The most valuable B2B companies didn't win their markets — they created them. A breakdown of the category creation playbook behind Gong, Drift, and HubSpot, with the five moves that define every category creator.
HubSpot invented inbound marketing. Now HubSpot is publicly arguing that AI search is rewriting it — and quietly rebuilding for a world where the chatbox replaces the search box.
HubSpot built the canonical customer acquisition machine — coined "inbound marketing," built HubSpot Academy, runs the State of Marketing research, and grew to 250,000+ customers across 135 countries. The discipline is repeatable. The patience is the multiplier.
Three B2B software companies built content-marketing infrastructure that would define the discipline. HubSpot anchored on "inbound marketing" category creation. Mailchimp built distinctive brand voice. Buffer built radical transparency. Three doctrines, one shared insight: content marketing is the growth strategy, not a sub-function beneath it.