Is HubSpot effectively adapting to the AI era with its new growth framework?
👨‍🏫 The “Loop” was advertised during the INBOUND 2025 event with the 4 core stages, and my first take of the tl;dr recap was a big “sigh” in trying to reinvent something that worked, but no longer does.
The funnel and smarketing principles from the early HubSpot inbound sessions of 2013-2014 were groundbreaking at the time.
Just completed “The Sales Acceleration Formula” by Mark Roberge, HubSpot’s 4th hire and the IT engineer who built their entire sales motion from $1M to $100M.
🤔 HubSpot’s core team is extremely inventive and capable of making rapid pivots. However, it doesn’t mean that the current value proposition is necessarily aligned with market needs today – and the current playbook may be perceived as a churn-reducing session, or one designed to buy some time for a proper pivot.
Mainly, HubSpot has been revolving on inbound, content, funnels (later, flywheels), primarily focused on owned properties and data you can control. The support system and content/CMS hubs were meant to solve that.
What Yamini Rangan reminded us in the talk is the rising importance (for years) of social, podcasts, newsletters, and the increased investments by HubSpot in their own networks and portfolios in that arena. “My First Million”, one of the top-rated business podcasts, is also within their network.
Meanwhile, Dharmesh Shah has been one of the loudest proponents of the AI pivot, and his Agent.ai “build in public” evolution over the past year appears like a massive focus. Not surprised by the MCP integrations for interacting with HubSpot through a simplified interface, either.
👉 But my key takeaways here – and just halfway positive, even as a HubSpot agency partner on the DevriX side, and investing in $HUBS (which is down 29.53% year to date) – are:
1. HubSpot is trying to reinvent itself in the era of AI
2. The current Loop playbook isn’t far too different from what businesses have been scraping to do since the HCU update of Sep 2023, and AI Overviews after
3. The role of CRMs is being questioned today (Salesforce, Monday, and others are down, too) – especially if traffic to owned properties is down
4. Some old-school strategies around PR and brand mentions (not link-building) matter more than ever
5. Optimizing for visibility, not traffic and identification
6. “Enrich with intent signals” from this slide is critical
This playbook needs more work than what meets the eye – as our own DevriX playbooks include a handful of other critical areas.
What would a one-pager look like in B2B in 2026?
