Brian Halligan
As a General Partner at Propeller, Brian pioneered our partnership with WHOI, led fundraising and fund strategy, is the lead lecturer for the Ocean MBA, and is the ultimate CEO coach to our portfolio founders. He currently sits on the board of Aquatic Labs and is an independent board director for Navier.
Brian is the co-founder and executive chairperson of HubSpot, a CRM platform with over $2 billion in revenue over 100,000 customers. It is public and trades on the NYSE. He served as the company's CEO until 2021. During this time, he earned consistent recognition on Glassdoor and Comparably’s lists of Best CEOs.
Brian coined the term "inbound marketing" and together with Dharmesh Shah built a movement around the concept, which included organizing the Inbound conference and co-authoring the book Inbound Marketing.
Prior to HubSpot, Brian earned an MBA from MIT's Sloan School where he continues to stay involved. Brian developed MIT’s popular Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures class, which he has taught for over a decade. In recognition of his outstanding mentorship in entrepreneurship, MIT Sloan honored Brian with the Monosson Prize in 2023. In addition to teaching on the topic of scaling, Brian tweets, writes, presents, and talks on the topic often.
A passionate fan and scholar of the Grateful Dead, Brian co-wrote Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead with Bill Walton and David Meerman Scott. As the proud owner and steward of Jerry Garcia's Wolf guitar, he continues to honor the legacy of the iconic band. Currently, Brian is working on a film that explores the life and times of John Perry Barlow. He is also a co-author of an upcoming Harvard Business Review case study on the Grateful Dead.
Brian started his career with a BSEE from the University of Vermont. He was an early employee at PTC and rose to become an SVP of Sales there over a 10 year span. Then he ran sales at Groove Networks, which was later acquired by Microsoft. He was also a venture partner at Longworth Ventures.
