Letter from the Editor

I'm a man of many strong opinions. As a professional creative, it's a quality that has been instrumental in shaping my career and personal brand. It's helped me as a director, podcaster, and writer. It's gotten me into my fair share of trouble with friends and loved ones (as you might imagine.) But I wouldn't have it any other way.

In my professional career, I have numerous examples of where following my gut has paid off. One that most recently comes to mind is related to my role at HubSpot, leading brand and content strategy for HubSpot for Startups. I lead efforts to produce our industry reports. These have been terrific lead-generators for us. We'd invest a decent amount in these reports, produce a PDF, and then require an email to download the report. It's a very common course of action to fill the sales funnel.

But my gut was telling me we needed to shift our strategy — produce web-based reports instead of PDFs, and remove the lead gate. As has often been the case in my career, it was an idea that took getting used to. It bucked the trend. But my gut was telling me that the content world was changing. We'd need to have this information more easily accessible and allow it to help boost search signals and ranking.

A year after first making my plea to go web-based and ungated, LLMs and Google's AI overview turned the SEO world upside down. Traffic on many sites was decimated. A key part of an effective content marketing strategy now must include getting cited in LLMs. And you know what gets cited frequently in LLMs? Info-rich, web-based reports.

It's now something we're trying. But who knows how much further we'd be ahead of the game had we started earlier. But the strategy we've taken to keep our content largely available and targeted has paid off. Where many sites have seen traffic drops of as much as 50 to even 80%, the HubSpot for Startups monthly traffic numbers have dropped less than 10% YoY, and in a few months this year, they were even up 5 to 10%.

This month's theme is trusting in your gut. Whether it's Grant Lee and the team at Gamma believing they could take on Microsoft and Google with a superior presentation app; Ajay Kularni believing that Postgres back when those in the tech world thought it was an illogical technology to build a business around; or Rand Fishkin having a hunch that there was something fishy about Google's search algorithms and deciding to expose it. All successful startup founders will at some point be tested to follow their gut and go against the grain — and sometimes their own co-founders.

As 2025 comes to a close, and we embark on a new year, may you find the courage of your convictions to trust your gut and stake your claim, blaze your own trails, and succeed or fail on your terms.

Farewell

Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention that this will be my last Editor's Letter. By the time you read this, I will have trusted my gut again and embarked on a new adventure beyond HubSpot. My time here has been some of the most rewarding and fulfilling of my career. Not the least of which is conceiving, starting, and shepherding this magazine to bring you educational and insightful stories and lessons from some of the most inspiring founders and leaders around the globe. I leave the magazine in good hands, and as we celebrate our last issue of this year, please note the magazine will take a brief pause starting in January.

It's been a tremendous honor to serve this community.

Sincerely, Ron Dawson Executive Editor, Scaling Smarter Magazine