses HubSpot Starter and credits at up to 65% off, a buy-one-get-one-free ChatGPT Business seat for a year, and up to $750 in ChatGPT ad spend match. It’s another step towards making it easier for businesses to get started with AI and grow. Thank you to Sarah Friar and the OpenAI team for building with HubSpot so every scaling business can transform with AI.
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisTurns out, you can drop Wednesday Women into the middle of a massive developer conference and something pretty awesome happens. 💜 We just wrapped our first WeAreDevelopers World Congress and honestly I went into it with a tiny bit of trepidation. I mean, it’s a developer conference. I do not speak developer. 😂 I don’t even speak Excel. But what I found were incredibly high-level conversations about technology, AI, leadership, business and what’s coming next. I met women from across the tech ecosystem, including executives from Oracle, IBM, CTOs, CIOs, developers and operators, and reconnected with some old friends from my Marketing Ops days. And Wednesday Women SHOWED UP. ☕️Our Coffee & Conversation with Naida Vikalo brought together this incredible group of women you see in that first photo (and of course you know we didn’t take the picture until a third of the people left 🤦🏻♀️). What I loved even more was what happened afterward. Women kept coming up to me at our booth and around the conference to tell me how much they enjoyed it, who they met and how glad they were that the space existed. Yes, I said it….we had a BOOTH. 💜 Beatriz D. came and hung out with me. I got some wonderful time with Beth Rudden, Dominique Walter and Kim Kelley. And when one of our longtime partners, Sendoso, sent Pragathi S., one of their developers, over to find me and say hello? That was pretty cool. Of course, we had Brandi Rollins, photograph our activation and was walking around with an official PRESS & MEDIA badge. I ✨MAY✨ have been disproportionately excited about the fact that Wednesday Women had press credentials. 😂 What I keep thinking about, though, is that we didn’t have to change what Wednesday Women does to fit into a technical conference. We brought what we do. We created a place for women to find each other, have real conversations, make new connections and feel like there was a space intentionally created for them. And they found us. Thank you to WeAreDevelopers, Naida Vikalo, Christina Schaireiter, Josh Shulman, and Clemens Bauer for believing there should be more women in these rooms and inviting Wednesday Women to help make that happen. This one was different. And I loved it. P.S. For those following along, the foot made it. 😂
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisI came back from UNBOUND with 3 pages of notes and one big realization. The best partnerships aren't built in a pitch deck. They're built in those hallway conversations. 🧵 Here's what stood out from 3 days at UNBOUND: 1. Partners want to build a practice on top of you, not just resell you. The strongest conversations were about enablement, co-selling, and what we can build together, not just referral fees. Brainstorming with my longtime friend Christi Williams was an eye-opening conversation. 💡 2. The "unexpected lesson" story I almost skipped the side events at Unbound. Glad I didn't. One 20-minute conversation over coffee changed how I think about partner-led growth and co-selling at JustCall. Here's what I learned: Partners want to optimise for revenue and outcomes over sourced pipeline! 3. The real value is the people. Shoutout to Matthew Ziemba, Derik Savage, Anthony M. Ward and Adam Judd for the conversations that made the trip worth it. Yamini Rangan rise from HubSpot first Chief Customer Officer to CEO is a reminder that the best growth strategies start with the customer and scale through partners. Huge congratulations to Jatin Chhabra on being named one of the top 5 contestants representing 🇮🇳 India on the global stage, competing among 4,000+ HubSpot agencies! 👏 Also, great meeting Kyle Poyar - looking forward to a stronger partnership 🤝 What was your biggest takeaway from Unbound? 👇 #Unbound #Partnerships #SaaS
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisThis month at Hubspot Unbound, I sat down with Michael Hartman, Stage 2 Capital LP and Head of Enterprise Americas at Anthropic. Here’s what stuck out to me from our conversation: ** Humans will remain in the loop in sales - not simply because of what people can do, but because of what people must own. Humans will ultimately be accountable for decisions and outcomes, and that accountability is a critical reason the human role will endure. ** AI won’t eliminate human jobs so much as it will eliminate human-only jobs. Every role is moving toward some form of human–AI collaboration. ** Don’t wait for your company or school to teach you how to work with AI. Be proactive. Tinker, experiment, and learn on your own. That initiative will set you apart and help you stay near the frontier as it continues to move. ** Anthropic’s go-to-market team operates with a hybrid of traditional SaaS tools and newer AI-native applications, while still encouraging bottom-up innovation around new agents and skills. The optimal design is to continue to empower frontline employees to design skills and agents for themselves. But investing aggressively in counterbalancing operations to manage spend, identify redundancies, and assessing where new tools genuinely create efficiency. **Place greater weight on prior domain experience, creating stronger peer-to-peer connections between customer success teams and their customers, and taking ownership of the outcome, not merely the implementation. If you’re a Stage 2 LP or founder, Michael joins us again on November 10 at the Stage 2 Summit in Redwood City. If you haven’t signed up yet, now’s the time.
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisAfter taking some time to have fun with family and friends and think carefully about what I wanted to do next, I recently joined Delinea as CFO — and I feel great about where I landed. What drew me to Delinea was a combination of the people, the business, and what I think is a particularly interesting time in the market. Companies need to protect themselves against new AI-driven threats while also figuring out how to adopt AI quickly and securely. Delinea helps solve both challenges. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Art Gilliland and the Delinea team over the past few months, and I’m looking forward to building alongside them. I’m grateful to Art and TPG for the opportunity and excited to get to work!
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisI'm at OpenAI's DevDay today, and it was just announced that HubSpot is now part of the new OpenAI Marketplace. This is exciting because it means that if you already have spend committed with OpenAI, you can now put that toward HubSpot, too. This builds on what we've already done with OpenAI. HubSpot was the first CRM plugin in ChatGPT and then we built the first CRM integration for ChatGPT Ads. And now businesses can better manage their spend while getting value out of both HubSpot and ChatGPT. The point of all of it is the same. Wherever you're working, you should have your full HubSpot context with you. Here’s where you can learn more about it: https://lnkd.in/gqG9baGa
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Yamini Rangan liked thisYamini Rangan liked thisWorking with Sarah Friar is one of my career highlights and I’m lucky to count her as a friend. So glad we could bring her to The Next Seat for a fireside chat with me and Gina Mastantuono. It was an incredible hour and while it’s impossible to capture all the insights she shared, here are a few things I'll be thinking about for a long time: • Strategy without finance is toothless, and finance without strategy is directionless: Without the budget you can't get it done, and without the strategy you can’t know what to fund. Holding both is what puts the CFO in every room. • On AI ROI: don't measure too early. In the experimental phase, being too ROI-focused crushes the thing before people have really understood it. After that, get specific: pick a task you can actually cost today, rebuild it with AI, compare the two, then ask how many other tasks look like that one. • Create space in your days to have peripheral vision. If you show up with blinkers on and just work through the tasks, you never break out. Sarah also makes a point of being the least expert person in the room on purpose, fully willing to sound naive. You can tell people to be curious all you want, but if they don't see you doing it, they won't. Sarah opened the hour by saying the moment you get a seat at the table, the first thing you do is stand up, turn around, and pull someone else up beside you. That's what we're building for the next generation of finance professionals here at The Next Seat. More to come.
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