Brian Halligan (above) and Dharmesh Shah, founders of inbound marketing pioneer HubSpot, rang the bell to open the New York Stock Exchange this morning and watched 5 million shares of the company go off at $25 per share.
The Cambridge, MA-based company’s initital public offering would raise $125 million at that price, which rose from an initial range of $19-$21 following demand exhibited by investors yesterday. HubSpot shares will trade under the symbol “HUBS.”
“Though this has been a long journey, we feel we’re at the starting line right now,” said HubSpot CMO Mike Volpe. “We really believe that the way people research and buy products has changed, and millions of companies need to change how they do marketing.”
Halligan and Shah have long considered their company one of the standard bearers of Boston’s considerable tech community. At an industry conference in 2012, Halligan boasted that Silicon Valley would have to compete with the heirs of Route 128 for the future of the marketing industry. The IPO is a booming salvo in the battle for territory that is just beginning to be explored.
“This IPO serves to remind us how big and untapped this market really is,” commented Raghu Raghavan, CEO of marketing automation provider Act-On. “In North America alone, there are well over a million organizations in need of marketing automation, and HubSpot and Marketo between them address less than 2% of this market.”
With the public offering, HubSpot figures to be in the front lines. “There are now lots of options available for us for growth,” said Volpe.
