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Crunchbase data helps HubSpot for Startups identify, verify and prioritize high-potential startups — enabling a more data-driven motion and growing the program’s share of HubSpot’s install base.
HubSpot is an agentic customer platform that helps businesses grow by unifying marketing, sales, service and operations on a single system. Companies use HubSpot to attract customers, manage relationships and scale their go-to-market strategies as they grow.
Through HubSpot for Startups, the company extends that platform to early-stage companies by offering significant product discounts, educational resources and support designed specifically for startups. The program partners with accelerators, incubators and venture capital firms around the world to help founders adopt modern go-to-market tools earlier in their growth journey.
Today, HubSpot for Startups represents a growing pipeline of future HubSpot customers.
In its early years, HubSpot for Startups grew primarily through partnerships. These partnerships provided valuable entry points into founder ecosystems and helped the program gain early traction.
But this model also had limitations.
Once the most visible partner networks were established, it became harder to identify new opportunities at scale. The team needed a better way to discover startups outside existing relationships, determine which companies qualified for the program, and prioritize internal resources for the startups most likely to succeed.
At the same time, the team faced another challenge: evaluating startup potential when near-term revenue signals were misleading.
Early-stage companies often lack clear signals, making it difficult to assess their long-term potential and distinguish high-growth startups from their peers. While this is a common challenge in the private market, it became especially important for HubSpot as they looked to identify which companies were most likely to scale and warrant additional support from their program.
To address these challenges, HubSpot for Startups integrated Crunchbase data into multiple parts of its motion. Crunchbase quickly became the foundational layer in how the team identifies, evaluates and engages startups.
Today, Crunchbase supports several critical workflows across the program.
One of HubSpot for Startup’s early use cases for Crunchbase was revisiting startup opportunities where the timing hadn’t been right. Many companies had shown interest but paused due to timing, budget, or fundraising cycles.
With Crunchbase, the team could quickly see which of those companies had since raised funding or entered a new stage of growth — strong signals that buying power and priorities had shifted, reopening the door to meaningful conversations.
Crunchbase also helped HubSpot for Startups personalize outreach by providing context about startup funding and investor relationships.
Because Crunchbase links companies to funding rounds and investors, the team could match startups in its CRM to known partner ecosystems and tailor outreach accordingly.
HubSpot for Startups leveraged Crunchbase data to identify meaningful company signals they could weave into outreach, helping their messaging stand out. With trusted data like investor backing or accelerator relationships, the team could clearly articulate why a startup qualified for the program and the value it would receive. That level of personalization helped the team engage startups with greater relevance and credibility.
One of the most impactful uses of Crunchbase came when the team integrated the data into the startup application process.
Previously, eligibility decisions relied heavily on partner referrals and information provided during the application itself. While effective early on, the model left limited visibility into a company’s broader context and stage of growth.
By incorporating Crunchbase data directly into the review process, the Hubspot for Startups team can validate applications in real-time, also opening the program to venture-backed startups who may not have raised funding through a partner.
HubSpot for Startups also uses Crunchbase to allocate sales and customer success resources more effectively.
Funding data and firmographic context give HubSpot for Startups a clearer view of which startups are likely to grow. The team uses these signals to segment startups by maturity — such as seed versus Series A — and route them into different sales playbooks and support models.
By revealing which startups have the highest potential to scale, Crunchbase helps HubSpot prioritize where to deliver more tailored onboarding and support.
By integrating Crunchbase into its startup strategy, HubSpot for Startups transformed the program from a largely partnership-driven initiative into a more scalable, data-driven growth engine.
Crunchbase now serves as the backbone of the team’s third-party data strategy, helping HubSpot for Startups:
Crunchbase’s breadth and depth of company data — including funding history, investor insights and firmographic information — gives the team the context it needs to make more informed decisions across the startup lifecycle.
The impact is visible in the program’s growth, accelerating the install rates among startup program members.
That growth reflects a shift toward a more scalable operating model — one where Crunchbase helps HubSpot for Startups identify the startups most likely to succeed and invest in them earlier.
By identifying startups that are likely to raise funding or transition from seed to Series A, Crunchbase’s predictions could help HubSpot for Startups prioritize engagement with founders at the moment they begin investing more heavily in sales and marketing infrastructure.
"We're giving GTM teams...the chance to move earlier, act smarter, and stand out."
“Crunchbase provides a dataset of startup and funding data which constitutes the backbone of what we do.”
“Before using Crunchbase, we didn’t have visibility into which companies were actively raising or growing. Now, we can spot funding activity early and move faster on high-potential leads.”
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