Liz Moorehead
I hate that I had to miss this one, because if you care about HubSpot Commerce Hub, CPQ, and the future of revenue operations inside HubSpot, this episode is a must-listen. This week, HubHeroes welcomes back Jack Coopersmith, a returning friend of the pod from HubSpot, and Adam Wainwright, formerly of Cashflow and now leading the charge on building HubSpot’s next-generation CPQ solution.
Commerce Hub has been evolving fast, and with HubSpot’s acquisition of Cashflow, we’re looking at a major shift in how businesses manage quoting, payments, and revenue inside HubSpot.
🔎 Go Deeper: Unpacking the Future of Your Business of with HubSpot Commerce Hub
But what does that actually mean? Jack and Adam break down how CPQ fits into HubSpot’s broader strategy, what’s changed in the first few months since Cashflow became part of HubSpot, and what’s coming next. And yes, they address some of the long-standing pain points, like the complexity of HubSpot quotes, API limitations, and the growing need for automation in revenue operations.
But this isn’t just a feature update episode—this is a conversation about how businesses can rethink their entire sales and billing process inside HubSpot. They talk about why HubSpot isn’t trying to be an ERP, how sales teams can close deals faster with fewer headaches, and how Finance and RevOps teams can better align with Sales to create a more seamless customer buying experience. They even get into the future role of AI in CPQ, including how automation can make quoting, contract management, and payment processing easier than ever.
If your business relies on HubSpot for sales and billing—or if you’ve ever struggled with CPQ tools in HubSpot—this episode is packed with insights you don’t want to miss.
Keywords
HubSpot, revenue operations, CPQ, HubSpot Commerce Hub, customer experience, API, business strategy, product updates, sales process, integration, technology, integration, user experience, quotes, payment links, APIs, tax rates, QuickBooks, commerce hub, AI
What We Cover
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How Commerce Hub Has Evolved in the Last Year: Jack walks through the massive number of updates Commerce Hub has seen, from improved billing tools to new integrations that make managing revenue inside HubSpot more seamless.
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The Impact of HubSpot Acquiring Cashflow: Adam shares how the Cashflow acquisition has accelerated CPQ development inside HubSpot and what that means for users looking for a better, more flexible quoting and payment experience.
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Fixing HubSpot Quotes: What’s Changing?: One of the biggest frustrations for users has been the HubSpot quote experience. Adam addresses what’s being done to improve it, why the current process exists, and where we might see a better solution in the future.
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Why Sales, Finance, and RevOps Need to Work Together: CPQ isn’t just a sales tool—it affects Finance, RevOps, and Customer Success. The team discusses how businesses can better align these departments inside HubSpot to reduce friction and improve the entire buyer journey.
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The Future of CPQ and AI Inside HubSpot: AI is creeping into every part of HubSpot, and CPQ is no exception. Adam and Jack discuss how AI could be used to streamline quoting, optimize pricing, and even suggest deal structures based on historical data.
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How API Access is Expanding for Developers: For those who want to build more custom solutions inside HubSpot, the conversation covers the latest API improvements for Commerce Hub, including payment links, invoice creation, and how these changes make it easier to integrate CPQ into existing sales processes.
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Why Now is the Time to Reevaluate Commerce Hub: If you’ve looked at Commerce Hub before and decided it wasn’t for you, it might be time to take another look. The team discusses what’s changed and why businesses should reconsider how HubSpot fits into their revenue operations.
And so much more ...
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] George B. Thomas: Guys, I gotta be honest, I'm super excited because today we don't have one. One amazing guest, Mr. Jack Coopersmith, we have two, two amazing guests.
[00:00:10] We have Adam Wainwright. so, so so first of all, Adam, this is your first time on the podcast. Why don't we just
[00:00:15] start actually by taking a few seconds, Uh,
[00:00:19] explain people who you are, what you do, why the heck you're in the room, and then after Adam's done, Jack, I'm sure people know who you are, but let's go ahead and spin it to you.
[00:00:28] You give the lowdown and then we'll get into the good stuff.
[00:00:31] Adam WainWright: that's, yeah, that's a great place to start. Yeah. So it's a pleasure to be on this morning. Um, as y'all know, my name is Adam Wainwright. I've been effectively in, I'll sort of start with my background. I've been selling into and working with product teams, building revenue operations tooling for like the last 20 years.
[00:00:49] Give or take, uh, and that includes, you know, contract, lifecycle, management, CLM, CPQ, of course, uh, revenue operations, tools, sales, performance, management tools, uh, sales behavior, tilt tooling, learning, management tooling, uh, and so I've really run the gamut in terms of all of these different technologies that really are meant to effectively help sellers and businesses just unlock their revenue process.
[00:01:12] Easiest way to say it. Um, and I, so, so why am I here? I joined the cashflow team. I joined my, uh, my co founders, the cashflow about a year ago. Uh, and we really brought that business online in a major way. And then of course. And in, in about, you know, whatever, three months or so ago, HubSpot decided to bring us on board under the hub, under the HubSpot brand.
[00:01:32] And so our objective now is going to go and build a CPQ, a modern CPQ platform. And we're going to try and distribute this thing across all of these lovely hundreds of thousands of hubs across, um, across this globe.
[00:01:44] George B. Thomas: There are about 12 different ways that my brain goes and I want to talk about, but it's not time yet. Jack, Jack, remind the people, well, remind the people who you are. And then, Jack, how long has it been since you've been on the podcast? Like, sheesh, six months?
[00:01:58] A
[00:01:59] Max Cohen: My lord. It's been a while
[00:02:00] George B. Thomas: it's been a while. Yeah, like I know, I know we initially, we talked about Commerce Hub and its purpose.
[00:02:06] We even had you back on, we talked about like CPQ, which is interesting that that's kind of where Adam like, um, kind of went into this and some of the
[00:02:13] capabilities. Anyway, anyway, third time, it's been a long time. I don't know, by the way, Jack, I don't know if we have another three peat. I'm gonna just throw that out there.
[00:02:22] Anyway, let the audience know who you are, why you're in the room.
[00:02:25] Jack: Well, I'm absolutely honored, of course, George, and I'll admit, I don't know how long exactly it's been a handful of months too long, though, is definitely the answer there, honored to have the three feet under my belt here. Also, I think I may be one of the only guests that has my own superhero too. So I'll flex there a little bit as well.
[00:02:42] So I've been at HubSpot for over eight years now, and I've been on the commerce hub team for. More than three years now. So really since the very beginning. So I've seen it grow from a tool that maybe launched a little early, just based on where it was to where it stands today.
[00:02:58] And if you're listening to this podcast, I'm sure you're very familiar with HubSpot and how we think about. Um, growing the platform more broadly, the way that we don't think about it is by acquiring a bunch of companies and then just bolting on their software.
[00:03:12] We are very, very, very careful around like who we acquire and whether we want to go into that space. And so I'm really excited to have Adam here as, uh, we are now teammates and we definitely do have our legs under us because it has been like, what, four months now,
[00:03:26] Adam WainWright: I was going to say, I think it's, I think actually going into March, it's about four months.
[00:03:30] Jack: I think it's been only, yeah, it's been four months or so. And so it's been really awesome to see these teams come together. And I can tell you folks, we have a really, really interesting 2025 shaping up, so excited to chat with you about what we've been up to the past few months, as well as maybe give just a little bit of a crystal ball as to, you know, how we're thinking about the future.
[00:03:46] George B. Thomas: Yeah, definitely. I definitely want to talk about the future. I, I, we, we can maybe even dip into some of the things that have changed in like, because of the acquisition and, and where we might go. I know you can only share certain things, but I mean, listen, the idea is like, let's, let's highlight what's been changing in the first four months or three months of 2025 because Jack and Adam, uh, Max and Chad, you know, we're trying to swim and keep up, but, but Max or Jack and Adam, like, yeah. There were over 35 product updates,
[00:04:15] uh, to commerce hub in 2024, 35,
[00:04:18] by the way, that's just one little hub. The whole thing of updates is just getting kind of crazy,
[00:04:24] Chad Hohn: Well, it's like a microhub within the hubs, you know.
[00:04:27] George B. Thomas: Yeah. I mean, there are things like, uh, invoice payment links, subscriptions, think about the updates in 2024, and maybe even dip into some that you've done so far in 25, 2025, how have these updates improved? Us, HubSpot users, um, and the people that we serve. So just in general, user experience in like, business operations.
[00:04:48] Jack: Adam, I'll take that if that's okay.
[00:04:50] Adam WainWright: I was going to say when it comes to the, when it comes to the hub, absolutely. I think Jackie, you can start with that.
[00:04:55] Jack: Would love your take, though, of course, and Chad, Max, you all as well, and George, I know you use these tools day in, day out, too. So, as I look back at 2024, Um, the thing that I'm most excited about is we really rounded off our billing platform. So when
[00:05:07] I first started on the team, we were just a payments platform and everyone was like, Jack, you have these payable quotes, but I need it to say the word invoice on it.
[00:05:15] What that essentially was is like, I need to bill from HubSpot. And then we got, went down that road. It was like, okay, I need some milestone billing. I need subscription management. I need recurring invoices. And so the way that I think about 2024 is we really rounded off our billing platform to solve for the different ways that firms bill. Uh, and then as we ended last year, and as we start to go into this year, the, uh, acronym du jour is API. So of course, as I'm sure many of you all know,
[00:05:44] we are creating, we're creating objects in the CRM. That's all we're really doing to represent this revenue data. And of course, the core piece of an object is going to be an API.
[00:05:53] So that's the thing that we're thinking about a lot right now. We started to go down this road, Chad, as I'm sure you know, very, very well, and we're going to go down this road. So that's the thing that I'm immediately most excited for, but it is pretty nice to be able to look back and say, you know what?
[00:06:06] All those questions that people were asking me about, when are you going to have this feature? Most of them are out the door now, which I'm personally really excited about. Still a lot to do, don't get me wrong, but we've delivered a lot of value in the past year.
[00:06:19] Chad Hohn: Yeah, well guess what I just got working for a client, uh the other day
[00:06:24] Jack: QuickBooks,
[00:06:25] George B. Thomas: Uh
[00:06:25] Chad Hohn: Well, no, it was related to that, but because of the invoice create and read API being available, I was able to basically create very simple invoice generation with all the correct information on the invoice and based on business logic rules for invoices that would be created for this particular client, saving just a ton of time for them because you guys opened up that API.
[00:06:53] It still doesn't let me do everything I need to. I'll always gripe about that until we can actually, like, edit live things. But, uh, yeah, it's, like, so much better than it was. So much better.
[00:07:04] George B. Thomas: So Adam, this is for your benefit. And Jack, I don't know, uh, Chad's new to the show since you've been on last, I think. Um, we're all nerdy on this show. But Chad is like the nerds nerd like he, he's
[00:07:18] Chad Hohn: Me and Jack
[00:07:18] George B. Thomas: I
[00:07:19] Chad Hohn: back these days.
[00:07:20] George B. Thomas: hey buddy, like what do you think about this like
[00:07:23] scenario, and then it's like these like MC squared things start floating in front of my face and all sorts of things.
[00:07:31] Jack: our legal team, and you know,
[00:07:33] the marketers.
[00:07:34] George B. Thomas: Yeah,
[00:07:35] So, here's where my brain goes because I hear you kind of talking about laying this like better foundation for everybody Jackson's we kind of launched and got going. Yeah. And I know Adam, you immediately started to talk about like CPQ and so I'm interested in where we stand now with a good foundation and maybe some things that excite you about, you know, of course what you can talk about,
[00:08:00] but excite you of like where we're headed or, or how the acquisition is like accelerating where we're headed or things like that.
[00:08:08] Adam WainWright: So it's, it's a good question. And I'll, I'll certainly what I'll share is, um, I think the word foundation is the right word. Um, first of all, and I think nobody on this podcast is a stranger to the idea Um, I mean, we're talking about revenue. We're talking about how you close business. And we're talking about that across a portfolio of hundreds of thousands of companies.
[00:08:32] And so, first of all, uh, there is no such thing as two businesses looking just exactly the same. And so in that inference, now you start to understand that 35 releases over the course of 24 from where I'm sitting, that frankly, that's light.
[00:08:49] George B. Thomas: Oh.
[00:08:49] Adam WainWright: simply a reflection of the fact that you've really got to account for a myriad of different potential use cases that come up, depending on who you're talking to.
[00:08:56] And of course, at the end of the day, this is why a lot of, uh, we have a lot of very happy and successful deep partner networks because there's just no shortage of, uh, compounding problems when it comes to optimizing how our businesses manage and, you know, run revenue. Um, so to that end, that being sort of like the lead in, um, Um, we are we are hot on the trail of continuing to pour the concrete and the concrete.
[00:09:24] I think I think Jack actually nailed it. I think the concrete is a reflection of of objects. And so really, for us, it's going to be a function of building a bunch of framework that will allow customers to regardless of what you're doing to then go out and build this. I like to think of this sort of beautiful scaffolding.
[00:09:43] Uh, to build the tower of how you choose to build your process. Uh, but in a way that is not complicated in a way that actually services and favors, not only your internal teams, uh, but your sales team in terms of how they close. Um, more importantly, your downstream team, in terms of how they actually manage what's been closed, I think a lot of the reason why we're here is because all too often, the folks that have to kind of manage what closers are doing to squeeze those deals in at the end of the quarter ends up kind of creating a bunch of work for AR teams and finance teams.
[00:10:16] And so these are, there's an opportunity for us to come in here and optimize and streamline, at least lay that foundation so that you can go and continue to build on top of that. Um, and then, and so, so I guess sort of the long story short here is objects and customer experience. And then I guess, finally, I'll say we are also acutely aware that the better the experience for our buyers.
[00:10:37] The better the experience for our customers, the more memorable we can create that experience, which means they'll likely come back and choose to do business with us again. And that's really what we want to make sure we get right. So we're really focusing on those kind of core areas of this work that we're doing now and are really looking forward to having something for you all to play with here very soon.
[00:10:55] George B. Thomas: Oh, I, I can't. We like to play with things, uh,
[00:10:58] Adam WainWright: Yes. I
[00:10:59] Chad Hohn: you know who to call.
[00:11:00] Adam WainWright: Yeah.
[00:11:00] George B. Thomas: give it here, give it, give me the beta, I don't care if it's ugly. Like, I'll just mess around with it, let's see what's happening.
[00:11:07] Um, and, and what's fun is my brain really leans into, uh, the word memorable. The fact that you're going at this, that we want to create something that creates memorable experiences during the time that some people love, some people hate, but you're giving, you're giving your hard earned cash, right?
[00:11:24] You're like, you're hoping it solves a problem. You're, you're standing on the ledge and like, uh, I've got my credit card of the dream. If I buy this thing, this is like, and so I like that it's, it's going to be memorable. Max and Chad, where are your brain at so far? So
[00:11:39] Max Cohen: I want that. I want them apis dog.
[00:11:41] I want them apis dog That's just like I I mean the the thing with commerce hub for me is um you know, I think that that was the that that's one of the biggest things kind of like holding it back especially especially like Thinking about like how a SAS company might build like literally their entire business and framework on HubSpot, right? Cause sure. It's really easy to do the customer service stuff. I mean, now, since we have all those like really awesome new conversations, APIs, and you could build your like
[00:12:10] apps, custom chat into, into help desk and stuff like that, like, that's amazing. Like,
[00:12:16] sure. We've got APIs for everything else. So if you want to build, I don't know, you know, like, uh,
[00:12:20] Uh, a license.
[00:12:22] Uh, app license object that stays up to
[00:12:24] date that you
[00:12:25] can even like update and change, like from HubSpot to like update the experience they
[00:12:29] Chad Hohn: Yeah. So your reps can see what they have, what subscription, update user access, blah, blah, blah.
[00:12:34] Max Cohen: dude. I mean, we do that Like we're able to be like, Oh, like, look this HubSpotter installed a quote happily while I just have a workflow that changes a property to demo mode.
[00:12:45] And then all of a sudden they've got everything unlocked. Right.
[00:12:47] Chad Hohn: Yep. Yep.
[00:12:48] Max Cohen: But then
[00:12:48] it's like, you know, where I remember always getting caught. When I was a, you know, solutions engineer talking about commerce hub, you know, it would always kind of come down to, all right, uh, do we have an API to manage the subscriptions?
[00:13:02] And that's where it'd be like,
[00:13:03] Adam WainWright: Fans. And
[00:13:05] Chad Hohn: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Max Cohen: still got to use
[00:13:06] Stripe. Right. And, um, you know, so I'm, I'm really excited for that because I feel like that's the biggest missing puzzle piece, right. Um, is like really. When it comes to sass companies, I feel like that's the I don't want to say that's the final thing But it's really close to like the final huge thing, right?
[00:13:28] Um, so i'm super stoked on that
[00:13:31] George B. Thomas: It's like in the top three of huge things.
[00:13:33] Max Cohen: It's a it's a it's a it's a jordan a lebron or a kobe of missing sass features for hubspot. Yeah,
[00:13:42] George B. Thomas: fact that you didn't mention Larry Bird when Jack just said he was at the Celtics game at the beginning of
[00:13:48] Max Cohen: listen, listen, i'm the biggest
[00:13:50] George B. Thomas: know the room!
[00:13:51] Max Cohen: you could find but
[00:13:52] Yeah I
[00:13:54] George B. Thomas: so here's the thing, Chad, do you have, like, do you have a place where your brain's at? Because I have a place where my brain's at.
[00:14:00] Where are
[00:14:01] Chad Hohn: Yeah. Go for it. Go for it. I mean, I've, you know, I've talked extensively actually both to, to Jack and Adam on like our use case, so they're aware of the things, you know, I'll share if there's time, uh, for our listeners.
[00:14:13] George B. Thomas: want to know about your use cases as well. So,
[00:14:16] here's the thing, I live in this world where, and I love that Max was like, Give me those APIs, dawg! Cause
[00:14:22] Chad Hohn: Dude. Seriously,
[00:14:23] George B. Thomas: nerdy.
[00:14:23] Max Cohen: need them end points dog
[00:14:25] George B. Thomas: I realize that we have, uh, listeners and viewers, Um, They're like, uh, what do you mean?
[00:14:33] My post it note doesn't integrate with HubSpot. Like, um,
[00:14:37] what do you mean I got to get rid of my Excel spreadsheet? And so I want to maybe even take a step back. I want to ask the question around this, because if we're going to talk about CPQ and we're going to talk about Commerce Hub, like what are the key mindsets a business needs to adopt when they're thinking about building a CPQ process inside of HubSpot?
[00:14:56] Jack: I'll take that one. But Adam, I would love your, your take here. Um,
[00:14:59] yeah, that is a deep one. And I think a lot of it
[00:15:03] kind of boils down to Max. I think something that you were putting your finger on, and maybe this is a little cliche, but it's having HubSpot really be the hub for your business.
[00:15:12] Really managing everything within one place.
[00:15:14] Now that doesn't necessarily mean like building your app on HubSpot by any means, but it does mean having your marketing, your sales, your revenue activities, your customer service, your web hooks, and everything else coming out of that HubSpot platform. So when it comes to
[00:15:27] the mindset, Uh, really staying within HubSpot is ultimately how we're thinking about things. I'll tie back to ye olde flywheel, which I know we all love. If you're going to manage all of your leads and grow them into opportunities and then close them into happy customers, but you have to jump out of HubSpot between that opportunity to customer stage, which I would argue is one of the most important parts of the entire customer journey, then are you really giving that memorable buyer experience? Probably not, or at least you have opportunity to do so. So managing all of your revenue in one place is really that mindset that we're pushing all of our users towards in a big way. And I'm curious if you
[00:16:05] agree, disagree, what you would add there.
[00:16:07] Adam WainWright: no, I, I, I'll sort of start, I'll actually start on the heels of, of what your, your comment and then I'll even back up maybe with some, some history that I've learned over these 15 or 16 years, actually being specifically in revenue operations, um, in, in 2020 everybody was kind of clipping along and, and the market changed and, um, the, the, there were some, Pretty heavy duty considerations that a lot of businesses and I mean, I'm depends on kind of where you were and what you were selling at the time or how you made your money, I should say, but the market effectively made a pretty significant shift in terms of how the financial fiduciaries of the business were trying to figure out where they could effectively optimize their sort of spend across their investments.
[00:16:47] And technology was probably the single largest source of savings that a lot of CFOs try to figure out how to control for. Okay. Um, and, and so what, which really kind of comes back to what Jack's saying, like one thing that I observed over my years is, uh, especially in that particular timeframe is, um, it's like, we just got to figure out how to do more with less.
[00:17:07] And what that really meant was how do I consolidate back into my system? Can my CRM do all these things? And then, of course, Max and enter APIs. Well, does it possess the capability, the flexibility and the extensibility where we can just build out things on top of it? I got an army of engineers in some cases.
[00:17:22] Maybe I don't. Maybe I can bring in somebody who can help me. But is there an opportunity for me to figure out ways to basically ratchet back my spend? And so that Sentiment is carried over. And so that's sort of like big piece of the puzzle. Number one. So a lot of companies are really still just trying to figure out, like, can my investments do way more than I think I had initially thought that they were supposed to.
[00:17:42] And so, of course, HubSpot is uniquely positioned to say, yes, I think we're in a position where we can continue to grow our platform and actually help cover all of these different tooling, you know, enter a Commerce Hub. Now, Commerce Hub solves a compound problem. You know, Commerce Hub is not one thing.
[00:17:55] Commerce Hub really is three or four things that's doing a bunch of different things. And you may not necessarily need the whole suite, but depending on what you're trying to accomplish, maybe you do. You know, billing payments again, closing deals on DSO. You've now got kind of these compounding problems where you have to solve a bunch of different work streams and you have to do it under one roof.
[00:18:16] And so we came in because we effectively represent, at least in our minds, and I think the collective decision makers here at HubSpot felt like we were maybe missing a piece of this puzzle, which for us is not the first dominant fall. How do you close a deal? Now, HubSpot obviously has quotes. Um, but I think there's a lot of opportunity, uh, to have a better experience in how you were actually closing deals or using that tooling sort of enter, you know, enter a cashflow.
[00:18:41] Um, and so in that context, what we want to make sure we're doing is, is we're actually building a tool that is really, really easy to use, uh, but effectively can do any number of things, depending on what your business is actually, how your business is built. And so getting that right is going to take some time.
[00:19:00] Um, but what we want to, as long as we're focused and anchored on the mission of making it again and, you know, fast and easy, which, which is, you know, it cashflow well before I joined HubSpot, that's a, it's a fun little checklist of things to say fast, easy, and unified. Uh, but the reality is, is that the CFO has come to expect that the reality is, is that VPs of sales have come to expect this and I've run and stood up sales teams over.
[00:19:23] Over my years and the number one place where typically the deal starts to break down is when I have to figure out a way to get my customer a thing to sign. Right? So I was very eager to come and sort of solve this problem. Um, but the re and so when I was a cash flow, we even coined the phrase. One thing I would love to tell my customers is that at the end of the day, the business just simply wants to close fast and get paid.
[00:19:43] Well, that's ultimately what we want to accomplish for our customers in this hub, and at least in the iteration of the hub, that sort of rules we can come to expect coming out of this year. And so, so I guess that's a long winded way of saying, um, we are uniquely positioned to help our customers do that.
[00:19:59] And I really like the way that you framed that up, Max. I think conceptually, if we can build this thing on the back of all of the APIs necessary so that you don't necessarily have to do it in our guided steps. We think there's just a triple win across the board, right? Customers are going to win. The, uh, the buyers are going to win, uh, and your users are going to win.
[00:20:18] And so we're, we're very, very confident that what we're ultimately building is going to be something that's actually going to accomplish that mission of helping you consolidate, save money and do it really, really efficiently. Um, but this is not going to be a. You know, stamp it, close it, ship it, and then, and then move on to something new.
[00:20:33] This is going to be something that we're going to continue to invest in over these years to come, because as we all know, every business loves that we, they all have their own DNA and it's gotta be flexible. Um, it's gotta be usable. Uh, but we really want to make sure we get that initial user experience, right.
[00:20:48] And we really want to make sure that we're helping customers leave a really good impression with their customers.
[00:20:53] George B. Thomas: Yeah, I love that. And, um, Adam, before we move forward, I want you to know that you've actually unlocked a hidden hub heroes challenge. And so
[00:21:05] Let's give Adam a round of applause. You're officially, you get the award for the first person to use the word fiduciary on the
[00:21:14] Hub Heroes podcast. It's what you, you now have that award.
[00:21:17] We'll be sending it out in the mail.
[00:21:18] Adam WainWright: I love it. I was a banker before I got into SAS. I was a banker and all my friends, I lived abroad for a few years and they came back and I wanted to learn how to sell. And so I went in, I became a banker in, in the banking world. You have two options. You can either close customers, I think checking accounts or, you know, financial instruments, or you can be a fiduciary.
[00:21:39] And so I opted there, which was more of a customer relationship, protect the interests of your customer
[00:21:44] George B. Thomas: Yep.
[00:21:45] Adam WainWright: anyway. So that caught up to
[00:21:46] Max Cohen: Oh my God,
[00:21:48] uh, I have a question, uh, so every time HubSpot, you know, um, goes and like makes a, uh, strategic, uh, acquisition merger brings another company into the, into the, into the family, if you will, right
[00:22:04] Chad Hohn: Come on into the family.
[00:22:05] Max Cohen: about the respect. Yeah, right. Um, there's always like,
[00:22:11] George B. Thomas: you're going to do that in your cheeks, I think. But go
[00:22:13] ahead,
[00:22:13] Max Cohen: is that? There's always um, you know, the, the, the magical thing about that product that gets sort of like built and reimagined into HubSpot. Right? Um, What was it like, what, I guess, like what's happening behind the scenes right now? What's that like magic, that real unique magic juice from cashflow that's getting
[00:22:42] Chad Hohn: What's the
[00:22:43] Max Cohen: imagined into, into a HubSpot manifestation of that juice,
[00:22:50] right? Like from your your perspective, that's
[00:22:53] Adam WainWright: yeah, it's, it's a, it's actually a really good question. So, um,
[00:22:57] Max Cohen: It's a weird question. I've said it weirdly,
[00:22:59] Adam WainWright: no, I, I actually totally get what, frankly, so again, max, I, you know, coming on board of the company, my whole, my, I was set up, I had my sights set on solving a problem that for decades, CPQ traditionally is something that generally sucks. It's something that is not easy to do.
[00:23:18] Uh, and so I had sellers selling internationally and they had, they had SLAs, they had to ship quotes in certain timeframes and we had to have deal desk get online. I had to wake up people that were in Florida to help me cuss my rep that was in. You know, Cincinnati closed a deal because in the deal was international, you know, when we were, and we didn't close our books, we would, we were, we would be staying up until midnight.
[00:23:37] And so you got all these swirling interests, just trying to figure out how to get quotes out the door. Well, that's all solved with CPQ. So, uh, to answer your question, um, the, the easy answer here is the, first of all, the, the seller experience, the place where you're actually producing the quote, um, you know, I remember before Salesforce bought SteelBrick, I remember big machines.
[00:23:59] Being at the Salesforce event floor before Oracle swooped them up. And so, there's a, there's a, the market had sort of established that you're supposed to walk through like a guided set of processes in order to actually just get the initial quote built. Uh, I, I, in my mind, that had to be something that could be effectively easier to do.
[00:24:15] Cashflow got that right. Getting a, a seller in an environment that just effectively helped them. Um, edit the quote in a way where it felt like you were building more of like a piece of content, we thought was one way we could reimagine the process of building a quote. That was one. But number two, as soon as the customer is actually in the process of buying, wouldn't it be sweet if the customer could not only sign the deal, but could also Vendor accept like produce, do all of the things that the second step of the actual closing process beyond the booking, which was typically something that was done offline, right?
[00:24:47] The seller would close the deal. Let's see if maybe the buyer would close the deal. And then, of course, I'd have to have somebody on my finance team reach out to actually facilitate the actual transaction. Right now there's this exchange of paperwork. Maybe, you know, there's, there's documents going back and forth.
[00:25:01] There's banking, there's routing information, uh, cash flow. We built that checkout process inside of the actual workflow. And as a result, we actually ended up coming up with what's something that kind of felt B to C ish. It felt like buying a Tesla is the, is the analogy we like to use internally. Uh, but for a sophisticated, you know, Software solution that took six months to nine months of strategic value engineering and negotiating to close.
[00:25:24] And so in those two sort of those two cuts for cash flow, we really want for our customers. And then the third one is how do I then take that information and automatically stand up a billing event? How do I automatically stand up all of the payment schedule associated with how my customer has opted to actually pay me?
[00:25:41] Over the duration of our, of our relationship. Uh, if we could do that, then what we could now do is we could help your install sales team or your customer success team actually manage the relationship. And so in that way, what cashflow has unlocked and what we were successful doing was we kind of converted the idea of the transaction.
[00:26:00] In a way where we now became more of like a relationship tool. We're actually helping the business manage the relationship of the customer because the people who are actually doing the relationship management could see precisely what the customer had actually commercialed, right? What they had actually built and how they're going to be invoiced.
[00:26:16] And, and then we, then you can start to tune via API as well. Is it usage based? Are they buying, are they consuming more? I know exactly what they purchased. I don't have to go tap on. CS ops or revenue operations to figure out what the heck they purchased so that I can expose my commercial white space and then upsell them.
[00:26:32] It's all there. And so between these kinds of three phases, all happening in a really, really delightful system. And really what now happened was the SEAT, like the finance leader can actually create like a net dollar retention strategy that otherwise just was something you never focused on. Sales teams always got the cool toys, but the people who actually had to do all of the renewals and upsells were left having to unpack what, what the seller sold.
[00:26:56] And so now we could actually completely change how the business monetized any stage of that customer relationship life cycle in a way that was actually meaningful. To both the business and the customer. So that's, that's long, but I mean, is that, does
[00:27:08] Max Cohen: no, I like it where what's the um, where are we sort of at like if you could explain, uh, Like i'm a like i'm a five year old. What's the um, where are we at in the story of Of the transition of commerce hub in the background getting all of the The special goodies, if you will, from,
[00:27:31] Chad Hohn: Yeah. Max is just asking for a friend.
[00:27:34] Adam WainWright: yeah.
[00:27:35] Max Cohen: No! No, I
[00:27:36] Adam WainWright: a big, it's a big question.
[00:27:39] Max Cohen: I like to know what's going on
[00:27:40] Adam WainWright: There's a lot, what I can tell you is, um, we've never been as resource. As we, this obviously we're, we're resourced. Uh, very, very well. And so there's a lot happening. Um. I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but there's just, there's, there's a lot of different teams are working on a lot of different things because we want to build this into the hub.
[00:27:59] And so we've not, and we're advantaged because we have the world's brightest minds working on the problem. What I will tell you is, is that, uh, it. It's, we're moving a lot faster than I had initially anticipated we could. Uh, so we're very, very bullish.
[00:28:14] Chad Hohn: HubSpot's fast for the size they are. Like, the amount of speed that the HubSpot team can do stuff for the size of org they are. I mean, I know there's some beanbag chairs sometimes, right, Jack?
[00:28:25] Adam WainWright: Well, there's a lot of decisions to be made. There's a lot of, there's a lot of ways that you could skin this cat as it were. And so you can, you can start to see how, you know, what you really need are cool heads to prevail. But the, the net net is, is that we've got a vision and the, and the folks that are meant to go and help us accomplish and realize that vision are doing a very good job.
[00:28:43] George B. Thomas: I
[00:28:44] Chad Hohn: I've got a
[00:28:45] Jack: I'll throw out a couple of things, too, if that's
[00:28:46] okay. And Chad, sorry to just take the
[00:28:49] Chad Hohn: Nah, it's all good. You're good. I
[00:28:53] Jack: on this side of things. Obviously, Adam and I
[00:28:55] are very much on the same side, but, um. And nor do I think of you as a former cash flow person at this at this point at all, Adam, but it has been interesting from my end because. Um, we obviously have a framework and a design language and we
[00:29:09] want everything to look super consistent. And so the way that we've integrated our teams is actually really interesting. So the leaders of Cashflow are now the leaders of our hub. And while they'd obviously the Cashflow folks who are now obviously HubSpotters have a lot of expertise in the billing and the CPQ space. It's been awesome to see them just like. Go nuts and really, and really build everything that they know how to build while also still integrating the HubSpot DNA into the team. So like without dropping names, like we've moved some engineers who have been on the team for like 15 years, like really early HubSpot days, move them over to work on those tools with our new colleagues.
[00:29:48] And so it's been really interesting to see everything come together. And to me, it feels like the DNA is really. fused nicely and I've personally made a lot of new friends too. So it's been awesome getting to know you folks and it's been really cool to see these teams come together. We've melded them in a really, really thoughtful way, in my opinion.
[00:30:07] George B. Thomas: So, Chad, do you still have your question? Yeah, throw that out there. And then I want to,
[00:30:13] I want to go nerdy and I want to talk about something that all humans love. So, but,
[00:30:17] but your question first, then I'll dive
[00:30:19] Chad Hohn: Yeah. So, curious, and I'm hoping to get an answer, are quotes going to stick around, or be replaced, or will there be an addition to HubSpot quotes? Because right now, I don't know. The, like, and I was just joking about this in chat, but like the experience of signing a HubSpot quote, we have help articles that we send with our emails to people to tell them what to expect and how to sign a bloody HubSpot quote.
[00:30:54] It's like, Oh, you're going to get a second email or you have to click that email. I'll take you to a link and then you got to click here and you got to do the things.
[00:31:01] George B. Thomas: salts
[00:31:02] Max Cohen: have to bring the magic beans to the wizard
[00:31:04] on the hill and he'll approve your quote.
[00:31:06] George B. Thomas: jeez,
[00:31:06] Chad Hohn: seriously, that's like what it's like. It's the worst and like I love you guys But like and I know you know that that sucks, right?
[00:31:13] Like it was good for like the time that it belonged in and it was for security reasons or whatever Because reasons but like if it's not as good as like basically it's it's like to me where my brain goes What you guys are trying to build is like the more complex billing solution version of Shopify Something that's so simple like Shopify.
[00:31:37] Where like people can just like almost have like this universal access key as a business, but then boom, they're in, it's got all their stuff, it already knows who they are, because it's like this integrated platform that they're a part of, and then they can do whatever their historical stuff was on top of it, much like that, I mean, it may not be quite to that level of integration, because it's supposed to be business to like company to company.
[00:32:03] Right, and white labeled, but anyway, all that to come back to, like, with quotes, right?
[00:32:09] George B. Thomas: there's the question. Okay,
[00:32:10] Adam WainWright: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question. So, um, here's what, here's what I can tell you. Um, we are, we're aware, we're aware of what you've just described. Uh, we are deeply, intimately aware of the fact that there's absolutely opportunity to go and just make that whole process better, uh, to the extent that, that, um, I don't want to, I don't want to overshare in terms of how we're kind of thinking about these things.
[00:32:35] There's, there's a lot of two way doors around that conversation. Um, what I will tell you is that in the cashflow world, and you know, if you can read into this, however you want, uh, the idea was now a customer is getting the actual quote object and there, and it's, and it is somewhat editable, right? It's actually there, there's, there are ways that the buyer is now interacting with it, maybe where they're actually updating the bill to or ship to address.
[00:32:58] Maybe they're updating. The actual vendor
[00:33:00] Chad Hohn: Ooh.
[00:33:01] Adam WainWright: details in the actual code itself. Now, what we don't want to necessarily do is have a, like a seller, and this happens sometimes in B2B. Kind of get those details wrong, and then what has to happen, right? They send that over the fence, and then, then they have to cancel the order, and then go and do it again.
[00:33:16] Uh, that's why we built our system to do, to facilitate that. So, to the extent that we're in a position to take advantage of existing technology, we're going to do so. But to the extent that maybe there's an opportunity for us to try and do something different, or, Maybe produce a version two or a separate system.
[00:33:32] These things are all on the table. Uh, that's what I'll tell you. Um, but the good news is, is that that is, we are, I'll just say that we are acutely aware that that is something that absolutely in order for our vision to come true,
[00:33:43] Chad Hohn: hmm.
[00:33:44] Adam WainWright: have to get
[00:33:45] Chad Hohn: We gotta get around that little email verification shenanigans,
[00:33:48] Adam WainWright: That's exactly right.
[00:33:49] In, in, in, in the land that I come from, uh, one button is pressed and then a second modal comes up and says, Hey, now you got to pay for it. And then in the same action, maybe I'm mailing it to my accounts payable person, and the, the deal is now effectively closed. If we can facilitate a process where you don't just book it, but you now can even recognize what you, or even collect,
[00:34:12] Chad Hohn: Yeah.
[00:34:13] Adam WainWright: that's nirvana state.
[00:34:15] And we're gonna, we're gonna do our best to build towards that.
[00:34:18] Chad Hohn: That's feeling real nice.
[00:34:20] George B. Thomas: yeah, Chad might need a
[00:34:21] Max Cohen: I got, Jack, I gotta press you on something. I gotta press you.
[00:34:25] George B. Thomas: go.
[00:34:26] Max Cohen: Jack, uh, I need a, uh, how we doing on the, oh wait, now I'm trying to remember if this, I don't know if this was public or not. Is there, is there, is there,
[00:34:37] Adam WainWright: I love it.
[00:34:38] Max Cohen: no, no, no, I'm not gonna,
[00:34:39] George B. Thomas: bro.
[00:34:40] Don't get
[00:34:40] Max Cohen: are there any APIs coming to help us with the creation of payment links?
[00:34:48] Is that a thing? You could say no.
[00:34:51] Chad Hohn: Ah, that'd be sick and dope.
[00:34:52] Max Cohen: Am I imagining something?
[00:34:54] Jack: you're not a match.
[00:34:55] Chad Hohn: links with query params. That'd be nice. Pass data into them. We've
[00:35:00] Max Cohen: here, here's, here's, here's the thing. What I, what I think I really want Is I really just want the forms to be better on payment links
[00:35:10] Like the fact that like the forms don't have the same functionality as like at least the legacy form builder Eats me up like that.
[00:35:19] I can just add two You know, I can just add two other like fields or something can't really do much else with them like that Like I think that would be Such a big win, if like, the form could be built with the form's editor. Um, you know, for payment links at least, that would just be unbelievable.
[00:35:39] George B. Thomas: over here thinking about the massive amount of line of lines of code that you just said.
[00:35:44] Oh, it'd be nice if
[00:35:46] Chad Hohn: I'd love this. It'd be great.
[00:35:49] Jack: And so you can get a lot fancier today than I think a lot of people expect using some custom logic, maybe a little react here and there too. So you can, I've seen people get really fancy when it comes to progressive forms and logic that then surfaces the requisite
[00:36:07] Max Cohen: Yeah,
[00:36:08] Jack: And so APIs more broadly. Yes.
[00:36:10] We want to go down that road. Do I see us focusing on those core object APIs likely first? Well. A lot of it's already, you know, in public beta. So yes, I definitely do.
[00:36:20] Um, now do I see us trying to build a proper shopping cart? No, I don't see us moving in that space. Never want to say never, but I'd be surprised if we moved in that area. So Max, I see us being more flexible. I think people can do a lot more today than what a lot of folks actually do realize. I don't see us trying to be that, like, Shopify competitor, though. Be true to Shopify, however, like, Chad, you kind of put your finger on that one. Yeah.
[00:36:45] Chad Hohn: The
[00:36:45] Max Cohen: even think like Shopify competitor, I think it's just the ability to have more information on the form, like for a
[00:36:51] payment link, you know,
[00:36:53] that's a big thing because like, you know, I, uh, you know, for example, I would love to be able to make it easy for, you know, HubSpot payment links to, you know, register someone for an event, right.
[00:37:05] But what I have to do is create an insane amount of like workflows and, you know, stuff in the background versus just being able to like. Hey, it's a HubSpot forum. I can have a hidden field in there. There's my event ID and boom it
[00:37:17] registers I'm like that like that. That's the kind of stuff, you know Where it's just like if there's if HubSpot's building a product that has a form on it Man, it would be great if it
[00:37:28] had parody to the you know, the forms
[00:37:31] tool that it already has
[00:37:32] Chad Hohn: like, a number of units, right? Set a number of units with, like, a query parameter so you could just send somebody a link on something that has variable units and just say, you need to buy 80 units, rather than sending them a screenshot of how, where the dropdown is, because it's kind of hidden.
[00:37:49] Max Cohen: or maybe have it just be like instead of you know, uh Adding, you know, specific properties. You can just embed an existing HubSpot form and
[00:37:57] have that form be on there, right? Yeah, that might be neat. I don't
[00:38:01] know.
[00:38:02] George B. Thomas: let's get it. I think this is like the API show, by the way, because we're,
[00:38:06] Max Cohen: It's not. It's the Commerce Hub. Dog.
[00:38:09] George B. Thomas: Because it's another API and it's something that we all love to talk about. We all love, people complain about, but we know we really love it. That's taxes. Anyway, uh, can you guys
[00:38:19] Adam WainWright: Hot topic.
[00:38:20] George B. Thomas: the tax rates API? It was introduced in February of 2025. Like, um, why is that important? What should businesses be thinking about? Like, how does it help manage tax rates? Like, talk me through that little nerdy piece.
[00:38:33] Jack: Yep, uh, I never thought I'd be as enthusiastic about taxes as I am, uh, and I'm, I'm even starting to get into, like, EU tax law. I know more about German tax law today than I
[00:38:45] ever thought I would
[00:38:46] Max Cohen: It's crazy.
[00:38:47] Jack: years ago. It is kind of crazy. Now, George, um, that is an API that is very much in tandem. With the invoice create API, as well as the quote create API as well.
[00:38:57] So Chad, I'm happy to hear that you had played around with that. You can add a tax rate in the UI today. This allows for you to essentially programmatically pull that and then create that artifact in one fell swoop. Also quotes can be created via API as well. Some people get really fancy with that. So. If that's on your mind, I recommend playing around with it because you can do quite a bit. So that's really what it's all about, George, is allowing for people to programmatically create those artifacts with the create, with the right tax. Um, now I'm sure you will have seen a lot of stuff from us recently on the tax side of things. Obviously, less, we have complex tax, um, models, Canada, UK. Again, I know way more about this than I ever thought I would. And so we're going to keep enabling. Uh, on that front. So we want to allow for people to do it in the UI easily, but we also want to solve for the developers, um, as well. And so that's what this new feature is really all about.
[00:39:49] Chad Hohn: How'd that go the first time somebody hooked up their QBO with taxes and they were a Canadian Like a Canadian QBO, because you're required, like, this is something that I found out at my last job, we built our own custom QBO sync, and you have to have a tax rate on every individual line item in Canadian QBO instances, and if you don't, it's just like, sorry, don't pass go, don't collect 200, you're toast, brother.
[00:40:21] Jack: Yep. Same thing with Xero for the
[00:40:24] record as well. And so more to come on that.
[00:40:27] I can promise that one there, but, uh, yeah, when it comes to the U S QBO has huge market share and obviously, you know, getting their feet in Canada and the UK a little
[00:40:35] bit. Xero is the giant internationally though. And they also have that requirement.
[00:40:39] So that's something that's front of mind for the
[00:40:40] George B. Thomas: You, uh, you, you nerds, by the way, for any of you listening, uh, what QBO is, it's QuickBooks Online
[00:40:49] Chad Hohn: Yeah,
[00:40:49] George B. Thomas: all of you mere mortal human beings. Um, and, and because you brought that up, we can't have an episode of the commerce hub where we don't just give you a moment, Adam or Jack, to talk about, like. Where is the QuickBooks Online, like, you know, Commerce Hub integration, like, because I know we started using it when it was like a baby in diapers, like, talk us through kind of what
[00:41:10] people should be re if they're like, they tried it and they're like, not for me, not yet, like, how should they be rethinking about it or what should they know about it right now?
[00:41:19] Adam WainWright: Jack, I'll let you, I can let you take that one. You have some more history on it. You
[00:41:24] Jack: as deep as Chad, frankly, even though, uh, it was part of
[00:41:29] Max Cohen: No one's ever
[00:41:29] Chad Hohn: mean, I've had to work my way, wow, I don't know, uh, anyway, sorry,
[00:41:40] Jack: so it's just really like,
[00:41:41] George B. Thomas: getting cancelled!
[00:41:42] Jack: So philosophically, um, I've mentioned this a couple of times, but we're really all about allowing for you to manage your entire customer journey and your entire revenue operations process from within HubSpot. Uh, now that does not necessarily mean we're going to be coming, we're going to be a back office platform or an accounting platform or an ERP. I just don't really see us playing in that space anytime soon. Integration is the route that we're going to go there. And so it was our number one feature request for quite some time to be able to take HubSpot invoices and sync them out to QBO. We checked that box last year. That was a big deal. But as always, once we release something, we have folks like you all who are like, all right, we need this, this, this, and this.
[00:42:21] And so we very, very, very much hear you on that. And I think we're making incremental progress. So one of the most common errors that we saw once we launched this was the billing contact. So essentially the data model within HubSpot isn't the exact same as the data model within QuickBooks is the headline, which caused a lot of errors to think over. And so what we did is we were like, okay, it seems like everyone is running into this. Let's make it easier to select the correct billing contact within HubSpot. And so we have a little modal to pop up that says like, Are you sure you don't want it to be associated with this person? Because then that sync will, um, be successful. Taxes is another big thing that we've been working on. I think everyone knows that at this point. Uh, and there's definitely a QBO and Xero work stream there too. And so really, George, the way that I see it is we're making just progress on fewer errors and making it
[00:43:10] more, um, making you have to think less, frankly, because in a world where you have to be an
[00:43:15] expert in the QuickBooks online data model and the expert in the HubSpot data model, we're maybe making you think a little too much.
[00:43:22] So we
[00:43:22] want to make it easier, frankly, uh, to adopt and leverage.
[00:43:26] George B. Thomas: Yeah. My brain. Thanks you. My brain. Thanks, you A as, as we kind of get ready to close this bad boy out. I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask this in kind of a two part question 'cause I feel like. We're kind of talking about commerce hub and we're kind of talking about cpq and they're they're kind of the same thing But maybe sort of not And so, uh, if you guys could and so jack you'll probably answer one adam You'll probably answer the other like if you guys could wave a magic wand And you could add one feature to commerce hub or or one feature to cpq tomorrow what the heck would it be and why?
[00:43:59] Adam WainWright: want me to, I can, so, you know, we started the conversation. There's one thing that we, you know, I, I have been, um, hesitant to go down the imagining what AI can do, you know, in a, in a, in the dry land of, you know, ledgers and finance and, but, but the right, the reality is there's a massive opportunity for us to also bring in.
[00:44:26] another brain into your ecosystem that actually helps you manage a ton of processes that today are just buttons and click. They're just, they're just things that you kind of have to do. Dunning's a good example. There's, there's so many things that some of these systems have to do in order for these things to be cohesive.
[00:44:41] And if, if the, if the objective, uh, I think, I think Jack nailed it, right? We're not necessarily, we're not planning on being an ERP. Um, but if there's an opportunity for us to maybe retire a lot of the capabilities that QuickBooks is sort of having to do because your finance leaders are like, don't touch my billing process, and then we can just effectively make it be the ledger.
[00:45:01] Um, that would be a really nice place for a lot of our customers, especially the ones that are kind of going through their digital transformation journey. They're kind of early enough where they don't have to go out and get deep and knowledgeable on these. Super back, heavy back end tools. Um, and so I think if I had to make wave a magic wand and, and, you know, I, I'd like to think that we're in the process of waiting it, uh, it would be to introduce a whole ton of re imagining around how the machine can effectively offload a lot of these processes.
[00:45:30] And so we're really excited about, and frankly, there may be an opportunity for a V2 of this conversation, um, to bring in a brain that helps you, helps the sellers understand. Maybe even coach them through optimizing their quotes or their deals for margins in SAS or for inventory review, uh, for your accounts receivable team, maybe identifying and understanding where my, my, my risk is, uh, maybe I'm building profiles for my customers based on buying behaviors or, um, attributes across industries, there's a whole bunch of opportunity, uh, to look at an agentic component of this and, and, um, You know, I, the, the irony of me saying all of that is, is that it's, it feels like it's a little bit magic wandy, but the reality is, is that we're actually pretty close to coming online with something that's going to facilitate a lot of automation.
[00:46:22] And so I'm looking forward to having an opportunity to say at one point, it may have been, it may have been a bit magical, but it turns out actually it's actually closer to reality than we think.
[00:46:30] Chad Hohn: mm, that's awesome.
[00:46:32] Jack: I'll add on top of that because, uh, when specific features are obviously something I'll always get excited about and talk about till my face is blue. Um, but I'll add on top of what Adam mentioned because I think that that's going to be the real. Transformation for a given business that what I would add on top, though, is around the extensibility of everything in a world where we really can be the center of gravity for your entire business,
[00:46:58] but also speak to all of the other aspects of your business that we need to. Uh, and allow for you to do everything in one place with just a couple of clicks, not a lot of tabs, uh, not a lot of thinking. That's when I think businesses are going to say, wow, this, this platform is really transforming how we operate and allowing for us to really grow better, ideally. So I think it's the combo of AI, the framework that we have, and the ability for us to take in any information that you would want us to take in.
[00:47:26] George B. Thomas: gentlemen, I appreciate you taking time out of your day to come and hang out with Chad and Max and myself and just drop the knowledge bombs that you have. My, my one takeaway and then actually, well, Max and Chad, do you guys have a takeaway from today?
[00:47:40] Chad Hohn: I have a takeaway. I mean, I think what you guys are talking about with being able to have something to assist people, I think will bring a lot of standardization. Um, and like, that's one of the things that we run into a lot of issues with our clients is, um, They find somebody in the construction space, like, they'll hire someone who's good at data admin work, who is probably not an accountant at all.
[00:48:06] They don't know the word fiduciary, right? They know the word, like, Excel formula. And like having something help keep them on the rails, like doing things the way it ought to be done so that it will get where it needs to go. And so that a business can grow is like, that's a huge exciting thing for me. And that's like a, you know, a big takeaway is I think, um, you know, I'm, I know commerce hub is headed in the right direction.
[00:48:35] I've known it for a long time. I've had to like bite tooth and nail to keep like our industry. Invested in staying on it because some things have been difficult for like, again, exactly what Jack said, the customer structure, right? We have humans and projects underneath the humans and like the contact sync for commerce hub just doesn't do that.
[00:48:58] So I had to get really crazy with some fancy footwork of being able to laser in contacts underneath it and move invoices around after they get synced over and stuff like that. So they stay linked up, but. Like all that to say like I know you guys are really headed in the right direction to make all that work and like If you had a bad experience with qbo sync before try it again If you had a bad experience with commerce hub before I mean now is still just It's, uh, right now, it's the worst it's ever going to be always because it's always improving, right?
[00:49:35] It's not the worst it ever has been, but it's the worst it's ever going to be moving forward, theoretically, and, um, with What adam's been talking about about cash flow and that great human user experience on both sides the sales side and on the um buyer side man, I can't be more excited about that
[00:49:57] George B. Thomas: Max, final thoughts.
[00:49:58] Max Cohen: Oh, you know me, I'm the ecosystem app guy, right? So a lot of the times that I get super excited, I start to think about what this means for the broader, you know, ecosystem of the potential opportunity
[00:50:09] out there. Right. And if I'm hearing that, you know, we're building this new solid foundation for commerce on HubSpot and giving you the ability to create all these things, whether it's payments or subscriptions or this.
[00:50:21] That and the other
[00:50:21] thing, uh, the slew of possibilities around apps centered around commerce and
[00:50:29] payment getting built on HubSpot is what really excites me. Right. I
[00:50:33] mean, you know, if we think about, Hey, like, what do we need? We need an API for payments or transactions or subscriptions or whatever you want to call them.
[00:50:41] And then, you know, the next person can come around and build like the literal, uh, you know, Shopify built purpose built for HubSpot from the ground up. off the tail end of those, you know, uh, those APIs, right? Like
[00:50:54] someone in the ecosystem could come do that, right? And like that to me is really, really exciting because like, while we look at this as, you know, updates to like core features of HubSpot, there's also like a big other picture of what this opens up.
[00:51:10] You know, uh, downstream of that and, and
[00:51:13] outside of that, right. Um, you know, we, we built a CPQ platform on HubSpot, quote happily, right. I had to get it at the end, but like all this stuff that you guys are talking about. Is going to be that many more toys for us to be able to like play
[00:51:26] with and make our platform better.
[00:51:28] And you know what I mean? Like, so it's, it's, this is the stuff that really, really kind of excites me. And that, you know, what feels like features getting out of the hub spot is always a much bigger picture than just that. Right. So ecosystem should be stoked right now.
[00:51:43] George B. Thomas: Yeah, my takeaway is if you have looked at Commerce Hub but haven't tried it, maybe it's time to dip your toe in. If you've used it historically and you walked away, you might want to tease it again because
[00:51:54] in good HubSpot fashion, everything changes every single day and we're in a new wonderland where magic wands are being waved and things are being created and hey, maybe it's your time. We'll see you next time on the Hubby Heroes podcast. Don't forget to be a happy, helpful, humble human. Do some happy Hubspotting along the way.
