Dharmesh Shah: Building a Successful Software Business

Dharmesh Shah is the founder and CTO of HubSpot, a venture-backed software company offering a hosted software service for inbound marketing. Prior to HubSpot, Dharmesh was the founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions. Pyramid was a three time recipient of the Inc. 500 award and was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. Dharmesh is also the author of OnStartups.com, a top-ranking startup blog with over 20,000 subscribers and 100,000 members in it’s online community. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the UAB and an M.S. in the Management of Technology from MIT.

Dharmesh is co-author of the recently released book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. The book has been in the Amazon Top 100 business books for 21 consecutive days.

Dharmesh is obsessed by code and making customers happy. In this talk at Business of Software 2010, Dharmesh talks about why venture capital is neither necessary, nor evil, how value is created, why user experience is EVERYTHING and how Hubspot developed its key metric, the ‘CHI’ – Customer Happiness Index.

Dharmesh Shah
Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah

Dharmesh Shah is co-founder and CTO of HubSpot, the NYSE listed inbound marketing platform with a market cap of over $7 billion and $590 million revenue in past year.

Prior to founding HubSpot in 2006, Dharmesh was founder and CEO of Pyramid Digital Solutions, which was acquired by SunGard Data Systems in 2005. Dharmesh is an active member of the Boston-area entrepreneurial community, an angel investor in over 60 startups, and writes about startups, inbound marketing, and company culture. Dharmesh holds a BS in Computer Science from UAB and an MS from MIT but learned everything he knows about the software business from his regular attendance at Business of Software Conference since the very first one!

More from Dharmesh.

Online workshops

New to AI in your business?
AI in Your Business: Where to Start
Set up your AI company OS. Two sessions, cohort of 12.
“I’ve been talking to it loads about positioning, sales framing, North Star metrics. I came up with a succinct statement that I really like.”
Marv Rance, InTouch
Register now Want to do it with just you? One-on-one option ›
Already set up your OS?
Building Your AI Company
Operating System
Not sure what to do next. Four weeks, cohort of 12, with Tim Barker and Mark Littlewood.
“I think about the business differently than I used to. I would never have come to that conclusion without this process.”
Stephen, cohort participant
Register now

Conference

BoS Conference attendees
In-person BoS Conference 2026
Date TBA ⌄
📅 Date TBA 📍 In-person

Two days with software founders and leaders who have actually built profitable businesses. No panels, no keynotes designed to impress. Talks that earned their place because the idea was worth the room’s time.

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