Riding the popularity of Website Grader, Halligan said yes to spinning off sibling graders, including a Foursquare grader built around the then-hot check-in app.

“a Foursquare grader (yes, that was hot at the time)”

Halligan doesn't give a specific reason it failed, only that it ran its course quickly and was dropped once it stopped adding value.

“We gave it a run, and we moved on”

For years HubSpot tried to serve two very different buyer personas at once — a small-business owner ("Owner Ollie") and a mid-market marketing director ("Marketing Mary") — without committing to either.

“By not deciding on one of these personas, we paid a gigantic, invisible “optionality tax.””

Serving both personas simultaneously diluted marketing messaging and slowed product development for both.

“By continuing to serve two masters, we watered down our marketing effort, and hampered our product development velocity”