Brian Halligan

Halligan was born in Westwood, Massachusetts, and grew up and attended public schools in Westwood, Massachusetts. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont in 1990 and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management in 2005.

His career began at Parametric Technology Corporation in several roles leading up to senior vice president of the Pacific Rim. Wanting to work in a smaller company, he joined Groove Networks as vice president of sales, where he worked from 2000 to 2004 before it was acquired by Microsoft and rebranded as Microsoft SharePoint Workspace.

After a period as a venture partner at Longworth Ventures, he co-founded HubSpot in June 2006. In HubSpot's 2022 Year In Review, the company reported $1.731 billion in total revenue and 5,895 employees with headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and offices in Dublin, Ireland (EMEA HQ), Berlin, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Japan, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and San Francisco. He credits the company's success, in part, to innovations like the "Alpha, Beta, Version One" policy, in which employees begin proving their ideas might profit the company "nights and weekends" (the alpha phase) before receiving additional resources (the beta and version one phases). He stepped down as CEO of HubSpot after being injured in a snowmobile accident in 2021.

He is a senior lecturer at MIT teaching "Designing, Developing, and Launching Successful Products in an Entrepreneurial Environment". He previously taught "Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures" at MIT.

Halligan is a corporation member of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. From 2014 to 2016, Halligan served on the board of directors of Fleetmatics until it was acquired by Verizon.

In 2022 Halligan also founded Propeller Ventures and directs a $100 million climate tech venture fund specializing in ocean innovation investments. Brian is also a senior advisor at Sequoia Capital where he coaches startup founders.