Learn how we advertise.go viral.content market.use webinars.get customers. Follow along with us as we share everything that works and fails to grow Hubstaff. The Story of Hubstaff 2011-06-15Why We Built Hubstaff: Personal Pain and a Need to Be Free0 Customers / $0 MRRThe deeply personal story of how Hubstaff came to be and why we do what we do. Includes our core values, why we exist, and where we are going. Must read for anyone that wants to know Hubstaff on a deep level. Read post Never miss an update.Follow our story by subscribing to the Hubstaff blog. 2011-12-5How to Test your Startup Idea Before you Build0 Customers / $0 MRRHere’s a quick list of tests to think about before you embark on the long journey of building a startup. Read post 2012-2-1How I Used LinkedIn to Find a Technical Co-Founder0 Customers / $0 MRRA breakdown of Dave’s journey of finding and pitching to Hubstaff’s technical co-founder, Jared Brown. Filled with tips and tricks for those seeking a business partner. Read post First Paying Customer 2013-11-27Acquiring Early Adopters: How Hubstaff Got Its First 2525 Customers / $1,222 MRRWhen we first launched Hubstaff, it was important for us to get feedback on the experience. That’s why we searched far and wide for early users. We tried inbound marketing, reaching out in person, paid ads and more. Here’s what worked and what didn’t. Read post 2014-01-3How we Determine the Real Priorities in our Startup99 Customers / $3,637 MRRThere are thousands of things to work on. Which tasks get attention vs. the hold button. Read post 2014-02-22Our Big Free Plan Mistake: Why Giving it Away Didn't Work122 Customers / $5,748 MRRRead about Hubstaff’s failed attempt at offering a three-user free plan. Learn what we discovered and why we don’t offer it anymore. Read post 2014-04-23High Quality Content: How it helps us automatically drive laser targeted leads239 Customers / $7,292 MRRContent marketing keeps our communication efforts laser-focused on quality leads. Learn how we create and leverage the excellent content we showcase to drive leads and get sales. Read post 250 Customers / $7,373 MRR 2014-08-06How to Evaluate Market Size and Pricing388 Customers / $11,566 MRRHow and why to evaluate market size, product pricing, and your customers BEFORE starting your business. Read post 2014-10-02Where we Invest and Why496 Customers / $14,295 MRRWe decided to invest our money back into software instead of into marketing. Here’s why. Read post 500 Customers / $14,224 MRR 2015-1-22Software that helps us Grow Hubstaff694 Customers / $20,143 MRRWe use third party software whenever we can. Here are the systems we use and how we use them. Read post 750 Customers / $21,959 MRR 2015-4-20How We Used Buffer to Boost Our Social Traffic by 350%964 Customers / $28,725 MRRIn order to increase our social media growth and take full advantage of Buffer, we developed a few strategies that resulted in overwhelming success. Read post 1000 Customers / $29,590 MRR 2015-5-6The Decision to Embrace Revenue Transparency at Hubstaff1026 Customers / $29,920 MRRThe decision to embrace revenue transparency at Hubstaff was long discussed and extensively analyzed. Ultimately, we decided to go transparent down to the core of our business. Read post 2015-6-10Virtual Employees: How We Find and Hire the Best1131 Customers / $35,658 MRRIf we’re going to build our virtual startup to $1 million in MRR and beyond, we need to have an all-star team on board. Here’s our process for finding and hiring our awesome virtual team members. Read post 1250 Customers / $40,039 MRR 2015-7-27How We Built and Manage a Successful Remote Company1,336 Customers / $43,611 MRRSince the inception of Hubstaff, we understood the kind of team we wanted to create. This post goes over how we built our successful virtual team, management strategies, communication tools and why we think 9 to 5 is dead. Read post 1500 Customers / $47,053 MRR 2015-8-19Paying Independent Contractors1,592 Customers / $47,176 MRROnce we started working with independent contractors, it was of the utmost importance to find a solution that allowed us to pay them in a fair and efficient way. Here is what we learned. Read post 2015-8-24Entrepreneurial Mindset: Setting the record straight1,611 Customers / $47,739 MRRThere are a lot of things I didn’t expect when becoming an entrepreneur. Here are a few unexpected challenges and the mindset I’ve had to develop to get over them. Read post 2015-9-7What I’ve learned from 10 years of remote team management1,685 Customers / $50,920 MRRI spent 10 years and counting refining team management in virtual teams. I’m sharing the actionable steps and useful tips I learned in this post. Read post 2000 Customers / $61,329 MRR 2016-2-1The Full Guide to Scaling Your Business with Virtual Assistants2,186 Customers / $68,404 MRRI built 3 multi-million dollar businesses with outsourced teams, and in this post, I’m going to lay out exactly how we do it the right way. Read post 2250 Customers / $76,787 MRR 2016-3-7Why Bootstrapping Our Startup Was One of the Best Decisions We Ever Made2,268 Customers / $77,315 MRRAn in-depth look at why we choose to retain ownership of Hubstaff and remain bootstrapped instead of accepting investment offers. Read post 2016-4-4We dumped MailChimp. Here’s how we picked our new email marketing platform2,362 Customers / $81,341 MRRWe love MailChimp, but decided we needed something more robust. See what spurred our decision to change email marketing platforms and how we chose a winner. Read post 2016-5-2What I Learned Starting, Buying, and Selling 3 Businesses2,485 Customers / $86,382 MRRI don’t care about building a unicorn, and you shouldn’t either. This guide covers what every entrepreneur should know about buying and selling businesses, based on my personal experiences growing businesses to millions in annual revenue. Read post 2500 Customers / $88,261 MRR 2016-5-31Revising Our Social Media Content Strategy Boosted Visits by 230%2,655 Customers / $94,589 MRROur social media profiles went from a no-mans land to having a dedicated social media manager. Learn how humanizing our brand earned us more engagement and smiles. Read post 2016-6-6The Blog Post Checklist We Use to Publish Great Content Every Time2,652 Customers / $95,623 MRRMany of Hubstaff’s marketing channels depend on content to achieve their goals. Here’s how we ensure great content is produced every time. Read post 2750 Customers / $98,716 MRR 2016-7-5How to Manage Remote Teams: We Uncover the System That Lets Us Grow 10% Each Month2,809 Customers / $101,000 MRRDave Nevogt hired his first employee when he was 23 and didn’t know what he was doing. In this post he shares the system he has developed since then to manage an entirely remote team of superstars who helps Hubstaff grow 10 percent each month. Read post 2016-8-1The Secret of Our Growth: Successful Integration Partnerships2,959 Customers / $109,000 MRROur partners’ successes are our successes. We share how and why we invest so much time to build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with our integration partners. Read post 3000 Customers / $112,000 MRR 2016-8-15How To Build And Scale A Curated Newsletter In 5 Easy Steps3,020 Customers / $112,000 MRRWe built a curated newsletter that got 213 subscribers within 2 months after the first issue. This is the journey of how we did it and why we pulled the plug on it. Read post 2016-8-29Is Paid Acquisition Worth It? Lessons Learned at Hubstaff3,155 Customers / $117,000 MRRWe’ve experimented across a number of different channels to see what works best for our business. This post contains examples of the campaigns we’ve used, the channels we’ve explored, and the results we’ve generated. Read post 2016-9-12The SaaS Free Trial Is Essential to the Success of Our Startup. Here’s What We’re Doing to Improve It3,202 Customers / $120,000 MRROur free trial has been crucial to the success of our SaaS. We go over what worked to convert our trial users into paying customers. Read post 2016-9-19Content Marketing ROI: How We Measure Success at Hubstaff3,230 Customers / $121,000 MRRMeasuring content marketing ROI can be challenging but without doing so you’ll never truly know if your strategy is working. Here is our process for measuring the ROI for content marketing. Read post 3250 Customers / $125,000 MRR 2016-9-26Developing Marketing Strategies: The Effective 7-Step Process We Use at Hubstaff3,286 Customers / $125,000 MRR Finding the right way to build a sustainable marketing strategy isn’t exactly easy. After some trials and errors we created a proven 7-step system for developing effective marketing strategies. Read post 2016-10-3Marketing Trumps Sales: How We Built a Million Dollar Business Without Selling3,310 Customers / $126,000 MRR At Hubstaff, we’ve grown a million dollar company focusing on marketing, not sales. Find out why we’ve invested heavily on inbound marketing and what we’re doing to see results. Read post 2016-10-17The Super-Detailed Guide to Setting Up an Editorial Calendar3,387 Customers / $128,000 MRRPublishing useful and engaging content is a top priority for marketers from all fields today but nobody said doing it is easy. Learn how to take back control with this detailed guide on how to set up a content calendar. Read post 2016-10-24Lessons in App Store Optimization: How We Launched Hubstaff's Mobile Apps3,398 Customers / $128,000 MRR Optimizing for app stores is quickly becoming one of the most wanted marketing skills. Learn more about our strategy for app optimization. Read post 3500 Customers / $137,000 MRR 2016-12-12How We Use Webinars to Make Free Trial Users 2x More Likely to Convert3,600 Customers / $137,000 MRR If you want to connect with a large number of prospects of customers online, there’s no better way to do it than with a webinar. Here is our strategy from start to finish. Read post 2016-12-19The 7-Step Process We Use to Grow and Convert Organic Traffic3,686 Customers / $140,000 MRR Discover our highly effective 7-step process for growing our traffic and converting viewers into customers. Read post Keep up with our growth story.Subscribe to the Hubstaff blog and get insights sent right to your inbox. 2016-12-27How Trust 'Just Happens' Inside Our Remote Team of 253,726 Customers / $141,000 MRR Trust is a common theme when it comes to remote teams but trust in remote teams isn’t really something you build. It’s something that just happens when you focus on putting the right systems in place. Discover how trust just happens for us. Read post 2017-1-9The 8-Step Process We Used to Start a Successful Podcast3,773 Customers / $144,023 MRR A year since launching, we’ve published 57 episodes of the podcast, it has been downloaded tens of thousands of times, and it’s consistently delivering actionable content to a core segment of our target market. Read post 2017-1-3143 Lessons Learned from Growing Three Startups from Zero to $1M+3,915 Customers / $152,000 MRR In this post, I review the most significant lessons I’ve learned from growing three startups from zero to over a million (including Hubstaff). Read post 10886 Customers / $636,008 MRR 2020-4-01Everything You Need to Know About Leading Remote Teams10,886 Customers / $636,008 MRR I’ve been leading Hubstaff’s remote team for the past nine years. Here’s what I’ve learned about being an effective remote leader. Read post 2020-5-14A Day in the Life of a Startup CEO11,500 Customers / $701,357 MRR My day has changed drastically over the years as we’ve gone from 1 to 86 team members. Some routines I’ve followed since the beginning. Here’s what a day looks like for a startup CEO. Read post 14,000 Customers / $1,001,300 MRR 2020-5-14Startup Ground Zero: What I Wish I Had Known Then14,500 Customers / $1,086,899 MRR Now that we’ve reached $1MM in monthly recurring revenue, one of the most common questions I hear is this: If you could start over again, what would you do differently? This article answers that question. Read post