As Hubspot celebrates its 15th birthday, (9 June), Dharmesh Shah shared 15 things he has learned along the way one for every year.

Dharmesh has been a frequent speaker at Business of Software over the years. Just as Joel Spolsky’s news last week prompted us to take a look at some of the talks that showed how his thinking has evolved over the years, Dharmesh’s give an insight into how his learning as an entrepreneur has grown as his baby Hubspot has too.

From insights around MIT, through building better businesses, successful businesses, big ass businesses, great businesses, you can see the trajectory of the company and the entrepreneur… This will be a business school case study one day.

Here are some of the highlights…

Hat tip to Taylor McKnight, Founder of Virtual Events platform Emamo, who in the process of building his new website discovered the most active participant in virtual events in history. Just for fun and as a lesson in why stock photos are not a very good idea for your website…

She gets everywhere! Have you met her yet?

Joel Spolsky, founder of FogCreek, Trello, Stack Overflow, HASH – and, with Neil Davidson, one of the original movers behind a thing called Business of Software Conference, announced that Stack Overflow has been acquired by Prosus, a European private equity firm that is the largest shareholder in Tencent, for $1.8 billion.

Congratulations to the team for another notable exit. Don’t forget, Trello was a FogCreek production that was purchased by Atlassian – you can hear the story behind how they almost messed up Trello here…

Most BoS supporters tend to be relatively large companies. Where by “relatively large” we mean more than two people.

Not so for Software Promotions. One of the things that sets them apart, and proudly so, is that they’re only two people — and they have no plans on ever changing that.

They believe this what has kept many of their clients with them for years.

What do they do? Well, they promote software. Check out Dave’s talk from 2016 to learn why and how they do this differently and come join them at BoS Conf Online Spring on the 26th and 27th of April.

Jason VandeBoom will be speaking at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: Inflection Points on a Journey from Side Hustle to 1,000 People.

Jason is the founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign. He went against a lot of traditional advice for startups: staying in your lane; not going after big companies as your first customers; treating customer support as a cost centre…

Those unorthodox decisions have been key to the growth of ActiveCampaign.

IQ Capital invests £0.5-10m at Seed and Series A in disruptive UK-based tech companies capable of dominating global markets.

This year we’re excited to welcome them as BoS Conf Online supporters and, of course, as conference participants themselves. Naturally this means that attending BoS Conf Spring in April is a great way of getting to know some of the UK’s leading tech VCs.

Rich Mirinov will be leading a breakout session at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April.

Rich is a seasoned executive and serial entrepreneur – he has been the ‘product guy’ (as CEO/VP Product) at six startups. With deep technical roots in B2B infrastructure, SaaS and consumer online, Rich combines ‘what-we-can-build’ with ‘what-markets-want’.

In his breakout discussion he will help you solve your gnarliest product problems through an open and engaging Q&A approach.

BoS regulars will be familiar with Balsamiq and their CEO Peldi. In fact, for most of us, it would be a surprise not to see him at a BoS event.

We’re therefore delighted to announce that Balsamiq are once again supporting BoS in 2021 because Balsamiq and Peldi embody our values and what we believe make software companies great: a unique founder story, a successful product, and a willingness to share and give back to the community.

In 2016 Rob Castaneda, CEO of ServiceRocket, spoke about the three mistakes he made that almost killed his company. Rob never took funding and built ServiceRocket from his bedroom in Sydney to an operation in four countries employing over 200 people.

ServiceRocket is now joining many other companies in supporting this year’s Business of Software Spring Conference.

Joe Leech will be leading a breakout session at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: “Why Don’t Your Customers Care About Your Website?”

Business of Software is a paid conference with limited sponsorship. We focus on delivering value to our customers – the attendees. We know this means not everyone who would like to can afford the cost of attendance.

We’re delighted and grateful that the lovely people at Balsamiq Wireframes, Kevel, ServiceRocket, IQ Capital and Software Promotions are supporting us and the scholarship program to offer a helping hand.

Update: And to the kind generosity of BoS Mensch Dharmesh Shah…

Apply Here Now.

Asia Orangio will be leading a breakout session at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: “How Founders Can Get Better at Marketing.”

If the open Q&A session we had with Asia a few weeks ago is anything to by (it is) then you won’t want to miss this session.

As founder and CEO of DemandMaven Asia helps CEOs and founders make sense of marketing and focus on things that count and she now also serves on the board of directors for Moz.

Sahil Lavingia will be speaking at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: “The Pros and Cons of Setting Your Own Goals as an Entrepreneur.”

Venture-backed or independent? That’s a question many founders and entrepreneurs have to answer when they start a software company. (And a highly charged topic for many.)

Sahil is one of the few entrepreneurs who’s gone down both paths, with the same company. After taking angel and venture funding for his company he radically rethought the goals and purpose of his company and pivoted back to an independent business.

We’re therefore delighted to welcome Sahil, founder and CEO of Gumroad, as a first-time BoS speaker to share his unique experiences with us.

BoS regulars will know that James Avery recently renamed Adzerk as Kevel, raised $11 million to grow the company, and had a very frank and enlightening conversation with Mark.

You should also know that this year Kevel will be supporting (and attending) the Business of Software Spring Conference on the 26th and 27th of April.

Gareth Marlow will be leading a breakout session at BoS Conf Spring.Online 26-27 April on the topic: “Entrepreneurs Anonymous: Scaling a Tech Business is Hard.”

If you’ve ever worked with someone you didn’t trust, you will know how hard it can be to get even simple things done. Let alone taking big decisions.

Even harder is trying to deal with that alone.

In his session, Gareth will create a safe and welcoming space where entrepreneurs can work through difficult problems with peers who are attempting to navigate similar issues.