It’s not often I write a blog post about a specific individual, but this guy deserves a special public shout-out.

Our co-founder and CEO, Brian Halligan, is awesome.  There are many ways in which he’s awesome, and it’s been acknowledged with assorted awards, but this post is about two specific reasons not often mentioned.

One is that Brian is willing to trust people with things he doesn’t fully grok right away, and give them the freedom to experiment and innovate.  This is more rare than it sounds.  Most CEOs I’ve known are too arrogant, or too afraid of looking clueless, if they allow things they don’t fully understand to go on.  Brian, on the other hand, looks to hire smart people, trust them, and work together with them as everyone grows.  This is great.

Two is that although Brian has a vision for HubSpot, and he largely created that vision with Dharmesh, he’s not afraid to see it change.  He’s humble enough to evolve with time, modify the vision, adjust, innovate, and grow.  This, too, is rare and appreciated.

My new(ish) team at HubSpot, the Platform team, would not be possible without both of these personality traits in our CEO.  It’s an expensive team with a bunch of good folks, doing work whose impact is in the long-term.  Sometimes it’s hard to tie our work to immediate goals, whether they are sales goals or otherwise.  But Brian has had faith, patience, and the ability to change and adjust.

The winners are our customers, first and foremost, but also our employees.  This blog post summarizes one of my top, most important reasons for joining HubSpot, for staying here, and for recruiting other friends and colleagues.

I hope you’re lucky enough to work for a CEO as clueful as Halligan in your professional career.  They’re rare.

Thanks, Brian!