HUBSPOT INC - Annual Report: 2020 (Form 10-K)

UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

FORM 10-K

(MARK ONE)

FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2020

OR

FOR THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM                      TO                     

Commission File Number 001-36680

HubSpot, Inc.

(Exact name of registrant as specified in its charter)

25 First Street

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02141

(Address of principal executive offices)

(888) 482-7768

(Registrant’s telephone number, including area code)

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act:

Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: None.

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is a well-known seasoned issuer, as defined in Rule 405 of the Securities Act.    YES   ☒     NO   ☐

Indicate by check mark if the registrant is not required to file reports pursuant to Section 13 or Section 15(d) of the Act.    YES   ☐     NO   ☒

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days.    YES   ☒     NO   ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has submitted electronically every Interactive Data File required to be submitted pursuant to Rule 405 of Regulation S-T (§232.405 of this chapter) during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to submit such files).    YES   ☒     NO   ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See the definitions of “large accelerated filer,” “accelerated filer,” “smaller reporting company,” and “emerging growth company” in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act:

If an emerging growth company, indicate by check mark if the Registrant has elected not to use the extended transition period for complying with any new or revised financial accounting standards provided pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act. ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant has filed a report on and attestation to its management’s assessment of the effectiveness of its internal controls over financial reporting under Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (15 U.S.C 7262(b)) by the registered public accounting firm that prepared or issued its audit report  YES   ☒     NO   ☐

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a shell company (as defined in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act).    YES   ☐     NO   ☒

The aggregate market value of common stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant, based on the closing price of the registrant’s common stock on June 30, 2020, as reported by the New York Stock Exchange on such date was approximately $9,621,952,510. Shares of the registrant’s common stock held by each executive officer, director and holder of 5% or more of the outstanding common stock have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This calculation does not reflect a determination that certain persons are affiliates of the registrant for any other purpose.

On February 12, 2021, the registrant had 46,335,184 shares of common stock outstanding.

DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE

Portions of the registrant’s definitive Proxy Statement for its 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders are incorporated by reference in Part III of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Such Proxy Statement will be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission within 120 days after the end of the fiscal year to which this report relates. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part of this Form 10-K.

HUBSPOT, INC.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and these statements involve substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are forward-looking statements.  Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements because they contain words such as “may,” “should,” “expects,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “could,” “intends,” “target,” “projects,” “contemplates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “predicts,” “potential” or “continue” or the negative of these words or other similar terms or expressions that concern our expectations, strategy, plans or intentions. Forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K include, but are not limited to, statements about:

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We caution you that the foregoing list may not contain all of the forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. We have based the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K primarily on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. The outcome of the events described in these forward-looking statements is subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors described in “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Moreover, we operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks and uncertainties emerge from time to time, and it is not possible for us to predict all risks and uncertainties that could have an impact on the forward-looking statements contained in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The results, events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements may not be achieved or occur, and actual results, events or circumstances could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K relate only to events as of the date on which the statements are made. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in this Annual Report on Form 10-K to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K or to reflect new information or the occurrence of unanticipated events, except as required by law.

We may not actually achieve the plans, intentions or expectations disclosed in our forward-looking statements and you should not place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements. Our forward-looking statements do not reflect the potential impact of any future acquisitions, mergers, dispositions, joint ventures or investments we may make.

In this Annual Report on Form 10-K, the terms “HubSpot,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refer to HubSpot, Inc. and its subsidiaries, unless the context indicates otherwise.

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Risk Factor Summary

The risk factors detailed in Item 1A entitled “Risk Factors” in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are the risks that we believe are material to our investors and a reader should carefully consider them. Those risks are not all of the risks we face and other factors not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also affect our business if they occur. The following is a summary of the risk factors detailed in Item 1A:

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PART 1

ITEM I. BUSINESS

Overview

We help scaling companies deliver a delightful customer experience through our cloud-based customer relationship management (“CRM”) Platform. Our CRM Platform includes marketing, sales, service, and content management system, (“CMS”), as well as other tools and integrations, that enable companies to attract, engage, and delight customers throughout the customer experience.  Additionally, we provide education, services and support to help customers be successful with our platform.

We focus on selling to mid-market business-to-business (“B2B”) companies, which we define as companies that have between 2 and 2,000 employees. We sell our CRM Platform on a subscription basis. In 2020, our total revenue was $883.0 million, and we incurred a net loss of $85.0 million.  As of December 31, 2020, we had 4,225 full-time employees and 103,994 total customers of varying sizes in more than 120 countries.  

Our company was formed as a limited liability company in Delaware on April 4, 2005. We converted to a Delaware corporation on June 7, 2007. Our principal executive offices are located at 25 First Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and our main telephone number is 888-482-7768.  Our website address is https://www.hubspot.com. Information contained on or that can be accessed through our website does not constitute part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and inclusions of our website address in this Annual Report on Form 10-K are inactive textual references only.  

The HubSpot Approach

Our CRM Platform features a central database of lead and customer interactions and integrated applications designed to help businesses attract visitors to their websites, convert visitors into leads, close leads into customers, and delight customers so they become promoters of those businesses.

Designed to Help Companies Grow Better. Our CRM Platform was architected from the ground up to enable businesses to transform their marketing, sales, services, and content management playbook to meet the demands of customers today.  Our CRM Platform includes both a system of record for maintaining a unified view of the customer experience and a system of engagement for efficiently engaging customers through search engine optimization (“SEO”), web content, social, blogging, email, marketing automation, messaging, support ticketing, knowledge base and more.

Ease of Use of a Single, Extensible Platform. We provide a set of integrated applications on a common platform, which offers businesses ease of use and simplicity. Our CRM Platform has one login, one user interface, one database, and one team for support. Our CRM Platform starts free and grows with our customers. It is designed to scale its power and technical sophistication without losing its ease-of-use. In addition to being a comprehensive suite itself, our CRM Platform seamlessly integrates with hundreds of external applications, making it easy to extend the functionality of our CRM Platform and customize it for any business.  

Power of a Unified Customer View. At the core of our CRM Platform is a single CRM database for each business that captures its lead and customer activity throughout the customer lifecycle. Our CRM Platform creates a unified timeline incorporating all the interactions with a particular customer. In contrast to many CRM suites which are cobbled together, HubSpot has a set of core functionalities, including reporting, content, messaging, data, and automation, which runs across our product lines, which we refer to as Hubs.

Scalability. Our CRM Platform was designed and built to serve a large number of customers with demanding use cases. Our CRM Platform currently processes billions of data points each week, and we use leading global cloud infrastructure providers and our own automation technology to dynamically allocate capacity to handle processing workloads of all sizes. We have built our CRM Platform on modern, scalable distributed technologies. We built the infrastructure to support hundreds of microservices and can easily add new features and capabilities to the CRM Platform. We utilize a variety of open-source distributed systems including HBase, Kafka, Vitess, and Elasticsearch to scale our data collection and processing. Our scalability gives us flexibility for future growth and enables us to service a large variety of businesses of different sizes across different industries.

Extensible and Open Architecture. Our CRM Platform features a variety of open application programming interfaces (“APIs”) that allows easy integration of our platform with other applications. We enable our customers to connect our platform to their other applications, such as ecommerce, event management and videoconferencing applications. By connecting third-party applications, our customers can leverage our centralized inbound database to perform additional functions and analysis. 

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Our Competitive Strengths

We believe that our market leadership position is based on the following key strengths:

Leading Platform. We have designed and built a world-class CRM Platform. We believe our customers choose our CRM Platform over others because of its powerful, integrated, and easy-to-use applications. We built HubSpot on a single, unified, and intuitive platform, which we believe contrasts positively with many other CRM suites.

Market Leadership and Strong Brand. We are a recognized thought leader in the cloud-based marketing, sales, customer service, and content management software industry with a leading brand. Our founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, wrote the best-selling marketing book Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media and Blogs. Our marketing, sales, service, and content management experience attracts, engages, and delights customers by being more relevant, more helpful, more personalized, and less interruptive than traditional marketing and sales tactics. Our INBOUND event is one of the largest inbound industry conference events with registered attendance increasing from 1,100 in 2011 to over 26,000 in 2019. In 2020, we shifted our INBOUND event to a virtual-only experience due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and we had more than 70,000 registered attendees.

Large and Growing Solutions Partner Program.  A Solutions Partner is a service provider that helps businesses with strategy, execution, and implementation of go-to-market activities and technology solutions. Our Solutions Partners promote our brand and offer our CRM Platform to their clients. Solutions Partners and customers referred to us by our Solutions Partners represented approximately 35% of our Total Customers, as defined in our Key Business Metrics in Item 7, as of December 31, 2020, and approximately 43% of our revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020. These Solutions Partners help us to promote the vision of the inbound experience, efficiently reach new mid-market businesses at scale, and provide our mutual customers with more diverse and higher-touch services.

Freemium Pricing Strategy. Our freemium model attracts customers who begin using our CRM Platform through our free products and then upgrade to our paid Hubs.  Through our freemium products, our customers are able to receive value from HubSpot before converting to a paid product or engaging with sales.

Mid-Market Focus. We believe we have significant competitive advantages reaching mid-market businesses and efficiently reach this market at scale as a result of our inbound methodology, freemium pricing strategy, and our Solutions Partner channel.

Powerful Network Effects. We have built a large and growing ecosystem around our CRM Platform and company. Thousands of our customers integrate third-party applications with our CRM Platform. We believe this ecosystem drives more businesses and professionals to embrace the inbound playbook. As our engaged audience grows, more Solutions Partners collaborate with us, more third-party developers integrate their applications with our CRM Platform, and more professionals complete our certification programs, all of which help to drive more businesses to adopt our CRM Platform.

Our Growth Strategy

The key elements to our growth strategy are:

Grow Our Customer Base. The market for our CRM Platform is large and underserved. Mid-market businesses are particularly underserved by existing point application vendors and often lack sufficient resources to implement complex solutions. Our all-in-one CRM Platform allows mid-market businesses to efficiently adopt and execute an effective inbound marketing, sales, customer service, and content management strategy to help them expand and grow. We will continue to leverage our inbound go-to-market approach, freemium pricing strategy and our network of Solutions Partners to keep growing our business.

Increase Revenue from Existing Customers. With 103,994 Total Customers in more than 120 countries spanning many industries, we believe we have a significant opportunity to increase revenue from our existing customers. We plan to increase revenue from our existing customers by expanding their use of our CRM Platform by upselling additional offerings and features, adding additional users, and cross-selling our marketing, sales, service, and content management products to existing customers through touchless or low touch in-product purchases. Our scalable pricing model allows us to capture more spend as our customers grow, increase the number of their customers and prospects managed on our CRM Platform, and offer additional functionality available from our higher price tiers and add-ons, providing us with a substantial opportunity to increase the lifetime value of our customer relationships.

Keep Expanding Internationally. There is a significant opportunity for our CRM Platform outside of the United States. As of December 31, 2020, approximately 50% of our Total Customers were located outside of the United States and these customers generated approximately 43% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020. We sell to those international customers from our U.S., European, Asia Pacific, and South American based operations. We intend to grow our presence in international markets

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through additional investments in local sales, marketing and professional service capabilities, as well as by leveraging our Solutions Partner network. We have opened eight international offices and plan to open additional international offices. We have significant website traffic from regions outside the United States, and we believe that markets outside the United States represent a significant growth opportunity.

Continue to Innovate and Expand Our CRM Platform. Mid-market businesses are increasingly realizing the value of having an integrated marketing, sales, customer service, and content management platform. We believe we are well positioned to capitalize on this opportunity by introducing new products and applications to extend the functionality of our CRM Platform. 

Selectively Pursue Acquisitions. We plan to selectively pursue acquisitions of complementary businesses, technologies and teams that would allow us to add new features and functionalities to our platform and accelerate the pace of our innovation.

Our CRM Platform

Our CRM Platform features integrated applications and tools that enable companies to create a cohesive and adaptable customer experience.  Each Hub can be used standalone or in conjunction with the other Hubs. Our Hubs are available in both free and paid tiers (i.e., Starter, Professional and Enterprise) with gradually increasing levels of functionality that support the needs of our customers as they see success with our tools and their businesses grow.   

HubSpot CRM

The core of our CRM Platform is a single database of lead and customer information that allows businesses to track their interactions with contacts and customers, manage their sales activities, and report on their pipeline and sales.  This allows a complete view of lead and customer interactions across all of our integrated Hubs, giving our CRM Platform substantial power. This integration makes it possible to personalize every aspect of the customer interaction across web content, social media engagement, and email messages across devices, including mobile. The integrated Hubs on our CRM Platform have a common user interface and are accessed through a single login. There is a free version of HubSpot CRM that can be used standalone, or with any combination of CMS Hub, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and/or Service Hub.

Marketing Hub

Marketing Hub is an all-in-one toolset for marketers to attract, engage, and nurture new leads towards sales readiness over the entire customer lifecycle. Marketing Hub is available in both free and paid tiers, and can be used standalone, with HubSpot CRM, a third party CRM, and/or any version of CMS Hub, Sales Hub or Service Hub. Features include: marketing automation and email, social media, SEO, and reporting and analytics. 

Sales Hub

We designed Sales Hub to enhance the productivity and effectiveness of sales teams. Businesses can empower their teams with tools that deliver a personalized experience for prospects with less work for sales representatives. Sales Hub is available in both free and paid tiers, and can be used with HubSpot CRM, a third party CRM, and/or any version of Marketing Hub, CMS Hub or Service Hub.  Features include: email templates and tracking, conversations and live chat, meeting and call scheduling, lead and website visit alerts, sales automation, and lead scoring.

Service Hub

Service Hub is our customer service software that is designed to help businesses manage and connect with customers. Service Hub is available in free and paid tiers, and can be used standalone, with HubSpot CRM, a third party CRM, and/or any version of Marketing Hub, CMS Hub or Sales Hub. Features include: conversations and live chat functionality, conversational bots, tickets and help desk, automation and routing, knowledge base, team emails, feedback and reporting tools, and customer goals.

CMS Hub

Our content management system (“CMS”) Hub combines the power of content relationship management and a content management system into one integrated platform.  Our content tools enable businesses to create new and edit existing web content while also personalizing their websites for different visitors and optimizing their websites to convert more visitors into leads and customers.  CMS Hub can be purchased as a standalone product, with HubSpot CRM, a third party CRM, and/or with any version of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Service Hub. Features include: website pages, business blogging, smart content, landing pages and forms, SEO tools, forms and lead flow, web analytics reporting, calls-to-action, and file manager.

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Platform Application (“App”) Partners

Businesses that use software outside of HubSpot can leverage our ecosystem of third-party integrations. We make it easy to find and install new or existing software solutions that complement our CRM Platform.  Over 600 integrations and applications are available for our users, across a wide range of categories, including integrations with leading social media, email, sales, video, analytics, content and webinar tools.  

Our Services

We complement our product offerings with professional services, customer success and support, which we view as critical elements of ensuring the long-term retention of our customers. The majority of our services and support is offered over email, phone, chat applications and via web meeting technology rather than in-person, which is a more efficient business model for us and our customers.

Professional Services. We offer professional services to educate and train customers on how to leverage our CRM Platform to transform how their business attracts, engages and delights customers. Depending on which Hubs and services a customer purchases, they receive one-on-one training and guidance from one of our onboarding or technical specialists by web meeting and can purchase additional group training and education in online or in-person classes. Our professional services are also available to customers who need additional assistance on a one-time or ongoing basis for an additional fee.

Customer Success. Our customers have access to a Customer Success Manager (“CSM”) or Customer Success Team (“CST”) which are responsible for our customers’ long term success, retention and growth on the HubSpot platform. Our CSMs and CSTs address the unique needs and goals of our customers through a series of ongoing interactions and strategy calls on how to best engage and use our CRM Platform.

Support. In addition to assistance provided by our online articles and customer discussion forums, we offer phone and/or email and chat based support, which is included in the cost of a subscription for our Hubs. Phone support is available starting at the Professional product level for all Hubs while email and chat based support is available for Starter Hubs. We strive to maintain an exceptional quality of customer service. We continuously monitor key customer service metrics such as phone hold time, ticket response time and ticket resolution rates, and we monitor the customer satisfaction of our customer support interactions. We believe our customer support is an important reason why businesses choose our CRM Platform and recommend it to their colleagues.

Our Total Customers

As of December 31, 2020, we had 103,994 Total Customers in more than 120 countries, representing many industries. No single customer represented more than one percent of our revenue in 2020, 2019, or 2018. 

Our Technology

Our Total Customers have chosen us as their CRM Platform, which we architected and built to be secure, highly distributed and highly scalable. Since our founding, we have embraced rapid, iterative product development lifecycles, cloud automation and open-source technologies, including big data platforms, to power marketing, sales, service, and content management programs and provide insights not previously possible or available.

Our CRM Platform is a multi-tenant, single code-based, globally available software-as-a-service delivered through APIs, web browsers or mobile applications. Our commitment to a highly available, reliable, and scalable platform for businesses of all sizes is accomplished through the use of these technologies.

Platform Approach. We built HubSpot on a single platform with reusable and composable libraries, allowing us to rapidly address new feature areas and bring new products to market that have a consistent user experience and data model. We have built this platform with scale in mind, supporting thousands of components including hundreds of microservices,

Modern Database Architecture. We process billions of data points weekly across various channels, including social media, email, SEO and website visits, and continue to drive nearly real-time analytics across these channels. This is possible because we built our database from the ground up using distributed big data technologies such as HBase, Elasticsearch and Kafka to both process and analyze the large amounts of data we collect. We also utilize Vitess to operate MySQL at scale, allowing our engineers to choose the best datastore for each task.

Agility. Our infrastructure and development and software release processes allow us to update our platform for specific groups of customers or our entire customer base at any time. This means we can rapidly innovate and deliver new functionality frequently,

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without waiting for quarterly or annual release cycles. We typically deploy updates to our software platform thousands of times a day, enabling us to gather immediate customer feedback and improve our product quickly and continuously.

Cost leverage. Because our CRM Platform was built on an almost exclusive footprint of open-source software and designed to operate in cloud-based data centers, we have benefited from large-scale price reductions by these cloud computing service providers as they continue to innovate and compete for market share. As our processing volume continues to grow, we continue to receive larger volume discounts on a per-unit basis for costs such as storage, bandwidth and computing capacity. We also believe that our extensive use of open-source software will provide additional leverage as we scale our CRM Platform and infrastructure.

Scalability. By leveraging leading cloud infrastructure providers along with our automated technology stack, we are able to scale workloads of varying sizes at any time. This allows us to handle customers of all sizes and demands without traditional operational limitations such as network bandwidth, computing cycles, or storage capacity as we can scale our platform on-demand.

Reliability. Customer data is distributed and processed across multiple data centers within a region to provide redundancy. We built our CRM platform on a distributed computing architecture with reduced single points of failure and we operate across data center boundaries daily. In addition to datacenter level redundancy, this architecture supports multiple live copies of each data set along with snapshot capabilities for faster, point-in-time data recovery instead of traditional backup and restore methodologies.

Security. We leverage industry standard network and perimeter defense technologies, distributed denial-of-service (“DDoS”), protection systems (including web application firewalls) and enterprise grade domain name system (“DNS”), services across multiple vendors. Our data-center providers operate and certify to high industry compliance levels. Due to the broad footprint of our customer base, we regularly test and evaluate our platform with trusted third-party vendors to ensure the security and integrity of our services.

Marketing and Sales

We believe we are a global leader in implementing an inbound experience in marketing and sales. We believe that our marketing and sales model provides us with a competitive advantage, especially when targeting mid-market businesses, because we can attract and engage these businesses efficiently and at scale.

Inbound Marketing. Our marketing team attracts new leads each month through our industry-leading blog and other content, free tools, large social media following, high search engine rankings and personalized website and email content. In addition, we are generating leads for new and add-on product purchases through content and offers delivered through our CRM Platform to existing customers. 

Inbound Direct Sales. Our sales representatives are based in our offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Dublin, Ireland, Sydney, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Japan, Berlin, Germany, Paris, France, and Bogotá, Columbia, and use phone, email, and web meetings to interact with prospects and customers. The majority of revenue generated by our sales representatives originates with inbound leads produced by our marketing efforts. In addition, through our freemium products and in-product cross-sell offerings, we close new business with little or no interaction by our sales representatives.

Inbound Channel Sales. In addition to our direct sales team, we have sales representatives that manage relationships with our worldwide network of Solutions Partners who both use our platform for their own businesses and also, on a commissioned basis, refer customers to us. These Solutions Partners collaborate with us not only to leverage our software platform and educational resources, but also to build their own business by offering new services and shifting their revenue mix to include recurring revenue streams.

COVID-19 Pandemic

In March 2020, the World Health Organization, or WHO, declared the outbreak of a disease caused by a novel strain of the coronavirus (“COVID-19”) to be a global pandemic (the “pandemic”). This pandemic is having widespread, rapidly-evolving, and unpredictable impacts on global societies, economies, financial markets, and business practices. While the pandemic has not had a material adverse financial impact on our business to date, the broader implications of the pandemic on our results of operations and overall financial performance will depend on future developments and conditions. We are closely monitoring the impact of the pandemic and developments related thereto and our focus remains on promoting employee health and safety, serving our customers, and ensuring business continuity. For discussion regarding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and financial results, see “Risk Factors” in Item 1A and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Item 7 of this report.

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Human Capital Management

Helping millions of organizations grow better requires a truly remarkable team. We are passionate about building a company culture where people can do their best work. Our company culture and our people are not just human resources priorities but critical business priorities. As a result, we consistently focus on how we can continue to help employees grow, both personally and professionally.

Since 2012, we have expanded beyond our Cambridge, Massachusetts headquarters to several offices globally and have built a large remote community. As of December 31, 2020, we had 4,225 full-time employees, or HubSpotters. Of these, 2,813 are in North and Latin America, 1,082 are in Europe, and 330 are in the Asia Pacific region.

Competition

Our market is evolving, highly competitive and fragmented, and we expect competition to increase in the future. We believe the principal competitive factors in our market are:

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We believe we compete favorably with respect to all of these factors.

We face intense competition from other software companies that develop marketing, sales, service, and content management software. Our competitors offer various point applications that provide certain functions and features that we provide, including:

In addition, instead of using our CRM Platform, some prospective customers may elect to combine disparate point applications, such as content management, marketing automation, analytics, social media management, ticketing, and conversational bots. We expect that we will develop and introduce, or acquire, applications serving customer-facing and other front office functions.

Intellectual Property

Our ability to protect our intellectual property, including our technology, will be an important factor in the success and continued growth of our business. We protect our intellectual property through trade secrets law, copyrights, trademarks, patents, and contracts. Some of our technology relies upon third-party licensed intellectual property. We have 3 issued U.S. Patents, 2 allowed patent pending issuance, 7 U.S. utility patents applications pending, and 2 provisional patents filed.  We intend to pursue and are pursuing additional patent protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost-effective.

In addition to the foregoing, we have established business procedures designed to maintain the confidentiality of our proprietary information, including the use of confidentiality agreements and assignment of inventions agreements with employees, independent contractors, consultants, and companies with which we conduct business.

Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property, unauthorized parties may still copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology. In addition, we intend to continue to expand our international operations, and effective intellectual property, copyright, trademark and trade secret protection may not be available or may be limited in foreign countries. Any significant impairment of our intellectual property rights could harm our business or our ability to compete.

Financial Information About Segments

We operate as one operating segment. Operating segments are defined as components of an enterprise for which separate financial information is regularly evaluated by the chief operating decision maker (“CODM”), which is our chief executive officer, in deciding how to allocate resources and assess performance. The CODM evaluates our financial information and resources and assesses the performance of these resources on a consolidated basis. Since we operate in one operating segment, all required financial segment information can be found in the consolidated financial statements. See Footnote 10 within the consolidated financial statements for information by geographic area.

Available Information

Our website is located at http://www.hubspot.com, and our investor relations website is located at https://www.hubspot.com/investor-relations. Copies of our Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to these reports filed or furnished pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, are available, free of charge, on our investor relations website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are filed with, or furnished to, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. The SEC also maintains a

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website at http://www.sec.gov that contains our SEC filings and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC.

We webcast our earnings calls and certain events we participate in or host with members of the investment community on our investor relations website. Additionally, we provide notifications of news or announcements regarding our financial performance, including SEC filings, investor events, press and earnings releases, and blogs as part of our investor relations website. We have used, and intend to continue to use, our investor relations website as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Further corporate governance information, including our certificate of incorporation, bylaws, governance guidelines, board committee charters, and code of business conduct and ethics, is also available on our investor relations website under the heading “Corporate Governance.” The contents of our websites are not intended to be incorporated by reference into this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in any other report or document we file with the SEC, and any references to our websites are intended to be inactive textual references only.

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An investment in our common stock involves a high degree of risk. You should carefully consider the risks described below and the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our other public filings before making an investment decision. Our business, prospects, financial condition, or operating results could be harmed by any of these risks, as well as other risks not currently known to us or that we currently consider immaterial. If any such risks and uncertainties actually occurs, our business, financial condition or operating results could differ materially from the plans, projections and other forward-looking statements included in the section titled “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and elsewhere in this report and in our other public filings. The trading price of our common stock could decline due to any of these risks, and, as a result, you may lose all or part of your investment.

Risks Related to Our Business and Strategy

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have materially affected how we and our customers are operating our businesses, and the duration and extent to which this will impact our future results of operations and overall financial performance remains uncertain.

In December 2019, a novel coronavirus disease (“COVID-19”), was reported and in January 2020, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) declared it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. On February 28, 2020, the WHO raised its assessment of the COVID-19 threat from high to very high at a global level due to the continued increase in the number of cases and affected countries, and on March 11, 2020, the WHO characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic, (the “pandemic”). The pandemic, which has continued to spread, and the related adverse public health developments, including orders to shelter-in-place, travel restrictions, and mandated business closures, have adversely affected workforces, organizations, customers, economies, and financial markets globally, leading to an economic downturn and increased market volatility. It has also disrupted the normal operations of many businesses, including ours.

Our operations have also been impacted by a range of external factors related to the pandemic that are not within our control. For example, many cities, counties, states, and even countries have imposed or may impose a wide range of restrictions on the physical movement of our employees, partners and customers to limit the spread of the pandemic, including physical distancing, travel bans and restrictions, closure of non-essential business, quarantines, work-from-home directives, shelter-in-place orders, and limitations on public gatherings. These measures have caused, and are continuing to cause, business slowdowns or shutdowns in affected areas, both regionally and worldwide. In March 2020, we temporarily closed our global offices, including our corporate headquarters, suspended all company-related travel, and all HubSpot employees globally were required to work from home for several months during the height of the pandemic. We shifted our Solutions Partner events and INBOUND 2020 to virtual-only experiences and have cancelled other customer and industry events. Although we have begun to slowly re-open our offices on a staggered, region-by-region basis in accordance with local authority guidelines, we may deem it advisable to similarly alter, postpone or cancel entirely additional customer, employee or industry events in the future. All of these changes may disrupt the way we operate our business. Given that the economic consequences of the pandemic have been exceptionally challenging for many of our customers and prospects, we have also implemented certain changes to our pricing structure, including reducing prices on our Starter Growth Suite, offering certain product functionality free of charge for a limited time, suspending marketing email send limits for a limited time, and offering a one-time six-month advance on commissions to certain of our Solutions Partners.

Moreover, the conditions caused by the pandemic may affect the rate of spending on software products and may adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our offerings; the timing of our current or prospective customers’ purchasing decisions; pricing discounts or extended payment terms; reductions in the amount or duration of customers’ subscription contracts; or increase customer attrition rates, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. If the pandemic has a substantial impact on the ability of our customers to purchase our offerings, our results of operations and overall financial performance may be harmed.

The duration and extent of the impact from the pandemic depends on future developments that cannot be accurately predicted at this time, such as the severity and transmission rate of the virus, the extent and effectiveness of containment actions, the disruption caused by such actions, and the impact of these and other factors on our employees, customers, partners and vendors. If we are not able to respond to and manage the impact of such events effectively, our business will be harmed.

To the extent the pandemic adversely affects our business and financial results, it may also have the effect of heightening many of the other risks described in this “Risk Factors” section, including, in particular, risks related to our dependence on customer renewals, the addition of new customers and increased revenue from existing customer, risks that our operating results could be negatively affected by changes in the sizes or types of businesses that purchase our platform and the risk that weakened global economic conditions may harm our industry, business and results of operations.

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We are dependent upon customer renewals, the addition of new customers, increased revenue from existing customers and the continued growth of the market for a CRM Platform.

We derive, and expect to continue to derive, a substantial portion of our revenue from the sale of subscriptions to our CRM Platform. The market for inbound marketing, sales and customer service products is still evolving, and competitive dynamics may cause pricing levels to change as the market matures and as existing and new market participants introduce new types of point applications and different approaches to enable businesses to address their respective needs. As a result, we may be forced to reduce the prices we charge for our platform and may be unable to renew existing customer agreements or enter into new customer agreements at the same prices and upon the same terms that we have historically. In addition, our growth strategy involves a scalable pricing model (including freemium versions of our products) intended to provide us with an opportunity to increase the value of our customer relationships over time as we expand their use of our platform, sell to other parts of their organizations, cross-sell our sales products to existing marketing product customers and vice versa through touchless or low touch in product purchases, and upsell additional offerings and features. If our cross-selling efforts are unsuccessful or if our existing customers do not expand their use of our platform or adopt additional offerings and features, our operating results may suffer.

Our subscription renewal rates may decrease, and any decrease could harm our future revenue and operating results.

Our customers have no obligation to renew their subscriptions for our platform after the expiration of their subscription periods, substantially all of which are one year or less. In addition, our customers may seek to renew for lower subscription tiers, for fewer contacts or seats, or for shorter contract lengths. Also, customers may choose not to renew their subscriptions for a variety of reasons. Our renewal rates may decline or fluctuate as a result of a number of factors, including limited customer resources, pricing changes, the prices of services offered by our competitors, adoption and utilization of our platform and add-on applications by our customers, adoption of our new products, customer satisfaction with our platform, mergers and acquisitions affecting our customer base, reductions in our customers’ spending levels or declines in customer activity as a result of economic downturns or uncertainty in financial markets. If our customers do not renew their subscriptions for our platform or decrease the amount they spend with us, our revenue will decline and our business will suffer. In addition, a subscription model creates certain risks related to the timing of revenue recognition and potential reductions in cash flows. A portion of the subscription-based revenue we report each quarter results from the recognition of deferred revenue relating to subscription agreements entered into during previous quarters. A decline in new or renewed subscriptions in any period may not be immediately reflected in our reported financial results for that period, but may result in a decline in our revenue in future quarters. If we were to experience significant downturns in subscription sales and renewal rates, our reported financial results might not reflect such downturns until future periods.

We face significant competition from both established and new companies offering marketing, sales and customer service software and other related applications, as well as internally developed software, which may harm our ability to add new customers, retain existing customers and grow our business.

The marketing, sales, customer service, and content management software market is evolving, highly competitive and significantly fragmented. With the introduction of new technologies and the potential entry of new competitors into the market, we expect competition to persist and intensify in the future, which could harm our ability to increase sales, maintain or increase renewals and maintain our prices.

We face intense competition from other software companies that develop marketing, sales, customer service, and content management software and from marketing services companies that provide interactive marketing services. Competition could significantly impede our ability to sell subscriptions to our CRM Platform on terms favorable to us. Our current and potential competitors may develop and market new technologies that render our existing or future products less competitive, or obsolete. In addition, if these competitors develop products with similar or superior functionality to our platform, we may need to decrease the prices or accept less favorable terms for our platform subscriptions in order to remain competitive. If we are unable to maintain our pricing due to competitive pressures, our margins will be reduced and our operating results will be negatively affected.

Our competitors include:

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In addition, instead of using our platform, some prospective customers may elect to combine disparate point applications, such as content management, marketing automation, CRM, analytics and social media management. We expect that new competitors, such as enterprise software vendors that have traditionally focused on enterprise resource planning or other applications supporting back office functions, will develop and introduce applications serving customer-facing and other front office functions. This development could have an adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition. In addition, sales force automation and CRM  vendors could acquire or develop applications that compete with our marketing software offerings. Some of these companies have acquired social media marketing and other marketing software providers to integrate with their broader offerings.

Our current and potential competitors may have significantly more financial, technical, marketing and other resources than we have, be able to devote greater resources to the development, promotion, sale and support of their products and services, may have more extensive customer bases and broader customer relationships than we have, and may have longer operating histories and greater name recognition than we have. As a result, these competitors may respond faster to new technologies and undertake more extensive marketing campaigns for their products. In a few cases, these vendors may also be able to offer marketing, sales, customer service and content management software at little or no additional cost by bundling it with their existing suite of applications. To the extent any of our competitors has existing relationships with potential customers for either marketing software or other applications, those customers may be unwilling to purchase our platform because of their existing relationships with our competitor. If we are unable to compete with such companies, the demand for our CRM Platform could substantially decline.

In addition, if one or more of our competitors were to merge or partner with another of our competitors, our ability to compete effectively could be adversely affected. Our competitors may also establish or strengthen cooperative relationships with our current or future strategic distribution and technology partners or other parties with whom we have relationships, thereby limiting our ability to promote and implement our platform. We may not be able to compete successfully against current or future competitors, and competitive pressures may harm our business, operating results and financial condition.

We have experienced rapid growth and organizational change in recent periods and expect continued future growth. If we fail to manage our growth effectively, we may be unable to execute our business plan, maintain high levels of service or address competitive challenges adequately.

Our head count and operations have grown substantially. For example, we had 4,225 full-time employees as of December 31, 2020, as compared with 3,387 as of December 31, 2019 and we have opened 8 international offices since 2012. We also plan to open additional offices in the future. This growth has placed, and will continue to place, a significant strain on our management, administrative, operational and financial infrastructure. We anticipate further growth will be required to address increases in our product offerings and continued expansion. Our success will depend in part upon our ability to recruit, hire, train, manage and integrate a significant number of qualified managers, technical personnel and employees in specialized roles within our company, including in technology, sales and marketing. Furthermore, preservation of our corporate culture has been made more difficult as our work force has been working from home in connection with restrictions placed upon businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A long-term continuation of these restrictions could, among other things, negatively impact employee morale and productivity. Any failure to preserve our culture could harm our future success, including our ability to retain and recruit personnel, innovate and operate effectively and execute on our business strategy. If we experience any of these effects in connection with future growth, if our new employees perform poorly, or if we are unsuccessful in recruiting, hiring, training, managing and integrating these new employees, or retaining these or our existing employees, it could materially impair our ability to attract new customers, retain existing customers and expand their use of our platform, all of which would materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

In addition, to manage the expected continued growth of our head count, operations and geographic expansion, we will need to continue to improve our information technology infrastructure, operational, financial and management systems and procedures. Our anticipated additional head count and capital investments will increase our costs, which will make it more difficult for us to address any future revenue shortfalls by reducing expenses in the short term. If we fail to successfully manage our growth, we will be unable to successfully execute our business plan, which could have a negative impact on our business, results of operations or financial condition.

Failure to effectively develop and expand our marketing, sales, customer service, and content management capabilities could harm our ability to increase our customer base and achieve broader market acceptance of our platform.

To increase Total Customers and achieve broader market acceptance of our CRM Platform, we will need to expand our marketing, sales, customer service and content management operations, including our sales force and third-party channel partners. We will continue to dedicate significant resources to inbound sales and marketing programs. The effectiveness of our inbound sales and marketing and third-party channel partners has varied over time and may vary in the future and depends on our ability to maintain and improve our CRM Platform. All of these efforts will require us to invest significant financial and other resources. Our business will be seriously harmed if our efforts do not generate a correspondingly significant increase in revenue. We may not achieve anticipated

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revenue growth from expanding our sales force if we are unable to hire, develop and retain talented sales personnel, if our new sales personnel are unable to achieve desired productivity levels in a reasonable period of time or if our sales and marketing programs are not effective.

The rate of growth of our business depends on the continued participation and level of service of our Solutions Partners.

We rely on our Solutions Partners to provide certain services to our customers, as well as pursue sales of our CRM Platform to customers. To the extent we do not attract new Solutions Partners, or existing or new Solutions Partners do not refer a growing number of customers to us, our revenue and operating results would be harmed. In addition, if our Solutions Partners do not continue to provide services to our customers, we would be required to provide such services ourselves either by expanding our internal team or engaging other third-party providers, which would increase our operating costs.

If we fail to maintain our inbound thought leadership position, our business may suffer.

We believe that maintaining our thought leadership position in inbound marketing, sales, services and content management is an important element in attracting new customers. We devote significant resources to develop and maintain our thought leadership position, with a focus on identifying and interpreting emerging trends in the inbound experience, shaping and guiding industry dialog and creating and sharing the best inbound practices. Our activities related to developing and maintaining our thought leadership may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incurred in such effort. We rely upon the continued services of our management and employees with domain expertise with inbound marketing, sales, services, and content management, and the loss of any key employees in this area could harm our competitive position and reputation. If we fail to successfully grow and maintain our thought leadership position, we may not attract enough new customers or retain our existing customers, and our business could suffer.

If we fail to further enhance our brand and maintain our existing strong brand awareness, our ability to expand our customer base will be impaired and our financial condition may suffer.

We believe that our development of the HubSpot brand is critical to achieving widespread awareness of our existing and future inbound experience solutions, and, as a result, is important to attracting new customers and maintaining existing customers. In the past, our efforts to build our brand have involved significant expenses, and we believe that this investment has resulted in strong brand recognition in the B2B market. Successful promotion and maintenance of our brands will depend largely on the effectiveness of our marketing efforts and on our ability to provide a reliable and useful CRM Platform at competitive prices. Brand promotion activities may not yield increased revenue, and even if they do, any increased revenue may not offset the expenses we incurred in building our brand. If we fail to successfully promote and maintain our brand, our business could suffer.

If we fail to adapt and respond effectively to rapidly changing technology, evolving industry standards and changing customer needs or requirements, our CRM Platform may become less competitive.

Our future success depends on our ability to adapt and innovate our CRM Platform. To attract new customers and increase revenue from existing customers, we need to continue to enhance and improve our offerings to meet customer needs at prices that our customers are willing to pay. Such efforts will require adding new functionality and responding to technological advancements, which will increase our research and development costs. If we are unable to develop new applications that address our customers’ needs, or to enhance and improve our platform in a timely manner, we may not be able to maintain or increase market acceptance of our platform. Our ability to grow is also subject to the risk of future disruptive technologies. Access and use of our CRM Platform is provided via the cloud, which, itself, was disruptive to the previous enterprise software model. If new technologies emerge that are able to deliver inbound marketing software and related applications at lower prices, more efficiently, more conveniently or more securely, such technologies could adversely affect our ability to compete.

If we fail to offer high-quality customer support, our business and reputation may suffer.

High-quality education, training and customer support are important for the successful marketing, sale and use of our CRM Platform and for the renewal of existing customers. Providing this education, training and support requires that our personnel who manage our online training resource, HubSpot Academy, or provide customer support have specific inbound experience domain knowledge and expertise, making it more difficult for us to hire qualified personnel and to scale up our support operations. The importance of high-quality customer support will increase as we expand our business and pursue new customers. If we do not help our customers use multiple applications within our CRM Platform and provide effective ongoing support, our ability to sell additional functionality and services to, or to retain, existing customers may suffer and our reputation with existing or potential customers may be harmed.

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We may not be able to scale our business quickly enough to meet our customers’ growing needs and if we are not able to grow efficiently, our operating results could be harmed.

As usage of our CRM Platform grows and as customers use our platform for additional inbound applications, such as sales and services, we will need to devote additional resources to improving our application architecture, integrating with third-party systems and maintaining infrastructure performance. In addition, we will need to appropriately scale our internal business systems and our services organization, including customer support and professional services, to serve our growing customer base, particularly as our customer demographics change over time. Any failure of or delay in these efforts could cause impaired system performance and reduced customer satisfaction. These issues could reduce the attractiveness of our CRM Platform to customers, resulting in decreased sales to new customers, lower renewal rates by existing customers, the issuance of service credits, or requested refunds, which could impede our revenue growth and harm our reputation. Even if we are able to upgrade our systems and expand our staff, any such expansion will be expensive and complex, requiring management’s time and attention. We could also face inefficiencies or operational failures as a result of our efforts to scale our infrastructure. Moreover, there are inherent risks associated with upgrading, improving and expanding our information technology systems. We cannot be sure that the expansion and improvements to our infrastructure and systems will be fully or effectively implemented on a timely basis, if at all. These efforts may reduce revenue and our margins and adversely affect our financial results.

Our ability to introduce new products and features is dependent on adequate research and development resources. If we do not adequately fund our research and development efforts, we may not be able to compete effectively and our business and operating results may be harmed.

To remain competitive, we must continue to develop new product offerings, applications, features and enhancements to our existing CRM Platform. Maintaining adequate research and development personnel and resources to meet the demands of the market is essential. If we are unable to develop our platform internally due to certain constraints, such as high employee turnover, lack of management ability or a lack of other research and development resources, we may miss market opportunities. Further, many of our competitors expend a considerably greater amount of funds on their research and development programs, and those that do not may be acquired by larger companies that would allocate greater resources to our competitors’ research and development programs. Our failure to maintain adequate research and development resources or to compete effectively with the research and development programs of our competitors could materially adversely affect our business.

Changes in the sizes or types of businesses that purchase our platform or in the applications within our CRM Platform purchased or used by our customers could negatively affect our operating results.

Our strategy is to sell subscriptions to our CRM Platform to mid-sized businesses, but we have sold and will continue to sell to organizations ranging from small businesses to enterprises. Our gross margins can vary depending on numerous factors related to the implementation and use of our CRM Platform, including the sophistication and intensity of our customers’ use of our platform and the level of professional services and support required by a customer. Sales to enterprise customers may entail longer sales cycles and more significant selling efforts. Selling to small businesses may involve greater credit risk and uncertainty. If there are changes in the mix of businesses that purchase our platform or the mix of the product plans purchased by our customers, our gross margins could decrease and our operating results could be adversely affected.

We have in the past completed acquisitions and may acquire or invest in other companies or technologies in the future, which could divert management’s attention, fail to meet our expectations, result in additional dilution to our stockholders, increase expenses, disrupt our operations or harm our operating results.

We have in the past acquired, and we may in the future acquire or invest in, businesses, products or technologies that we believe could complement or expand our platform, enhance our technical capabilities or otherwise offer growth opportunities, for example, the acquisition of PieSync in 2019. We may not be able to fully realize the anticipated benefits of these or any future acquisitions. The pursuit of potential acquisitions may divert the attention of management and cause us to incur various expenses related to identifying, investigating and pursuing suitable acquisitions, whether or not they are consummated.

There are inherent risks in integrating and managing acquisitions. If we acquire additional businesses, we may not be able to assimilate or integrate the acquired personnel, operations and technologies successfully or effectively manage the combined business following the acquisition and our management may be distracted from operating our business. We also may not achieve the anticipated benefits from the acquired business due to a number of factors, including: unanticipated costs or liabilities associated with the acquisition; incurrence of acquisition-related costs, which would be recognized as a current period expense; inability to generate sufficient revenue to offset acquisition or investment costs; the inability to maintain relationships with customers and partners of the acquired business; the difficulty of incorporating acquired technology and rights into our platform and of maintaining quality and security standards consistent with our brand; delays in customer purchases due to uncertainty related to any acquisition; the need to integrate or implement additional controls, procedures and policies; challenges caused by distance, language and cultural differences; harm to our existing business relationships with business partners and customers as a result of the acquisition; the potential loss of key

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employees; use of resources that are needed in other parts of our business and diversion of management and employee resources; the inability to recognize acquired deferred revenue in accordance with our revenue recognition policies; and use of substantial portions of our available cash or the incurrence of debt to consummate the acquisition. Acquisitions also increase the risk of unforeseen legal liability, including for potential violations of applicable law or industry rules and regulations, arising from prior or ongoing acts or omissions by the acquired businesses which are not discovered by due diligence during the acquisition process. Generally, if an acquired business fails to meet our expectations, our operating results, business and financial condition may suffer. Acquisitions could also result in dilutive issuances of equity securities or the incurrence of debt, which could adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition.

In addition, a significant portion of the purchase price of companies we acquire may be allocated to goodwill and other intangible assets, which must be assessed for impairment at least annually. If our acquisitions do not ultimately yield expected returns, we may be required to make charges to our operating results based on our impairment assessment process, which could harm our results of operations.

Because our long-term growth strategy involves further expansion of our sales to customers outside the United States, our business will be susceptible to risks associated with international operations.

A component of our growth strategy involves the further expansion of our operations and customer base internationally. We have opened 8 international offices since 2012. We also plan to open additional offices in the future. These international offices focus primarily on sales, professional services and support. We also have a development team in Dublin, Ireland. Our current international operations and future initiatives will involve a variety of risks, including:

Our limited experience in operating our business internationally increases the risk that any potential future expansion efforts that we may undertake will not be successful. If we invest substantial time and resources to expand our international operations and are unable to do so successfully and in a timely manner, our business and operating results will suffer. We continue to implement policies and procedures to facilitate our compliance with U.S. laws and regulations applicable to or arising from our international business. Inadequacies in our past or current compliance practices may increase the risk of inadvertent violations of such laws and regulations, which could lead to financial and other penalties that could damage our reputation and impose costs on us.

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Risks Related to Employee Matters

If we cannot maintain our company culture as we grow, we could lose the innovation, teamwork, passion and focus on execution that we believe contribute to our success and our business may be harmed.

We believe that a critical component to our success has been our company culture, which is based on transparency and personal autonomy. We have invested substantial time and resources in building our team within this company culture. Any failure to preserve our culture could negatively affect our ability to retain and recruit personnel and to effectively focus on and pursue our corporate objectives. As we grow as and continue to develop the infrastructure of a public company, we may find it difficult to maintain these important aspects of our company culture. If we fail to maintain our company culture, our business may be adversely impacted.

We rely on our management team and other key employees, and the loss of one or more key employees could harm our business.

Our success and future growth depend upon the continued services of our management team, including our co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, and other key employees in the areas of research and development, marketing, sales, services, content management, and general and administrative functions. From time to time, there may be changes in our management team resulting from the hiring or departure of executives, which could disrupt our business. We also are dependent on the continued service of our existing software engineers and information technology personnel because of the complexity of our platform, technologies and infrastructure. We may terminate any employee’s employment at any time, with or without cause, and any employee may resign at any time, with or without cause. We do not have employment agreements with any of our key personnel. The loss of one or more of our key employees could harm our business.

The failure to attract and retain additional qualified personnel could prevent us from executing our business strategy.

To execute our business strategy, we must attract and retain highly qualified personnel. In particular, we compete with many other companies for software developers with high levels of experience in designing, developing and managing cloud-based software, as well as for skilled information technology, marketing, sales and operations professionals, and we may not be successful in attracting and retaining the professionals we need. Also, inbound sales, marketing, services, and content management domain experts are very important to our success and are difficult to replace. We have from time to time in the past experienced, and we expect to continue to experience in the future, difficulty in hiring and difficulty in retaining highly skilled employees with appropriate qualifications. In particular, we have experienced a competitive hiring environment in the Greater Boston area, where we are headquartered. Many of the companies with which we compete for experienced personnel have greater resources than we do. In addition, in making employment decisions, particularly in the software industry, job candidates often consider the value of the stock options or other equity incentives they are to receive in connection with their employment. If the price of our stock declines, or experiences significant volatility, our ability to attract or retain key employees will be adversely affected. If we fail to attract new personnel or fail to retain and motivate our current personnel, our growth prospects could be severely harmed.

Risks Related to Our Technical Operations Infrastructure and Dependence on Third Parties

Interruptions or delays in service from our third-party data center providers could impair our ability to deliver our platform to our customers, resulting in customer dissatisfaction, damage to our reputation, loss of customers, limited growth and reduction in revenue.

We currently serve the majority of our platform functions from third-party data center hosting facilities operated by Amazon Web Services located in northern Virginia and Google Cloud Platform located in Frankfurt, Germany. In addition, we serve ancillary functions for our customers from third-party data center hosting facilities operated by Rackspace located in Dallas, Texas, with a backup facility in Chicago, Illinois. Our operations depend, in part, on our third-party facility providers’ abilities to protect these facilities against damage or interruption from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, power or telecommunications failures, criminal acts and similar events. In the event that any of our third-party facilities arrangements is terminated, or if there is a lapse of service or damage to a facility, we could experience interruptions in our platform as well as delays and additional expenses in arranging new facilities and services.

Any damage to, or failure of, the systems of our third-party providers could result in interruptions to our platform. Despite precautions taken at our data centers, the occurrence of spikes in usage volume, a natural disaster, such as earthquakes or hurricane, an act of terrorism, vandalism or sabotage, a decision to close a facility without adequate notice, or other unanticipated problems at a facility could result in lengthy interruptions in the availability of our on-demand software. Even with current and planned disaster recovery arrangements, our business could be harmed. Also, in the event of damage or interruption, our insurance policies may not adequately compensate us for any losses that we may incur. These factors in turn could further reduce our revenue, subject us to liability and cause us to issue credits or cause customers to fail to renew their subscriptions, any of which could materially adversely affect our business.

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If our CRM Platform has outages or fails due to defects or similar problems, and if we fail to correct any defect or other software problems, we could lose customers, become subject to service performance or warranty claims or incur significant costs.

Our platform and its underlying infrastructure are inherently complex and may contain material defects or errors. We release modifications, updates, bug fixes and other changes to our software several times per day, without traditional human-performed quality control reviews for each release. We have from time to time found defects in our software and may discover additional defects in the future. We may not be able to detect and correct defects or errors before customers begin to use our platform or its applications. Consequently, we or our customers may discover defects or errors after our platform has been implemented. For example, in March 2019, we had a product outage due to the failure of one of the infrastructure systems that supports multiple parts of our platform. Although no data from prior to the outage was lost, our customers experienced disruptions in using our platform during the outage.  Defects or errors could result in product outages and could also cause inaccuracies in the data we collect and process for our customers, or even the loss, damage or inadvertent release of such confidential data. We implement bug fixes and upgrades as part of our regular system maintenance, which may lead to system downtime. Even if we are able to implement the bug fixes and upgrades in a timely manner, any history of product outages, defects or inaccuracies in the data we collect for our customers, or the loss, damage or inadvertent release of confidential data could cause our reputation to be harmed, and customers may elect not to purchase or renew their agreements with us. Furthermore, these issues could subject us to service performance credits (whether offered by us or required by contract), warranty claims or increased insurance costs. The costs associated with product outages, any material defects or errors in our platform or other performance problems may be substantial and could materially adversely affect our operating results.

In addition, third-party apps and features on our CRM Platform may not meet the same quality standards that we apply to our own development efforts and, to the extent they contain bugs, vulnerabilities or defects, they may create disruptions in our customers’ use of our products, lead to data loss, unauthorized access to customer data, damage our brand and reputation and affect the continued use of our products, any of which could harm our business, results of operations and financial condition.

We are dependent on the continued availability of third-party data hosting and transmission services.

A significant portion of our operating cost is from our third-party data hosting and transmission services. If the costs for such services increase due to vendor consolidation, regulation, contract renegotiation, or otherwise, we may not be able to increase the fees for our CRM Platform or services to cover the changes. As a result, our operating results may be significantly worse than forecasted.

If we do not or cannot maintain the compatibility of our CRM Platform with third-party applications that our customers use in their businesses, our revenue will decline.

A significant percentage of our customers choose to integrate our platform with certain capabilities provided by third-party application providers using application programming interfaces (“APIs”) published by these providers. The functionality and popularity of our CRM Platform depends, in part, on our ability to integrate our platform with third-party applications and platforms, including CRM, CMS, e-commerce, call center, analytics and social media sites that our customers use and from which they obtain data. Third-party providers of applications and APIs may change the features of their applications and platforms, restrict our access to their applications and platforms, or alter the terms governing use of their applications and APIs and access to those applications and platforms in an adverse manner. Such changes could functionally limit or terminate our ability to use these third-party applications and platforms in conjunction with our platform, which could negatively impact our offerings and harm our business. If we fail to integrate our platform with new third-party applications and platforms that our customers use for marketing, sales, services or content management purposes, or fail to renew existing relationships pursuant to which we currently provide such integration, we may not be able to offer the functionality that our customers need, which would negatively impact our ability to generate new revenue or maintain existing revenue and adversely impact our business.

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We rely on data provided by third parties, the loss of which could limit the functionality of our platform and disrupt our business.

Select functionality of our CRM Platform depends on our ability to deliver data, including search engine results and social media updates, provided by unaffiliated third parties, such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter. Some of this data is provided to us pursuant to third-party data sharing policies and terms of use, under data sharing agreements by third-party providers or by customer consent. In the future, any of these third parties could change its data sharing policies, including making them more restrictive, or alter its algorithms that determine the placement, display, and accessibility of search results and social media updates, any of which could result in the loss of, or significant impairment to, our ability to collect and provide useful data to our customers. These third parties could also interpret our, or our service providers’, data collection policies or practices as being inconsistent with their policies, which could result in the loss of our ability to collect this data for our customers. Any such changes could impair our ability to deliver data to our customers and could adversely impact select functionality of our platform, impairing the return on investment that our customers derive from using our solution, as well as adversely affecting our business and our ability to generate revenue.

Privacy concerns and end users’ acceptance of Internet behavior tracking may limit the applicability, use and adoption of our CRM Platform.

Privacy concerns may cause end users to resist providing the personal data necessary to allow our customers to use our platform effectively. We have implemented various features intended to enable our customers to better protect end user privacy, but these measures may not alleviate all potential privacy concerns and threats. Even the perception of privacy concerns, whether or not valid, may inhibit market adoption of our platform, especially in certain industries that rely on sensitive personal information. Privacy advocacy groups and the technology and other industries are considering various new, additional or different self-regulatory standards that may place additional burdens on us. The costs of compliance with, and other burdens imposed by these groups’ policies and actions may limit the use and adoption of our CRM Platform and reduce overall demand for it, or lead to significant fines, penalties or liabilities for any noncompliance or loss of any such action.

If our or our customers’ security measures are compromised or unauthorized access to data of our customers or their customers is otherwise obtained, our CRM Platform may be perceived as not being secure, our customers may be harmed and may curtail or cease their use of our platform, our reputation may be damaged and we may incur significant liabilities.

Our operations involve the storage and transmission of data of our customers and their customers, including personally identifiable information. Our storage is typically the sole source of record for portions of our customers’ businesses and end user data, such as initial contact information and online interactions. Security incidents could result in unauthorized access to, loss of or unauthorized disclosure of this information, litigation, indemnity obligations and other possible liabilities, as well as negative publicity, which could damage our reputation, impair our sales and harm our customers and our business. Cyber-attacks and other malicious Internet-based activity continue to increase generally, and cloud-based platform providers of marketing services have been targeted. If our security measures are compromised as a result of third-party action, employee or customer error, malfeasance, stolen or fraudulently obtained log-in credentials or otherwise, our reputation could be damaged, our business may be harmed and we could incur significant liability. If third parties with whom we work, such as vendors or developers, violate applicable laws, our security policies or our acceptable use policy, such violations may also put our customers’ information at risk and could in turn have an adverse effect on our business. In addition, if the security measures of our customers are compromised, even without any actual compromise of our own systems, we may face negative publicity or reputational harm if our customers or anyone else incorrectly attributes the blame for such security breaches to us or our systems. We may be unable to anticipate or prevent techniques used to obtain unauthorized access or to sabotage systems because they change frequently and generally are not detected until after an incident has occurred. As we increase our customer base and our brand becomes more widely known and recognized, we may become more of a target for third parties seeking to compromise our security systems or gain unauthorized access to our customers’ data. Additionally, we provide extensive access to our database, which stores our customer data, to our development team to facilitate our rapid pace of product development. If such access or our own operations cause the loss, damage or destruction of our customers’ business data, their sales, lead generation, support and other business operations may be permanently harmed. As a result, our customers may bring claims against us for lost profits and other damages.

Our internal computer systems and those of our current and any future strategic collaborators, vendors, and other contractors or consultants are vulnerable to damage from cyber-attacks, computer viruses, unauthorized access, natural disasters, cybersecurity threats, terrorism, war and telecommunication and electrical failures. Cyber incidents have been increasing in sophistication and frequency and can include third parties gaining access to employee or customer data using stolen or inferred credentials, computer malware, viruses, spamming, phishing attacks, ransomware, card skimming code, and other deliberate attacks and attempts to gain unauthorized access. Because the techniques used by computer programmers who may attempt to penetrate and sabotage our network security or our website change frequently and may not be recognized until launched against a target, we may be unable to anticipate these techniques.

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If we were to experience a cyberattack and suffer interruptions in our operations, it could result in a material disruption of our development programs and our business operations, whether due to a loss of our trade secrets or other proprietary information or other disruptions. These cyber-attacks could be carried out by threat actors of all types (including but not limited to nation states, organized crime, other criminal enterprises, individual actors and/or advanced persistent threat groups). In addition, we may experience intrusions on our physical premises by any of these threat actors. To the extent that any disruption or security breach were to result in a loss of, or damage to, our data or applications, or inappropriate disclosure of confidential or proprietary information, we could incur liability and our competitive position could be harmed. Any breach, loss, or compromise of personal data may also subject us to civil fines and penalties, or claims for damages either under the General Data Protection Regulation (the “GDPR”) and relevant member state law in the European Union, other foreign laws, and other relevant state and federal privacy laws in the United States.

Many governments have enacted laws requiring companies to notify individuals of data security incidents or unauthorized transfers involving certain types of personal data. In addition, some of our customers contractually require notification of any data security compromise. Security compromises experienced by our competitors, by our customers or by us may lead to public disclosures, which may lead to widespread negative publicity. Any security compromise in our industry, whether actual or perceived, could harm our reputation, erode customer confidence in the effectiveness of our security measures, negatively impact our ability to attract new customers, cause existing customers to elect not to renew their subscriptions or subject us to third-party lawsuits, regulatory fines or other action or liability, which could materially and adversely affect our business and operating results.

There can be no assurance that any limitations of liability provisions in our contracts for a security breach would be enforceable or adequate or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. We also cannot be sure that our existing general liability insurance coverage and coverage for errors or omissions will continue to be available on acceptable terms or will be available in sufficient amounts to cover one or more large claims, or that the insurer will not deny coverage as to any future claim. The successful assertion of one or more large claims against us that exceed available insurance coverage, or the occurrence of changes in our insurance policies, including premium increases or the imposition of large deductible or co-insurance requirements, could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and operating results.

Risks Related to Intellectual Property

Our business may suffer if it is alleged or determined that our technology infringes the intellectual property rights of others.

The software industry is characterized by the existence of a large number of patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and other intellectual and proprietary rights. Companies in the software industry, including those in marketing software, are often required to defend against litigation claims based on allegations of infringement or other violations of intellectual property rights. Many of our competitors and other industry participants have been issued patents and/or have filed patent applications and may assert patent or other intellectual property rights within the industry. Moreover, in recent years, individuals and groups that are non-practicing entities, commonly referred to as “patent trolls,” have purchased patents and other intellectual property assets for the purpose of making claims of infringement in order to extract settlements. From time to time, we may receive threatening letters or notices or may be the subject of claims that our services and/or platform and underlying technology infringe or violate the intellectual property rights of others. Responding to such claims, regardless of their merit, can be time consuming, costly to defend in litigation, divert management’s attention and resources, damage our reputation and brand and cause us to incur significant expenses. Our technologies may not be able to withstand any third-party claims or rights against their use. Claims of intellectual property infringement might require us to redesign our application, delay releases, enter into costly settlement or license agreements or pay costly damage awards, or face a temporary or permanent injunction prohibiting us from marketing or selling our platform. If we cannot or do not license the infringed technology on reasonable terms or at all, or substitute similar technology from another source, our revenue and operating results could be adversely impacted. Additionally, our customers may not purchase our CRM Platform if they are concerned that they may infringe third-party intellectual property rights. The occurrence of any of these events may have a material adverse effect on our business.

In our subscription agreements with our customers, we generally do not agree to indemnify our customers against any losses or costs incurred in connection with claims by a third party alleging that a customer’s use of our services or platform infringes the intellectual property rights of the third party. There can be no assurance, however, that customers will not assert a common law indemnity claim or that any existing limitations of liability provisions in our contracts would be enforceable or adequate, or would otherwise protect us from any such liabilities or damages with respect to any particular claim. Our customers who are accused of intellectual property infringement may in the future seek indemnification from us under common law or other legal theories. If such claims are successful, or if we are required to indemnify or defend our customers from these or other claims, these matters could be disruptive to our business and management and have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results and financial condition.

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If we fail to adequately protect our proprietary rights, in the United States and abroad, our competitive position could be impaired and we may lose valuable assets, experience reduced revenue and incur costly litigation to protect our rights.

Our success is dependent, in part, upon protecting our proprietary technology. We rely on a combination of copyrights, trademarks, service marks, trade secret laws and contractual restrictions to establish and protect our proprietary rights in our products and services. However, the steps we take to protect our intellectual property may be inadequate. We will not be able to protect our intellectual property if we are unable to enforce our rights or if we do not detect unauthorized use of our intellectual property. Any of our trademarks or other intellectual property rights may be challenged by others or invalidated through administrative process or litigation. Furthermore, legal standards relating to the validity, enforceability and scope of protection of intellectual property rights are uncertain. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for unauthorized third parties to copy our technology and use information that we regard as proprietary to create products and services that compete with ours. Some license provisions protecting against unauthorized use, copying, transfer and disclosure of our offerings may be unenforceable under the laws of certain jurisdictions and foreign countries. In addition, the laws of some countries do not protect proprietary rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. To the extent we expand our international activities, our exposure to unauthorized copying and use of our technology and proprietary information may increase.

We enter into confidentiality and invention assignment agreements with our employees and consultants and enter into confidentiality agreements with the parties with whom we have strategic relationships and business alliances. No assurance can be given that these agreements will be effective in controlling access to and distribution of our products and proprietary information. Further, these agreements may not prevent our competitors from independently developing technologies that are substantially equivalent or superior to our platform and offerings.

We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights. Litigation may be necessary in the future to enforce our intellectual property rights and to protect our trade secrets. Such litigation could be costly, time consuming and distracting to management and could result in the impairment or loss of portions of our intellectual property. Furthermore, our efforts to enforce our intellectual property rights may be met with defenses, counterclaims and countersuits attacking the validity and enforceability of our intellectual property rights. Our inability to protect our proprietary technology against unauthorized copying or use, as well as any costly litigation, could delay further sales or the implementation of our platform and offerings, impair the functionality of our platform and offerings, delay introductions of new features or enhancements, result in our substituting inferior or more costly technologies into our platform and offerings, or injure our reputation.

Our use of “open source” software could negatively affect our ability to offer our platform and subject us to possible litigation.

A substantial portion of our cloud-based platform incorporates so-called “open source” software, and we may incorporate additional open source software in the future. Open source software is generally freely accessible, usable and modifiable. Certain open source licenses may, in certain circumstances, require us to offer the components of our platform that incorporate the open source software for no cost, that we make available source code for modifications or derivative works we create based upon, incorporating or using the open source software and that we license such modifications or derivative works under the terms of the particular open source license. If an author or other third party that distributes open source software we use were to allege that we had not complied with the conditions of one or more of these licenses, we could be required to incur significant legal expenses defending against such allegations and could be subject to significant damages, including being enjoined from the offering of the components of our platform that contained the open source software and being required to comply with the foregoing conditions, which could disrupt our ability to offer the affected software. We could also be subject to suits by parties claiming ownership of what we believe to be open source software. Litigation could be costly for us to defend, have a negative effect on our operating results and financial condition and require us to devote additional research and development resources to change our products.

Risks Related to Government Regulation

We are subject to governmental regulation and other legal obligations, particularly related to privacy, data protection and information security, and our actual or perceived failure to comply with such obligations could harm our business. Compliance with such laws could also impair our efforts to maintain and expand our customer base, and thereby decrease our revenue.

Our handling of data is subject to a variety of laws and regulations, including regulation by various government agencies, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, and various state, local and foreign agencies. We collect personally identifiable information and other data from our customers and leads. We also handle personally identifiable information about our customers’ customers. We use this information to provide services to our customers, to support, expand and improve our business. We may also share customers’ personally identifiable information with third parties as authorized by the customer or as described in our privacy policy.

The U.S. federal and various state and foreign governments have adopted or proposed limitations on the collection, distribution, use and storage of personal information of individuals. In the United States, the FTC and many state attorneys general are applying

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federal and state consumer protection laws as imposing standards for the online collection, use and dissemination of data. However, these obligations may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent from one jurisdiction to another and may conflict with other requirements or our practices. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with privacy or security laws, policies, legal obligations or industry standards or any security incident that results in the unauthorized release or transfer of personally identifiable information or other customer data may result in governmental enforcement actions, litigation, fines and penalties and/or adverse publicity, and could cause our customers to lose trust in us, which could have an adverse effect on our reputation and business.

Laws and regulations concerning privacy, data protection and information security are evolving, and changes to such laws and regulations could require us to change features of our platform or restrict our customers’ ability to collect and use email addresses, page viewing data and personal information, which may reduce demand for our platform. Our failure to comply with federal, state and international data privacy laws and regulations could harm our ability to successfully operate our business and pursue our business goals. For example, California recently enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or CCPA, that, among other things, require covered companies to provide new disclosures to California consumers and afford such consumers new abilities to opt-out of certain sales of personal information. The CCPA recently was amended and it is not yet fully clear how the CCPA will be enforced and how certain of its requirements will be interpreted. We cannot yet predict the impact of the CCPA on our business or operations, but it may require us to modify our data processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply.

Additionally, a new California ballot initiative, the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA, was passed in November 2020. Effective starting on January 1, 2023, the CPRA imposes additional obligations on companies covered by the legislation and will significantly modify the CCPA, including by expanding consumers’ rights with respect to certain sensitive personal information. The CPRA also creates a new state agency that will be vested with authority to implement and enforce the CCPA and the CPRA. The effects of the CCPA and the CPRA are potentially significant and may require us to modify our data collection or processing practices and policies and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an effort to comply and increase our potential exposure to regulatory enforcement and/or litigation.

Certain other state laws impose similar privacy obligations and we also expect anticipate that more states to may enact legislation similar to the CCPA, which provides consumers with new privacy rights and increases the privacy and security obligations of entities handling certain personal information of such consumers. The CCPA has prompted a number of proposals for new federal and state-level privacy legislation. Such proposed legislation, if enacted, may add additional complexity, variation in requirements, restrictions and potential legal risk, require additional investment of resources in compliance programs, impact strategies and the availability of previously useful data and could result in increased compliance costs and/or changes in business practices and policies.

In addition, several foreign jurisdictions, including the European Union and Canada, have regulations dealing with the collection and use of personal information obtained from their residents, which are often more restrictive than those in the U.S. Laws and regulations in these jurisdictions apply broadly to the collection, use, storage, disclosure and security of personal information that identifies or may be used to identify an individual. In relevant part, these laws and regulations may affect our ability to engage in lead generation activities by imposing heightened requirements, such as affirmative opt-ins or consent prior to sending commercial correspondence or engaging in electronic tracking activities. For example, a recent ruling of the European Court of Justice in Case C-673/17 provides that a pre-checked opt-in is insufficient to constitute a valid active consumer consent to cookie storage.

Within the European Union, legislators have adopted the GDPR and which became effective in May 2018 which may impose additional obligations and risk upon our business and which may increase substantially the penalties to which we could be subject in the event of any non-compliance. In addition, further to the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union on January 31, 2020, the GDPR ceased to apply in the United Kingdom at the end of the transition period on December 31, 2020. However, as of January 1, 2021, the United Kingdom’s European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 incorporated the GDPR (as it existed on December 31, 2020 but subject to certain United Kingdom specific amendments) into United Kingdom law (the “UK GDPR”). The UK GDPR and the UK Data Protection Act 2018 set out the United Kingdom’s data protection regime, which is independent from but aligned to the European Union’s data protection regime. Non-compliance with the UK GDPR may result in monetary penalties of up to £17.5 million or 4% of worldwide revenue, whichever is higher. The United Kingdom, however, is now regarded as a third country under the European Union’s GDPR which means that transfers of personal data from the European Economic Area to the United Kingdom will be restricted unless an appropriate safeguard, as recognized by the European Union’s GDPR, has been put in place. However, under the EU-UK Trade Cooperation Agreement it is lawful to transfer personal data between the United Kingdom and the European Economic Area for a 6 month period following the end of the transition period, with a view to achieving an adequacy decision from the European Commission during that period. Like the European Union GDPR, the UK GDPR restricts personal data transfers outside the United Kingdom to countries not regarded by the United Kingdom as providing adequate protection (this means that personal data transfers from the United Kingdom to the European Economic Area remain free flowing).

On July 12, 2016, the European Commission adopted the EU-US Privacy Shield, a framework for the transfer of personal data from the European Union to the United States, as a successor to the Safe Harbor framework that was invalidated by the European Court of Justice in October 2015. We certified to the EU-US Privacy Shield. On July 16, 2020, the European Court of Justice

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invalidated the EU–US Privacy Shield ruling that it failed to offer adequate protections for European Union personal data transferred to the United States. The European Court of Justice, in the same decision, deemed that the Standard Contractual Clauses, or SCCs, approved by the European Commission for transfers of personal data between European Union controllers and non-European Union processors are valid, however the European Court of Justice deemed that transfers made pursuant to the SCCs need to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis to ensure the European Union’s standards of data protection are met. Our customer agreements include SCCs. However, as a result of this decision, companies may be required to adopt additional measures to accomplish transfers of personal data to the United States and other third countries in compliance with the GDPR, and there continue to be concerns about whether the SCCs will face additional challenges. Until the remaining legal uncertainties regarding how to legally continue these transfers are settled, we will continue to face uncertainty as to whether our customers will be permitted to transfer personal data to the United States for processing by us as part of our platform services. If such data transfer to the United States is not permitted, it could have a negative effect on our existing business and on our ability to attract and retain new customers. Our customers may view alternative data transfer mechanisms as being too costly, too burdensome, too legally uncertain or otherwise objectionable and therefore decide not to do business with us. For example, some of our customers or potential customers who do business in the European Union may require their vendors to host all personal data within the European Union and may decide to do business with one of our competitors who hosts personal data within the European Union instead of doing business with us.

The regulatory framework governing the collection, processing, storage, use and sharing of certain information, particularly financial and other personal information, is rapidly evolving and is likely to continue to be subject to uncertainty and varying interpretations. It is possible that these laws may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our existing data management practices or the features of our services and platform capabilities. Any failure or perceived failure by us, or any third parties with which we do business, to comply with our posted privacy policies, changing consumer expectations, evolving laws, rules and regulations, industry standards, or contractual obligations to which we or such third parties are or may become subject, may result in actions or other claims against us by governmental entities or private actors, the expenditure of substantial costs, time and other resources or the incurrence of significant fines, penalties or other liabilities. In addition, any such action, particularly to the extent we were found to be guilty of violations or otherwise liable for damages, would damage our reputation and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

We publicly post documentation regarding our practices concerning the collection, processing, use and disclosure of data. Although we endeavor to comply with our published policies and documentation, we may at times fail to do so or be alleged to have failed to do so. Any failure or perceived failure by us to comply with our privacy policies or any applicable privacy, security or data protection, information security or consumer-protection related laws, regulations, orders or industry standards could expose us to costly litigation, significant awards, fines or judgments, civil and/or criminal penalties or negative publicity, and could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. The publication of our privacy policy and other documentation that provide promises and assurances about privacy and security can subject us to potential state and federal action if they are found to be deceptive, unfair, or misrepresentative of our actual practices, which could, individually or in the aggregate, materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.

If our privacy or data security measures fail to comply with current or future laws and regulations, we may be subject to claims, legal proceedings or other actions by individuals or governmental authorities based on privacy or data protection regulations and our commitments to customers or others, as well as negative publicity and a potential loss of business. Moreover, if future laws and regulations limit our subscribers’ ability to use and share personal information or our ability to store, process and share personal information, demand for our solutions could decrease, our costs could increase, and our business, results of operations and financial condition could be harmed.

We could face liability, or our reputation might be harmed, as a result of the activities of our customers, the content of their websites or the data they store on our servers.

As a provider of a cloud-based inbound marketing, sales and customer service software platform, we may be subject to potential liability for the activities of our customers on or in connection with the data they store on our servers. Although our customer terms of use prohibit illegal use of our services by our customers and permit us to take down websites or take other appropriate actions for illegal use, customers may nonetheless engage in prohibited activities or upload or store content with us in violation of applicable law or the customer’s own policies, which could subject us to liability or harm our reputation. Furthermore, customers may upload, store, or use content on our CRM Platform that may violate our policy on acceptable use which prohibits content that is threatening, abusive, harassing, deceptive, false, misleading, vulgar, obscene, or indecent. While such content may not be illegal, use of our CRM Platform for such content could harm our reputation resulting in a loss of business.

Several U.S. federal statutes may apply to us with respect to various customer activities:

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Although these statutes and case law in the United States have generally shielded us from liability for customer activities to date, court rulings in pending or future litigation may narrow the scope of protection afforded us under these laws. In addition, laws governing these activities are unsettled in many international jurisdictions, or may prove difficult or impossible for us to comply with in some international jurisdictions. Also, notwithstanding the exculpatory language of these bodies of law, we may become involved in complaints and lawsuits which, even if ultimately resolved in our favor, add cost to our doing business and may divert management’s time and attention. Finally, other existing bodies of law, including the criminal laws of various states, may be deemed to apply or new statutes or regulations may be adopted in the future, any of which could expose us to further liability and increase our costs of doing business.

The standards that private entities use to regulate the use of email have in the past interfered with, and may in the future interfere with, the effectiveness of our CRM Platform and our ability to conduct business.

Our customers rely on email to communicate with their existing or prospective customers. Various private entities attempt to regulate the use of email for commercial solicitation. These entities often advocate standards of conduct or practice that significantly exceed current legal requirements and classify certain email solicitations that comply with current legal requirements as spam. Some of these entities maintain “blacklists” of companies and individuals, and the websites, internet service providers and internet protocol addresses associated with those entities or individuals that do not adhere to those standards of conduct or practices for commercial email solicitations that the blacklisting entity believes are appropriate. If a company’s internet protocol addresses are listed by a blacklisting entity, emails sent from those addresses may be blocked if they are sent to any internet domain or internet address that subscribes to the blacklisting entity’s service or purchases its blacklist.

From time to time, some of our internet protocol addresses may become listed with one or more blacklisting entities due to the messaging practices of our customers. There can be no guarantee that we will be able to successfully remove ourselves from those lists. Blacklisting of this type could interfere with our ability to market our CRM Platform and services and communicate with our customers and, because we fulfill email delivery on behalf of our customers, could undermine the effectiveness of our customers’ email marketing campaigns, all of which could have a material negative impact on our business and results of operations.

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Existing federal, state and foreign laws regulate Internet tracking software, the senders of commercial emails and text messages, website owners and other activities, and could impact the use of our CRM Platform and potentially subject us to regulatory enforcement or private litigation.

Certain aspects of how our customers utilize our platform are subject to regulations in the United States, European Union and elsewhere. In recent years, U.S. and European lawmakers and regulators have expressed concern over the use of third-party cookies or web beacons for online behavioral advertising, and legislation adopted recently in the European Union requires informed consent for the placement of a cookie on a user’s device. Regulation of cookies and web beacons may lead to restrictions on our activities, such as efforts to understand users’ Internet usage. New and expanding “Do Not Track” regulations have recently been enacted or proposed that protect users’ right to choose whether or not to be tracked online. These regulations seek, among other things, to allow end users to have greater control over the use of private information collected online, to forbid the collection or use of online information, to demand a business to comply with their choice to opt out of such collection or use, and to place limits upon the disclosure of information to third party websites. These policies could have a significant impact on the operation of our CRM Platform and could impair our attractiveness to customers, which would harm our business.

Many of our customers and potential customers in the healthcare, financial services and other industries are subject to substantial regulation regarding their collection, use and protection of data and may be the subject of further regulation in the future. Accordingly, these laws or significant new laws or regulations or changes in, or repeals of, existing laws, regulations or governmental policy may change the way these customers do business and may require us to implement additional features or offer additional contractual terms to satisfy customer and regulatory requirements, or could cause the demand for and sales of our CRM Platform to decrease and adversely impact our financial results.

In addition, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, or the CAN-SPAM Act, establishes certain requirements for commercial email messages and specifies penalties for the transmission of commercial email messages that are intended to deceive the recipient as to source or content. The CAN-SPAM Act, among other things, obligates the sender of commercial emails to provide recipients with the ability to opt out of receiving future commercial emails from the sender. The ability of our customers’ message recipients to opt out of receiving commercial emails may minimize the effectiveness of the email components of our CRM Platform. In addition, certain states and foreign jurisdictions, such as Australia, Canada and the European Union, have enacted laws that regulate sending email, and some of these laws are more restrictive than U.S. laws. For example, some foreign laws prohibit sending unsolicited email unless the recipient has provided the sender advance consent to receipt of such email, or in other words has “opted-in” to receiving it. A requirement that recipients opt into, or the ability of recipients to opt out of, receiving commercial emails may minimize the effectiveness of our platform.

While these laws and regulations generally govern our customers’ use of our platform, we may be subject to certain laws as a data processor on behalf of, or as a business associate of, our customers. For example, laws and regulations governing the collection, use and disclosure of personal information include, in the United States, rules and regulations promulgated under the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 and state breach notification laws, and internationally, the Data Protection Directive in the European Union and the Federal Data Protection Act in Germany. If we were found to be in violation of any of these laws or regulations as a result of government enforcement or private litigation, we could be subjected to civil and criminal sanctions, including both monetary fines and injunctive action that could force us to change our business practices, all of which could adversely affect our financial performance and significantly harm our reputation and our business.

We are subject to governmental export controls and economic sanctions laws that could impair our ability to compete in international markets and subject us to liability if we are not in full compliance with applicable laws.

Our business activities are subject to various restrictions under U.S. export controls and trade and economic sanctions laws, including the U.S. Commerce Department’s Export Administration Regulations and economic and trade sanctions regulations maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. If we fail to comply with these laws and regulations, we and certain of our employees could be subject to civil or criminal penalties and reputational harm. Obtaining the necessary authorizations, including any required license, for a particular transaction may be time-consuming, is not guaranteed, and may result in the delay or loss of sales opportunities. Furthermore, U.S. export control laws and economic sanctions laws prohibit certain transactions with U.S. embargoed or sanctioned countries, governments, persons and entities. Although we take precautions to prevent transactions with U.S. sanction targets, the possibility exists that we could inadvertently provide our solutions to persons prohibited by U.S. sanctions. This could result in negative consequences to us, including government investigations, penalties and reputational harm.

Risks Related to Taxation

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We may be subject to additional obligations to collect and remit sales tax and other taxes, and we may be subject to tax liability for past sales, which could harm our business.

State, local and foreign jurisdictions have differing rules and regulations governing sales, use, value added, Digital Services Tax, and other taxes, and these rules and regulations are subject to varying interpretations that may change over time. In particular, the applicability of such taxes to our CRM Platform in various jurisdictions is unclear. Further, these jurisdictions’ rules regarding tax nexus are complex and vary significantly. As a result, we could face the possibility of tax assessments and audits, and our liability for these taxes and associated penalties could exceed our original estimates. A successful assertion that we should be collecting additional sales, use, value added or other taxes in those jurisdictions where we have not historically done so and do not accrue for such taxes could result in substantial tax liabilities and related penalties for past sales, discourage customers from purchasing our application or otherwise harm our business and operating results.

Changes in tax laws or regulations that are applied adversely to us or our customers could increase the costs of our CRM Platform and adversely impact our business.

New income, sales, use or other tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be enacted at any time. Any new taxes could adversely affect our domestic and international business operations, and our business and financial performance. Further, existing tax laws, statutes, rules, regulations or ordinances could be interpreted, changed, modified or applied adversely to us. These events could require us or our customers to pay additional tax amounts on a prospective or retroactive basis, as well as require us or our customers to pay fines and/or penalties and interest for past amounts deemed to be due. If we raise our prices to offset the costs of these changes, existing and potential future customers may elect not to continue or purchase our CRM Platform in the future. Additionally, new, changed, modified or newly interpreted or applied tax laws could increase our customers’ and our compliance, operating and other costs, as well as the costs of our platform. Any or all of these events could adversely impact our business and financial performance.

We are a multinational organization faced with increasingly complex tax issues in many jurisdictions, and we could be obligated to pay additional taxes in various jurisdictions.

As a multinational organization, we may be subject to taxation in several jurisdictions around the world with increasingly complex tax laws, the application of which can be uncertain. The amount of taxes we pay in these jurisdictions could increase substantially as a result of changes in the applicable tax principles, including increased tax rates, new tax laws or revised interpretations of existing tax laws and precedents, which could have a material adverse effect on our liquidity and operating results. Changes in tax laws, such as tax reform in the United States or changes in tax laws resulting from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s multi-jurisdictional plan of action to address “base erosion and profit shifting,” could impact our effective tax rate. In addition, the authorities in these jurisdictions could review our tax returns and impose additional tax, interest and penalties, and the authorities could claim that various withholding requirements apply to us or our subsidiaries or assert that benefits of tax treaties are not available to us or our subsidiaries, any of which could have a material impact on us and the results of our operations.

We may not be able to utilize a significant portion of our net operating loss carryforwards, which could adversely affect our profitability.

We have incurred losses during our history and do not expect to become profitable in the near future, and we may never achieve profitability. As of December 31, 2020, we had $760 million of U.S. federal and $508 million state net operating loss carryforwards due to prior period losses, which, if not utilized, some of which will begin to expire in 2027 for federal purposes and begin to expire in 2023 for state purposes. These net operating loss carryforwards could expire unused and be unavailable to offset future income tax liabilities, which could adversely affect our profitability. Our U.S federal and certain state net operating loss carryforwards incurred for periods beginning on or after January 1, 2018 would not expire unused because they can be carried forward indefinitely. In addition, under Section 382 and Section 383 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, which we refer to as the Code, our ability to utilize net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes, such as research tax credits, in any taxable year may be further limited if we experience an “ownership change”. An ownership change generally occurs if one or more stockholders or groups of stockholders who own at least 5% of our stock increase their ownership by more than 50 percentage points over their lowest ownership percentage within a rolling three-year period. Similar rules may apply under state tax laws. We may have experienced an ownership change in the past, and future issuances of our stock could cause an ownership change. It is possible that any such ownership change could have a material effect on the use of our net operating loss carryforwards or other tax attributes accrued prior to such ownership change, which could adversely affect our profitability.

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Risks Related to Our Operating Results and Financial Condition

We have a history of losses and may not achieve profitability in the future.

We generated net losses of $85.0 million in 2020, $53.7 million in 2019, and $63.8 million in 2018. As of December 31, 2020, we had an accumulated deficit of $483.2 million. We will need to generate and sustain increased revenue levels in future periods to become profitable, and, even if we do, we may not be able to maintain or increase our level of profitability. We intend to continue to expend significant funds to grow our marketing, sales, customer service, and content management operations, develop and enhance our CRM Platform, scale our data center infrastructure and services capabilities and expand into new markets. Our efforts to grow our business may be more costly than we expect, and we may not be able to increase our revenue enough to offset our higher operating expenses. We may incur significant losses in the future for a number of reasons, including the other risks described in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, and unforeseen expenses, difficulties, complications and delays and other unknown events. If we are unable to achieve and sustain profitability, the market price of our common stock may significantly decrease.

From time to time, we may invest funds in social impact investment funds, and may receive no return on our investment or lose our entire investment.

From time to time, we may invest in social impact investment funds. For example, in December 2020, we committed $20 million to social impact investing. Our first allocation of those funds was a $12.5 million investment in the Black Economic Development Fund (“BEDF”). The BEDF is managed by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (“LISC”), which expects to make investments from the BEDF in the form of bank deposits, bridge financing, and other financing to Black-led businesses, financial institutions, and anchor institutions. There is no guarantee as to the performance of this investment or any similar investments we make in the future. Depending on the performance of this investment and future investments we may make, we may not receive any return on our investment or we may lose our entire investment, which could have an adverse effect on our business.

We may experience quarterly fluctuations in our operating results due to a number of factors, which makes our future results difficult to predict and could cause our operating results to fall below expectations or our guidance.

Our quarterly operating results have fluctuated in the past and are expected to fluctuate in the future due to a variety of factors, many of which are outside of our control. As a result, our past results may not be indicative of our future performance, and comparing our operating results on a period-to-period basis may not be meaningful. In addition to the other risks described in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, factors that may affect our quarterly operating results include the following:

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We may not be able to accurately forecast the amount and mix of future subscriptions, revenue and expenses and, as a result, our operating results may fall below our estimates or the expectations of public market analysts and investors. If our revenue or operating results fall below the expectations of investors or securities analysts, or below any guidance we may provide, the price of our common stock could decline.

If we do not accurately predict subscription renewal rates or otherwise fail to forecast our revenue accurately, or if we fail to match our expenditures with corresponding revenue, our operating results could be adversely affected.

Because our recent growth has resulted in the rapid expansion of our business, we do not have a long history upon which to base forecasts of renewal rates with customers or future operating revenue. As a result, our operating results in future reporting periods may be significantly below the expectations of the public market, equity research analysts or investors, which could harm the price of our common stock.

Because we generally recognize revenue from subscriptions ratably over the term of the agreement, near term changes in sales may not be reflected immediately in our operating results.

We offer our CRM Platform primarily through a mix of monthly, quarterly and single-year subscription agreements and generally recognize revenue ratably over the related subscription period. As a result, much of the revenue we report in each quarter is derived from agreements entered into during prior months, quarters or years. In addition, we do not record deferred revenue beyond amounts invoiced as a liability on our balance sheet. A decline in new or renewed subscriptions or marketing solutions agreements in any one quarter is not likely to be reflected immediately in our revenue results for that quarter. Such declines, however, would negatively affect our revenue and deferred revenue balances in future periods, and the effect of significant downturns in sales and market acceptance of our platform, and potential changes in our rate of renewals, may not be fully reflected in our results of operations until future periods. Our subscription model also makes it difficult for us to rapidly increase our total revenue and deferred revenue balance through additional sales in any period, as revenue from new customers must be recognized over the applicable subscription term.

Risks Related to Our Notes

Servicing our debt may require a significant amount of cash.  We may not have sufficient cash flow from our business to pay our indebtedness, and we may not have the ability to raise the funds necessary to settle for cash conversions of the Notes or to repurchase the Notes for cash upon a fundamental change, which could adversely affect our business and results of operations.

We incurred indebtedness in the aggregate principal amount of $400.0 million in connection with the issuance of our 0.25% convertible senior notes due June 1, 2022 (the “2022 Notes”). In June 2020, the Company exchanged approximately $272.1 million in aggregate principal amount of the 2022 Notes in privately-negotiated transactions for an aggregate of approximately $283.0 million in cash and 1.6 million shares of common stock. As of December 31, 2020, $125.8 million of principal remains outstanding on the 2022 Notes. In June 2020, concurrent with the partial repurchase of the 2022 Notes, we incurred indebtedness in the aggregate principal amount of $460.0 million in connection with the issuance of our 0.375% convertible senior notes due June 1, 2025 (the “2025 Notes”) and together with the 2022 Notes (the “Notes”). Our ability to make scheduled payments of the principal of, to pay interest on or to refinance our indebtedness, including the Notes, depends on our future performance, which is subject to economic, financial, competitive and other factors beyond our control. Our business may not continue to generate cash flow from operations in the future sufficient to service our debt and make necessary capital expenditures. If we are unable to generate such cash flow, we may be required to adopt one or more alternatives, such as selling assets, restructuring debt or obtaining additional debt financing or equity capital on terms that may be onerous or highly dilutive. Our ability to refinance any future indebtedness will depend on the capital markets and our financial condition at such time. We may not be able to engage in any of these activities or engage in these activities on desirable terms, which could result in a default on our debt obligations. In addition, any of our future debt agreements may contain restrictive covenants that may prohibit us from adopting any of these alternatives. Our failure to comply with these covenants could result in an event of default which, if not cured or waived, could result in the acceleration of our debt.

In addition, holders of the Notes have the right to require us to repurchase their Notes upon the occurrence of a fundamental change at a fundamental change repurchase price equal to 100% of the principal amount of the Notes to be repurchased, plus accrued and unpaid interest, if any. Upon conversion of the Notes, unless we elect to deliver solely shares of our common stock to settle such conversion (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we will be required to make cash payments in respect of the Notes being converted.  We may not have enough available cash or be able to obtain financing at the time we are required to make repurchases of Notes surrendered therefor or Notes being converted. In addition, our ability to repurchase the Notes or to pay cash upon conversions of the Notes may be limited by law, by regulatory authority or by agreements governing our future indebtedness. Our failure to repurchase Notes at a time when the repurchase is required by the indenture governing the notes or to pay any cash payable on future conversions of the Notes as required by such indenture would constitute a default under such indenture. A default under the indenture or the fundamental change itself could also lead to a default under agreements governing our future indebtedness.

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If the repayment of the related indebtedness were to be accelerated after any applicable notice or grace periods, we may not have sufficient funds to repay the indebtedness and repurchase the Notes or make cash payments upon conversions thereof.

In addition, our indebtedness, combined with our other financial obligations and contractual commitments, could have other important consequences.  For example, it could:

Any of these factors could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. In addition, if we incur additional indebtedness, the risks related to our business and our ability to service or repay our indebtedness would increase.

The conditional conversion feature of the Notes, if triggered, may adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.

In the event the conditional conversion feature of the 2022 Notes or the 2025 Notes is triggered, the holders thereof will be entitled to convert the 2022 Notes or the 2025 Notes respectively, at any time during specified periods at their option.

Because the last reported sale price of our common stock for at least 20 trading days during the period of 30 consecutive trading days ending on the last trading day of the calendar quarter ended December 31, 2020 was equal to or greater than 130% of the applicable conversion price on each applicable trading day, the 2022 Notes are convertible at the option of the holders thereof during the calendar quarter ending March 31, 2021. In the fourth quarter of 2020, the Company settled $2 million of principal balance of the 2022 Notes in cash. Between the end of the most recently completed fiscal quarter and February 12, 2021, the Company additionally settled $8.3 million of principal balance of the 2022 Notes in cash in response to conversion notices received prior to December 31, 2020. As of February 12, 2021, the Company has received additional conversion notices subsequent to year-end for approximately $36.1 million of the principal balance of the 2022 Notes, which will be settled in cash during the quarter ended March 31, 2021. Because the last reported sale price of the Company’s common stock for at least 20 trading days during the period of 30 consecutive trading days ending on the last trading day of the calendar quarter ended December 31, 2020 was equal to or greater than 130% of the applicable conversion price on each applicable trading day, the 2025 Notes are convertible at the option of the holders thereof during the calendar quarter ending March 31, 2021. As of February 12, 2021, no holders have converted or indicated their intention to convert the 2025 Notes. Whether the Notes that remain outstanding will be convertible following the calendar quarter ending December 31, 2020 will depend on the continued satisfaction of this condition or another conversion condition in the future. If one or more holders elect to convert their Notes, unless we elect to satisfy our conversion obligation by delivering solely shares of our common stock (other than paying cash in lieu of delivering any fractional share), we would be required to settle a portion or all of our conversion obligation through the payment of cash, which could adversely affect our liquidity. In addition, even if holders do not elect to convert their Notes, we could be required under applicable accounting rules to reclassify all or a portion of the outstanding principal of the Notes as a current rather than long-term liability, which would result in a material reduction of our net working capital. The Notes are currently classified as long-term debt, except for $7.8 million, classified as current as of December 31, 2020, for conversion notices received prior to year-end, for which the principal amount, net of discount, is expected to be cash-settled within the next fiscal quarter.

The accounting method for convertible debt securities that may be settled in cash, such as the Notes, could have a material effect on our reported financial results.

Under Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) Accounting Standards Codification 470-20, Debt with Conversion and Other Options, which we refer to as ASC 470-20, an entity must separately account for the liability and equity components of convertible debt instruments (such as the Notes) that may be settled entirely or partially in cash upon conversion in a manner that reflects the issuer’s economic interest cost. ASC 470-20 requires the value of the conversion option of the Notes, representing the equity component, to be recorded as additional paid-in capital within stockholders’ equity in our consolidated balance sheet and as a discount to the Notes, which reduces their initial carrying value. The carrying value of the Notes, net of the discount recorded, will be accreted up to the principal amount of the Notes from the issuance date until maturity, which will result in non-cash charges to interest expense in our consolidated statement of operations. Accordingly, we will report lower net income or higher net loss in our financial results because ASC 470-20 requires interest to include both the current period’s accretion of the debt discount and the instrument’s coupon interest, which could adversely affect our reported or future financial results, the trading price of our common stock and the trading price of the Notes.

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In addition, under certain circumstances, convertible debt instruments (such as the Notes) that may be settled entirely or partly in cash are currently accounted for utilizing the treasury stock method, the effect of which is that the shares issuable upon conversion of the Notes are not included in the calculation of diluted earnings per share except to the extent that the conversion value of the Notes exceeds their principal amount. Under the treasury stock method, for diluted earnings per share purposes, the transaction is accounted for as if the number of shares of common stock that would be necessary to settle such excess, if we elected to settle such excess in shares, are issued.

In August 2020, the FASB issued guidance simplifying ASC 470-20 by reducing the number of accounting models for convertible debt instruments and convertible preferred stock. Under the new guidance, we will no longer be required to separately account for the liability and equity components of convertible debt instruments. This will have the impact of reducing non-cash interest expense, and thereby increasing net income (or decreasing net losses). Additionally, the new guidance eliminates the treasury stock method for calculating diluted earnings per share for convertible instruments and requires use of the “if-converted” method, which would decrease (increase) our diluted net income (loss) per share. The new standard is effective beginning in January 2022, with early adoption permitted. We are currently evaluating the impact of the new guidance on our consolidated financial statements.

Risks Related to Our Common Stock

Our stock price may be volatile and you may be unable to sell your shares at or above the price you purchased them.

The trading prices of the securities of technology companies, including providers of software via the cloud-based model, have been highly volatile. Since shares of our common stock were sold in our initial public offering in October 2014 at a price of $25.00 per share, our stock price has ranged from $25.79 to $420.61, through December 31, 2020. The market price of our common stock may fluctuate significantly in response to numerous factors, many of which are beyond our control, including:

In addition, the stock markets have experienced extreme price and volume fluctuations that have affected and continue to affect the market prices of equity securities of many technology companies. Stock prices of many technology companies have fluctuated in a manner unrelated or disproportionate to the operating performance of those companies.

In the past, stockholders have instituted securities class action litigation following periods of market volatility. If we were to become involved in securities litigation, it could subject us to substantial costs, divert resources and the attention of management from our business and adversely affect our business.

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If we fail to maintain an effective system of disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, our ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements or comply with applicable regulations could be impaired.

As a public company we are subject to the reporting requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, or the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, or the Dodd-Frank Act, and the rules and regulations of the New York Stock Exchange, or NYSE. We expect that compliance with these rules and regulations will continue to increase our legal, accounting and financial compliance costs, make some activities more difficult, time consuming and costly, and place significant strain on our personnel, systems and resources.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act requires, among other things, that we assess the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting annually and the effectiveness of our disclosure controls and procedures quarterly. In particular, Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or Section 404, requires us to perform system and process evaluation and testing of our internal control over financial reporting to allow management to report on, and our independent registered public accounting firm to attest to, the effectiveness of our internal control over financial reporting. Our compliance with applicable provisions of Section 404 requires that we incur substantial accounting expense and expend significant management time on compliance-related issues as we implement additional corporate governance practices and comply with reporting requirements. Moreover, if we are not able to comply with the requirements of Section 404 applicable to us in a timely manner, or if we or our independent registered public accounting firm identifies deficiencies in our internal control over financial reporting that are deemed to be material weaknesses, the market price of our stock could decline and we could be subject to sanctions or investigations by the SEC or other regulatory authorities, which would require additional financial and management resources.

Furthermore, investor perceptions of our company may suffer if deficiencies are found, and this could cause a decline in the market price of our stock. Irrespective of compliance with Section 404, any failure of our internal control over financial reporting could have a material adverse effect on our stated operating results and harm our reputation. If we are unable to implement these requirements effectively or efficiently, it could harm our operations, financial reporting, or financial results and could result in an adverse opinion on our internal controls from our independent registered public accounting firm.

Anti-takeover provisions in our charter documents and Delaware law may delay or prevent an acquisition of our company.

Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation, amended and restated bylaws and Delaware law contain provisions that may have the effect of delaying or preventing a change in control of us or changes in our management. Our amended and restated certificate of incorporation and bylaws include provisions that:

These provisions, alone or together, could delay or prevent hostile takeovers and changes in control or changes in our management.

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In addition, because we are incorporated in Delaware, we are governed by the provisions of Section 203 of the Delaware General Corporation Law, which limits the ability of stockholders owning in excess of 15% of our outstanding voting stock to merge or combine with us in certain circumstances.

Any provision of our amended and restated certificate of incorporation or amended and restated bylaws or Delaware law that has the effect of delaying or deterring a change in control could limit the opportunity for our stockholders to receive a premium for their shares of our common stock, and could also affect the price that some investors are willing to pay for our common stock.

General Risks

Failure to comply with laws and regulations could harm our business.

Our business is subject to regulation by various federal, state, local and foreign governmental agencies, including agencies responsible for monitoring and enforcing employment and labor laws, workplace safety, environmental laws, consumer protection laws, anti-bribery laws, import/export controls, federal securities laws and tax laws and regulations. In certain jurisdictions, these regulatory requirements may be more stringent than those in the United States. Noncompliance with applicable regulations or requirements could subject us to investigations, sanctions, mandatory recalls, enforcement actions, disgorgement of profits, fines, damages, civil and criminal penalties or injunctions.

We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates.

We face exposure to movements in currency exchange rates, which may cause our revenue and operating results to differ materially from expectations. As we have expanded our international operations our exposure exchange rate fluctuations has increased, in particular with respect to the Euro, British Pound Sterling, Australian Dollar, Singapore Dollar, Japanese Yen and Colombian Peso. As exchange rates vary, revenue, cost of revenue, operating expenses and other operating results, when re-measured, may differ materially from expectations. In addition, our operating results are subject to fluctuation if our mix of U.S. and foreign currency denominated transactions and expenses changes in the future. Furthermore, global political events, including Brexit and similar geopolitical developments, fluctuating commodity prices and trade tariff developments, have caused global economic uncertainty, which could amplify the volatility of currency fluctuations. Such volatility, even when it increases our revenues or decreases our expenses, impacts our ability to predict our future results and earnings accurately. Although we may apply certain strategies to mitigate foreign currency risk, these strategies might not eliminate our exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations and would involve costs and risks of their own, such as ongoing management time and expertise, external costs to implement the strategies and potential accounting implications. Additionally, as we anticipate growing our business further outside of the United States, the effects of movements in currency exchange rates will increase as our transaction volume outside of the United States increases.

Weakened global economic conditions may harm our industry, business and results of operations.

Our overall performance depends in part on worldwide economic conditions. Global financial developments and downturns seemingly unrelated to us or the software industry may harm us. The United States and other key international economies have been affected from time to time by falling demand for a variety of goods and services, restricted credit, poor liquidity, reduced corporate profitability, volatility in credit, equity and foreign exchange markets, bankruptcies, and overall uncertainty with respect to the economy, including with respect to tariff and trade issues. In particular, the economies of countries in Europe have been experiencing weakness associated with high sovereign debt levels, weakness in the banking sector, uncertainty over the future of the Euro zone and volatility in the value of the pound sterling and the Euro, including instability surrounding Brexit. We have operations, as well as current and potential new customers, throughout most of Europe. If economic conditions in Europe and other key markets for our platform continue to remain uncertain or deteriorate further, it could adversely affect our customers’ ability or willingness to subscribe to our platform, delay prospective customers’ purchasing decisions, reduce the value or duration of their subscriptions or affect renewal rates, all of which could harm our operating results.

Our ability to raise capital in the future may be limited, and our failure to raise capital when needed could prevent us from growing.

Our business and operations may consume resources faster than we anticipate. In the future, we may need to raise additional funds to invest in future growth opportunities. Additional financing may not be available on favorable terms, if at all. If adequate funds are not available on acceptable terms, we may be unable to invest in future growth opportunities, which could seriously harm our business and operating results. If we incur debt, the debt holders would have rights senior to common stockholders to make claims on our assets, and the terms of any debt could restrict our operations, including our ability to pay dividends on our common stock. Furthermore, if we issue equity securities, stockholders will experience dilution, and the new equity securities could have rights senior to those of our common stock. The Notes are and any additional equity or equity-linked financings would be dilutive to our stockholders. Because our decision to issue securities in any future offering will depend on market conditions and other factors beyond

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our control, we cannot predict or estimate the amount, timing or nature of our future offerings. As a result, our stockholders bear the risk of our future securities offerings reducing the market price of our common stock and diluting their interest.

None.

We occupy approximately 443,000 square feet of office space in Cambridge, Massachusetts pursuant to lease agreements that expire through 2029. We also maintain offices in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Dublin, Ireland, Sydney, Australia, Singapore, Tokyo, Japan, Berlin, Germany, Bogotá, Colombia, Paris, France, and Ghent, Belgium. We believe that our current facilities are suitable and adequate to meet our current needs. We intend to add new facilities or expand existing facilities as we add employees, and we believe that suitable additional or substitute space will be available as needed to accommodate any such expansion of our operations.

From time to time we may become involved in legal proceedings or be subject to claims arising in the ordinary course of our business. Although the results of litigation and claims cannot be predicted with certainty, we currently believe that the ultimate costs to resolve any pending matter will not have a material adverse effect on our business, operating results, financial condition or cash flows. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can have an adverse impact on us because of defense and settlement costs, diversion of management resources and other factors.

Not Applicable.

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PART II

Market Information for Common Stock

Our common stock has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “HUBS” since October 9, 2014. Prior to that date, there was no public trading market for our common stock. Our initial public offering was priced at $25.00 per share on October 8, 2014.

As of February 12, 2021, we had 27 holders of record of our common stock. The actual number of shareholders is greater than this number of record holders, and includes shareholders who are beneficial owners, but whose shares are held in street name by brokers and other nominees. This number of holders of record also does not include shareholders whose shares may be held in trust by other entities.

Dividends

We have never declared or paid any cash dividends on our common stock. We currently anticipate that we will retain future earnings to fund development and growth of our business, and do not anticipate declaring or paying cash dividends in the foreseeable future.  Any future determination to pay dividends will be, subject to applicable law, at the discretion of our board of directors and will depend upon, among other factors, our results of operations, financial condition, contractual restrictions, and capital requirements.

Performance Graph

The following performance graph shall not be deemed “soliciting material” or to be “filed” with the Securities and Exchange Commission for purposes of Section 18 of the Exchange Act or otherwise subject to the liabilities under that Section, and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing of the company under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) or the Exchange Act.

The following graph shows a comparison of the cumulative total return for our common stock, the Nasdaq Computer Index and the S&P 500 Index for each of the last six fiscal years ended December 31, 2020. The graph assumes an initial investment of $100 in each of the Company’s common stock, the Nasdaq Computer Index and the S&P 500. Such returns are based on historical results and are not intended to suggest future performance.

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Recent Sales of Unregistered Securities

None.

Purchases of Equity Securities by the Issuer and Affiliated Purchasers

None.

Securities Authorized for Issuance Under Equity Compensation Plans

See Item 12, “Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters,” for information regarding securities authorized for issuance.

Outstanding Convertible Senior Notes, Convertible Note Hedge, and Warrant

In May 2017, we issued $400.0 million aggregate principal amount of 0.25% convertible senior notes (the “2022 Notes”) due June 1, 2022, of which $272.1 million was repurchased in June 2020 and $2 million was settled in cash during the fourth quarter of 2020. As of December 31, 2020, $125.8 million of principal remains outstanding on the 2022 Notes. Also in June 2020, we issued $460 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due June 1, 2025 (the “2025 Notes”).

In connection with the offering of the 2025 Notes, the Company purchased capped call options (“Capped Call Options”) that give the Company the option to purchase up to approximately 1.6 million shares of its common stock for $282.52 per share. In connection with the offering of the 2022 Notes, the Company entered into convertible note hedge transactions (the “Convertible Note Hedges”) with certain counterparties in which the Company has the option to purchase (subject to adjustment for certain specified events) shares of the Company’s common stock at a price of approximately $94.77 per share. In addition, the Company sold warrants (the “Warrants”) to certain bank counterparties whereby the holders of the warrants have the option to purchase (subject to adjustment for certain specified events) shares of the Company’s common stock at a price of $115.8 per share.  As of December 31, 2020, Convertible Note Hedges corresponding to approximately 1.3 million shares of the Company’s common stock and Warrants corresponding to approximately 1.3 million shares of the Company’s common stock remain outstanding. See Note 9 in the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements for more information.

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You should read the selected consolidated financial data below in conjunction with “Management’s discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations” and the consolidated financial statements, related notes and other financial information included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The selected consolidated financial data in this section are not intended to replace the consolidated financial statements and are qualified in their entirety by the consolidated financial statements and related notes included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

The following selected consolidated statements of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2020, 2019, and 2018, and the consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2020 and 2019, have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements included elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The consolidated statements of operations data for the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2016 and the consolidated balance sheet data as of December 31, 2018, 2017 and 2016 have been derived from our audited consolidated financial statements not included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. 

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The following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations should be read in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and related notes that appear elsewhere in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. As discussed in the section titled “Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements,” the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, as well as assumptions that, if they never materialize or prove incorrect, could cause our results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to, those identified below, and those discussed in the section titled “Risk Factors” included under Part I, Item 1A within this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Company Overview

We provide a cloud-based customer relationship management (“CRM”) Platform. Our CRM Platform is comprised of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub and content management system (“CMS”) Hub as well as other tools and integrations that enable companies to attract, engage, and delight customers throughout the customer experience.

At the core of our CRM Platform is our CRM that our customers use which creates a single view of all interactions a prospective or existing customer has with their marketing, sales and customer service teams. The CRM shares data across every application in the CRM Platform, automatically informing more personalized emails, website content, ads, and conversations, and enables more accurate timing cues for our customer’s internal teams. In addition, the CRM Platform was built to easily and seamlessly integrate third party applications to further customize to an individual company’s industry or needs. We designed and built our CRM Platform to serve a broad range of customers globally. Our CRM Platform starts completely free and grows with our customers to meet their needs at different stages in their life-cycles. It supports multiple languages and currencies and offers an array of sophisticated features, including content partitioning at the enterprise level for companies operating in or serving multiple countries.

We focus on selling to mid-market business-to-business, or B2B, companies, which we define as companies that have between two and 2,000 employees.  While our CRM Platform was built to grow with any company, we focus on selling to mid-market businesses because we believe we have significant competitive advantages attracting and serving this market segment. These mid-market businesses seek an integrated, easy-to-implement and easy-to-use solution to reach customers and compete with organizations that have larger marketing, sales, and customer service budgets. We efficiently reach these businesses at scale through our proven inbound methodology, our Solutions Partners, and our “freemium” model. A Solutions Partner is a service provider that helps businesses with strategy, execution, and implementation of go-to-market activities and technology solutions. Our freemium model attracts customers who begin using our CRM Platform through our free products and then upgrade to our paid products. As of December 31, 2020, we had 4,225 full-time employees and 103,994 Total Customers of varying sizes in more than 120 countries, representing almost every industry.

Our CRM Platform is a multi-tenant, single code-based and globally available software-as-a-service product delivered through web browsers or mobile applications. We sell our CRM Platform on a subscription basis. Our total revenue increased to $883.0 million in 2020, from $674.9 million in 2019, and from $513.0 million in 2018, representing year-over-year increases of 31% in 2020 and 32% in 2019. We had net losses of $85.0 million in 2020, $53.7 million in 2019, and $63.8 million in 2018, primarily due to investments in our growth.  

We derive most of our revenue from subscriptions to our cloud-based CRM Platform and related professional services, which consist of customer on-boarding and training services. Subscription revenue accounted for 97% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020, 96% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2019 and 95% of our total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2018. We sell multiple product plans at different base prices on a subscription basis, each of which includes our CRM and integrated applications to meet the needs of the various customers we serve. Customers pay additional fees if the number of contacts stored and tracked in the customer’s database exceeds specified thresholds. We also generate additional revenue based on the purchase of additional subscriptions and products, and the number of account users and subdomains. Most of our customers’ subscriptions are one year or less in duration.

Subscriptions are billed in advance on various schedules. Because the mix of billing terms for orders can vary from period to period, the annualized value of the orders we enter into with our customers will not be completely reflected in deferred revenue at any single point in time. Accordingly, we do not believe that change in deferred revenue is an accurate indicator of future revenue.

Many of our customers purchase on-boarding and training services which are designed to help customers enhance their ability to attract, engage and delight their customers using our CRM Platform. Professional services and other revenue accounted for 3% of total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020, 4% of total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2019 and 5% of total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2018. We expect professional services and other margins to range from a moderate loss to breakeven for the foreseeable future.

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COVID-19 Update

In March 2020, the World Health Organization, or WHO, declared the outbreak of a disease caused by a novel strain of the coronavirus (“COVID-19”) to be a pandemic (the “pandemic”). This pandemic is having widespread, rapidly-evolving, and unpredictable impacts on global societies, economies, financial markets, and business practices.  Federal and state governments have implemented measures in an effort to contain the virus, including physical distancing, travel bans and restrictions, closure of non-essential businesses, quarantines, work-from-home directives, shelter-in-place orders, and limitations on public gatherings.  These measurements have caused, and are continuing to cause, business slowdowns or shutdowns in affected areas, both regionally and worldwide.

 Our focus remains on promoting employee health and safety, serving our customers, and ensuring business continuity.  In March 2020, we temporarily closed our global offices, including our corporate headquarters, suspended all company-related travel, and all HubSpot employees globally were required to work from home. We shifted our Solutions Partner events and INBOUND 2020 to virtual-only experiences and have cancelled other customer and industry events. During the third quarter of 2020, we began to slowly re-open our offices on a staggered, region-to-region basis in accordance with local authority guidelines while ensuring that our return to work was thoughtful, prudent, and handled with an abundance of caution with the health of our employees being the top priority.  During the fourth quarter of 2020, due to surges in COVID-19 cases at almost all of our office locations, we elected to close all of our global offices. We are closely monitoring the impact of the pandemic and will continue to be thoughtful about employee safety and well-being.

Given that the economic consequences of the pandemic have been exceptionally challenging for many of our customers and prospects, we also implemented certain changes to our pricing structure in March 2020, including reducing prices on our Starter Growth Suite, offering certain product functionality free of charge for a limited time, suspending marketing email send limits for a limited time, and offering a one-time six-month advance on commissions to certain of our Solutions Partners.

While the pandemic has not had a material adverse financial impact on our business to date, the broader implications of the pandemic on our results of operations and overall financial performance will depend on future developments and conditions.  The pandemic and its adverse effects are prevalent in the locations where we, our customers, and partners conduct business.  As a result, at the outset of the pandemic, we experienced, and may again experience in the future, curtailed customer demand that could adversely impact our business, results of operations and overall financial performance in future periods. Specifically, we may be impacted by changes in our customers’ ability or willingness to purchase our offerings; changes in the timing of our current or prospective customers’ purchasing decisions; pricing discounts or extended payment terms; reductions in the amount or duration of customers’ subscription contracts; or increased customer attrition rates. While our revenue, customer retention, and earnings are relatively predictable as a result of our subscription-based business model, the effect of the pandemic will not be fully reflected in our results of operations and overall financial performance until future periods.

While the implications of the pandemic remain uncertain, we plan to continue to make investments to support business growth.  We believe that the growth of our business is dependent on many factors, including our ability to expand our customer base, increase adoption of our CRM Platform within existing customers, develop new products and applications to extend the functionality of our CRM Platform and provide a high level of customer service. We expect to invest in sales and marketing to support customer growth.  We also expect to invest in research and development as we continue to introduce new products and applications to extend the functionality of our CRM Platform. We also intend to maintain a high level of customer service and support which we consider critical for our continued success. We plan to continue to invest in our data center infrastructure and services capabilities in order to support continued customer growth. We also expect to continue to incur general and administrative expenses to support our business and to maintain the infrastructure required to be a public company. We expect to use our cash flow from operations and the proceeds from our convertible debt and stock offerings to fund these growth strategies and support our business despite the potential impact from the pandemic and do not expect to be profitable in the near term.

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Key Business Metrics

The following key business metrics are presented in this Annual Report on Form 10-K or in our press releases announcing our financial results which are furnished on Form 8-K. We use these key business metrics to evaluate our business, measure our performance, identify trends affecting our business and results of operations, formulate financial projections and make strategic decisions. These key business metrics may be calculated in a manner different than similar key business metrics used by other companies.

Total Customers.  We believe that our ability to increase our customer base is an indicator of our market penetration and growth of our business as we continue to expand our sales force and invest in marketing efforts. We define our Total Customers at the end of a particular period as the number of business entities or individuals with one or more paid subscriptions to our CRM Platform either paid directly or through a Solutions Partner. We do not include in Total Customers business entities or individuals with one or more paid subscriptions solely for our legacy Sales Hub ($10) product or any PieSync product. A single customer may have separate paid subscriptions for separate websites, sales licenses or seats, or our Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, Service Hub, or CMS Hub products, but we count these as one customer if certain customer-provided information such as company name, URL, or email address indicate that these subscriptions are managed by the same business entity or individual.

Total Average Subscription Revenue per Customer. We believe that our ability to increase the Total Average Subscription Revenue per Customer is an indicator of our ability to grow the long-term value of our existing customer relationships. We define Total Average Subscription Revenue per Customer during a particular period as subscription revenue, excluding revenue from our legacy Sales Hub ($10) and PieSync products, from our Total Customers during the period divided by the average Total Customers during the same period.

Total Subscription Dollar Retention Rate. We believe that our ability to retain and expand a customer relationship is an indicator of the stability of our revenue base and the long-term value of our customers. We assess our performance in this area using a metric we refer to as our Total Subscription Dollar Retention Rate. We compare the aggregate Total Contractual Monthly Subscription Revenue of our Total Customer base as of the beginning of each month, which we refer to as Total Retention Base Revenue, to the aggregate Total Contractual Monthly Subscription Revenue of the same group of Total Customers at the end of that month, which we refer to as Total Retained Subscription Revenue. We define Total Contractual Monthly Subscription Revenue as the total amount of subscription fees contractually committed to be paid for a full month under all of our Total Customer agreements, excluding any commissions owed to our Solutions Partners. Our Total Subscription Dollar Retention Rate for a given period is calculated by first dividing Total Retained Subscription Revenue by Total Retention Base Revenue for each month in the period, calculating the weighted average of these rates using the Total Retention Base Revenue for each month in the period, and then annualizing the resulting rates.

Key Components of Consolidated Statements of Operations

Revenue

We derive our revenue from two major sources, revenue from subscriptions to our CRM Platform and professional services and other revenue consisting mainly of on-boarding and training services fees.

Subscription based revenue is derived from customers using our CRM Platform for their inbound marketing, sales, service, and content management needs. Our CRM Platform features integrated applications that create a cohesive and adaptable customer experience. These integrated applications include a CRM, search engine optimization, blogging, website content management, messaging, chatbots, social media, marketing automation, email, predictive lead scoring, sales productivity, ticketing and helpdesk tools, customer NPS surveys, analytics, and reporting. Subscriptions are billed in advance on various schedules. All subscription fees that are billed in advance of service are recorded in deferred revenue. Subscription based revenue is recognized net of consideration paid to Solutions Partners when those Partners purchase a subscription to our CRM Platform.

Professional services and other revenue are derived primarily from customer on-boarding and training services. The on-boarding and training services provided to customers typically involves an implementation specialist. An implementation specialist will typically work with our customers to enhance their understanding of how to attract leads and convert them into customers through search engine optimization, social media, blogging and other content. Training is generally sold in connection with a customer’s initial

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subscription and is billed in advance. The training is also available to be purchased separately following a customer’s purchase of its initial subscription and our Solutions Partners routinely provide the same training to customers. The Company recognizes revenue from on-boarding and training services as the services are provided.

Cost of Revenue and Operating Expenses

Cost of Revenue

Cost of subscription revenue consists primarily of managed hosting providers and other third-party service providers, employee-related costs including payroll, benefits and stock-based compensation expense for our customer support team, amortization of capitalized software development costs and acquired technology, and allocated overhead costs, which we define as rent, facilities, depreciation of fixed assets, and costs related to information technology.

Cost of professional services and other revenue consists primarily of personnel costs of our professional services organization, including salaries, benefits, bonuses and stock-based compensation, amortization of capitalized software development costs associated with our internally built software platform, as well as allocated overhead costs.

We expect that cost of subscription and professional services and other revenue will increase in absolute dollars as we continue to invest in growing our business. Over time, we expect to gain benefits of scale associated with our costs of hosting our CRM Platform relative to subscription revenues, resulting in improved subscription gross margin, exclusive of stock-based compensation. We expect professional services and other margins to range from a moderate loss to breakeven for the foreseeable future, exclusive of stock-based compensation.

Research and Development

Research and development expenses consist primarily of personnel costs of our development team, including payroll, benefits and stock-based compensation expense and allocated overhead costs. We capitalize certain software development costs that are attributable to developing new products and adding incremental functionality to our CRM Platform and amortize such costs as costs of subscription revenue over the estimated life of the new product or incremental functionality, which is generally two years. We also capitalize certain development costs that are attributable to developing our internally developed software platforms and amortize such costs throughout the consolidated statement of operations over the estimated life of our internally developed software platforms, which is generally five years. We focus our research and development efforts on improving our products and developing new ones, delivering new functionality and enhancing the customer experience. We believe delivering new functionality for our customers is an integral part of our solution and provides our customers with access to a broad array of options and information critical to their marketing, sales, and customer service efforts. We expect to continue to make investments in and expand our offerings to enhance our customers’ experience and satisfaction and attract new customers. We expect research and development expenses to increase in absolute dollars as we continue to increase the functionality of our CRM Platform.

Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing expenses consist primarily of personnel costs of our sales and marketing employees, including sales commissions and incentives, benefits and stock-based compensation expense, marketing programs, including lead generation, costs of our annual INBOUND conference, other brand building expenses, amortization of capitalized software development costs associated with our internally built software platforms, and allocated overhead costs. We defer certain sales commissions related to acquiring new contracts and amortize them ratably over a period of benefit that we have determined to be approximately one to three years. Sales and marketing expenses also include commissions paid to our Solutions Partners in instances where the end customer purchases and pays for a subscription to our CRM Platform.

We plan to continue to expand sales and marketing to grow our customer base and increase sales to existing customers. This growth will include adding sales personnel and expanding our marketing activities to continue to generate additional leads and build brand awareness. We expect sales and marketing expenses will increase as a result of hiring net new quota-carrying sales representatives in the United States and worldwide and adding to our marketing staff. Over time, we expect sales and marketing expenses will decline as a percentage of total revenue, exclusive of stock-based compensation.

General and Administrative

General and administrative expenses consist of personnel costs and related expenses for executive, finance, legal, human resources, employee-related information technology, administrative personnel, including payroll, benefits and stock-based compensation expense; professional fees for external legal, accounting and other consulting services, amortization of capitalized software development costs associated with our internally built software platforms, and allocated overhead costs. We expect that

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general and administrative expenses will increase on an absolute dollar basis but decrease as a percentage of total revenue, exclusive of stock-based compensation expense, as we focus on processes, systems and controls to enable our internal support functions to scale with the growth of our business. We also anticipate continuing increases to general and administrative expenses as we incur the costs of compliance associated with being a publicly traded company, including audit and consulting fees.

Other Expense

Interest income primarily consists of interest earned on invested cash and cash equivalents balances and investments. Interest expense primarily consists of amortization of the debt discount, issuance costs and contractual interest expense related to our Notes, and the loss on early extinguishment of our 2022 Notes. Other expense primarily consists of the impact of foreign currency transaction gains and losses associated with monetary assets and liabilities.

Income Tax Expense

The income tax expense consists of current and deferred taxes for U.S. and foreign jurisdictions. We have historically had a taxable loss in our most significant jurisdiction, the U.S., and a full valuation allowance against the majority of our deferred tax assets. We expect this to continue in the near term.

Results of Operations

The following tables set forth certain consolidated financial data in dollar amounts and as a percentage of total revenue.

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Year Ended December 31, 2020 Compared to the Year Ended December 31, 2019

Revenue

Subscription revenue increased during 2020 due to an increase throughout the year in Total Customers, which grew from 73,483 as of December 31, 2019 to 103,994 as of December 31, 2020. Total Average Subscription Revenue per Customer decreased from $9,920 for the year ended December 31, 2019 to $9,582 for the year ended December 31, 2020. The growth in Total Customers was primarily driven by our increased sales representative capacity to meet market demand as well as our freemium product offering and lower priced starer products. The decrease in average subscription revenue per customer was driven primarily by the volume of continued purchases of our lower priced starter products.

The 5% increase in professional services and other revenue resulted primarily from the increase in Total Customers and from the delivery of on-boarding services for the additional subscriptions sold, slightly offset by fewer classroom trainings being held due to social gathering restrictions and travel bans implemented due to the pandemic.

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Total cost of revenue increased 28% during 2020 primarily due to an increase in subscription and hosting costs, employee-related costs, amortization of capitalized software development costs, and allocated overheard expenses, offset by a decrease in amortization of acquired technology due to certain acquired technology reaching the end of its useful life during the year ended December 31, 2020. Gross margin remained consistent year-over-year.

The increase in subscription cost of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019 was primarily due to the following:

Subscription and hosting costs increased primarily due to growth in our Total Customer base from 73,483 at December 31, 2019 to 103,994 at December 31, 2020. Additionally, we saw higher subscription and hosting costs as we focus on the security, reliability and performance of our CRM Platform. Employee-related costs increased as a result of increased headcount as we continue to grow our customer support organization to support our customer growth and improve service levels and offerings, offset slightly by reduced discretionary spending as a result of the pandemic. Amortization of capitalized software development costs increased due to the increased number of developers working on our software platform as we continue to develop new products and increased functionality. Allocated overhead expenses increased due to the expansion of our leased space and infrastructure as we continued to grow our business and expand headcount. Amortization of acquired technology decreased due to certain acquired technology reaching the end of its useful life during the year ended December 31, 2020.

The increase in professional services and other cost of revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019 was primarily due to the following:

Employee-related costs increased as a result of increased headcount as we continue to grow our professional services organization to support our customer growth.

Research and Development

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The increase in research and development expense for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019 was primarily due to the following:

Employee-related costs increased as a result of increased headcount as we continue to grow our engineering organization to develop new products, increase functionality and to maintain our existing CRM Platform, slightly offset by reduced discretionary spending as a result of the pandemic. Allocated overhead expense increased due to expanding our leased space and infrastructure as we continue to grow our business and expand headcount.

Sales and Marketing

The increase in sales and marketing expense for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019 was primarily due to the following:

Employee-related costs increased as a result of increased headcount as we continue to expand our selling and marketing organizations to grow our customer base, offset by reduced discretionary spending as a result of the pandemic. Marketing programs increased due to the timing and size of certain marketing efforts as we continue to make investments in attracting new customers. Solutions Partner commissions increased as a result of increased revenue generated through our partners. Allocated overhead expenses increased due to expanding our leased space and infrastructure as we continue to grow our business and expand headcount.

General and Administrative

The increase in general and administrative expense for the year ended December 31, 2020 compared to the year ended December 31, 2019 was primarily due to the following:

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Employee-related costs increased as a result of increased headcount as we continue to grow our business and require additional personnel to support our expanded operations, offset by reduced discretionary spending as a result of the pandemic. Allocated overhead expenses increased due to expanding our leased space and infrastructure as we continue to grow our business and expand headcount. Customer credit card fees increased due to increased customer transactions as we continue to grow our business.

Other Expense