#45 HubSpot CEO, Yamini Rangan
A customer-facing journey to the C-suite
Welcome trailblazers! I’m Simi Shah, and in this newsletter, I dive into the journey of a South Asian trailblazer. Find us on Instagram, LinkedIn, Apple, and Spotify.
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Today’s Episode 🎧 Yamini Rangan, CEO @ HubSpot
In this episode, I welcome one of the most powerful women in business, Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot. HubSpot is a leading CRM platform and publicly-traded company.
Prior to becoming CEO, Yamini served as the company's first-ever Chief Customer Officer. In September 2021, she succeeded CEO Brian Halligan, the co-founder of HubSpot who had served as CEO for the 15 years since the company's inception. A tech industry veteran, Yamini has more than 25 years of experience ranging from product marketing, sales, and strategy.
She previously served as Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox, where she was responsible for embedding a customer focus across the organization. Before Dropbox, she served as the VP of sales strategy and operations at Workday and she held several customer-facing leadership roles at SAP. Yamini holds a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering, a Master's in Computer Engineering and an MBA from Berkeley. Today, she’s part of the growing cohort of South Asian CEOs. Episode excerpts below:
Teamwork makes the dream work. 💭 Working in teams and dealing with different types of people require flexibility, sensitivity, open-mindedness, and a collaborative mindset. In this video, McKinsey consultants reflect on key learnings about teamwork, applicable to any rising leader:
Simi: In September 2021, you succeeded Brian Halligan, one of the co-founders of HubSpot. He served as CEO for 15 years, and his co-founder, Dharmesh Shah, still serves as CTO. Was it daunting to succeed not only a founder of the business, but also someone with such extensive tenure at the company?
Yamini: Absolutely. One day, Brian called me and said, ‘I want to walk you through a presentation.’ First off, I was used to presenting to Brian. He never presented anything to me. But he actually walked me through this presentation — his thought process of how he got to recommending me for the CEO role. And I said, Brian, ‘Let me just go compose myself.’ I didn’t even give him an answer because I was so emotional. I was in tears.
When this happened, two things were top of mind. First, Brian and Dharmesh have created a culture, a community, and a company that is just beyond what everybody else asked. Brian is a visionary, mentor, and friend. I didn't want to lock myself into thinking that I could step into his shoes. So I said, ‘I'm not even going into that aisle. I'm going into a different aisle.’ Secondly, I was thinking about my path from having grown up in rural India, being lost in the world in my early years and then coming to this country with nothing more than a dream. This opportunity just flashed in front of me and I'm thinking, ‘No, no, no, I didn’t even aspire to this.’ So I think both of those feelings were just exceptionally overwhelming, but in those moments and over the next few days, what was very present was the need to do right by HubSpot. It wasn’t about, ‘Oh, what am I going to do? And what is my thing going to be for HubSpot?’ It was much more about, ‘What does HubSpot deserve in a leader and CEO over the next five years, over the next decade? How can I really be committed to a vision that is bigger than myself?’
Simi: You say you saw yourself becoming a senior manager, but you never imagined ascending to the C-suite, let alone the role of CEO at any company. But soon, you started climbing the ranks at SAP, Dropbox and beyond. When did the goal of C-suite leadership start to come into your peripheral vision and feel like a potential reality?
Yamini: Never. I wish I could say that somewhere along the path there was a goal to become a C-suite executive or a CEO. My goal was always to be the best at what I was doing. When I was in go-to-market, I wanted to be the best go-to-market value professional there was. When I was in strategy and operations, I wanted to be the best strategy and operations professional that I could be. When I did get the opportunity to become a Chief Customer Officer, I threw myself at becoming the best one at that. It was never about the next role or the title. It was about being the best in my current role. That learner’s mindset and humility — knowing that I needed to learn a lot more in my current role before aspiring for something bigger — kept me hungry and kept me humble.
Catch my full conversation with Yamini on Apple, Spotify, or our website!
Interview curated with the support of Trailblazers Fellow, Nikki Zinzuwadia.