Jonathan Hunt leads owned media at HubSpot, where over three and a half years he has built one of the most ambitious in-house media operations in B2B software: 17 YouTube channels, six newsletters, and more than a thousand short-form clips a month, reaching over 50 million people every month. He staffed it with journalists from Axios, Business Insider, The Information, Morning Brew, and The Onion rather than software marketers, and built a bench of 150 creators HubSpot partners with monthly. The portfolio has grown through acquisitions including Starter Story and My First Million. He and the HubSpot team are publishing 'Loop Marketing' (Simon & Schuster) on September 22.
“We never try to meddle with the editorial because the concern there is that by meddling with the editorial, you then meddle with the audience. If you meddle with the audience, then you meddle with the trust.”
“The very worst thing you could do is buy something and then evaporate the trust overnight and have to write down that investment.”
“In a given month, we reach over 50 million people across our 17 YouTube channels and six newsletters.”
“There's always a human at the very start of something. And that's oftentimes where the originality, the tastes, the perspective, the lived experience comes from. You can't imitate that.”
“Nothing ever goes published until there's a human that actually says, this is good. And if they can't say, this is good, go back and they make it good.”
“That video is a transcript. That transcript can be turned into an audio podcast, can be turned into a newsletter, can be turned into a net new SEO or AEO blog post.”
“While it's very clear that LinkedIn is investing heavily and it's a video product, it's still not yet a video platform.”
“We've made a number of hires, like amazing hires from non-software and B2B companies, largely the Axioses and the BIs and the Informations and the Morning Brews and the Onions of the world — places that are known for great business content, but also not boring business content.”