HubSpot INBOUND 25: A Partner's Debrief

The Wormhole Moment

Every once in a while, the business world hits a turning point; a wormhole moment. INBOUND 2025 felt like one of those. Just like the dot-com era, we’re standing at the edge of a new reality. HubSpot unveiled the first round of AI-driven tools, and you can already see the arms race beginning. Salesforce will respond. Others will pile in. Iron will sharpen iron, and the pace of innovation will only accelerate.

The big takeaway? Revenue Operations (RevOps) is changing fast. The fundamentals of data, process, enablement, and adoption still matter. But the role of RevOps is shifting from building workflows to accelerating outcomes: faster conversions, faster revenue, faster customer success.

AI as an Accelerant, NOT a Replacement

HubSpot’s positioning of AI was reassuring. The message wasn’t “throw everything out.” It was: keep your solid foundation, then add AI as an accelerant. That framing matters. It calms the fear that AI will replace jobs and instead highlights how it frees people to lean into the work that matters: building trust, relationships, and long-term customers.

The formula HubSpot kept repeating: IP(Intellectual Property) + EQ (Emotional Intelligence) to the power of AI = Customer Value, sums it up. The intelligence and processes you already have, multiplied by human connection, then accelerated by AI.

From SEO to AEO: Marketing’s New Rules

One of the biggest shifts is how AI changes marketing itself. HubSpot’s introduction of AEO (AI Engine Optimization) signals the end of SEO as we know it. AI will create, adapt, and personalize content in real time. It will propose segments, personalize campaigns, and surface insights marketers can act on instantly.

That begs the organizational question: who owns this? Is it Marketing, IT, RevOps? The truth is, it’s everyone’s job. AI is cross-functional by nature. Marketing, sales, service, and leadership all need to own their slice of the AI pie.

The Rise of Unstructured Data

We heard the phrase unstructured data more in one week than in our last 10 years combined. Notes, emails, transcripts, LinkedIn profiles, press releases, it’s all fuel now. HubSpot’s Smart CRM is evolving to pull structure out of chaos, allowing leaders to query unstructured data just as easily as structured fields.

That means leaders can stop waiting on admins to build the perfect report. Instead, they’ll ask natural-language questions of their business and get answers instantly. For operators like us, this is game-changing.

The Double-Edged Sword of Acceleration

Accelerants cut both ways. If your operations aren’t sound, AI will accelerate failure. Faster leads won’t matter if you can’t onboard customers well. Smarter outreach won’t help if your service delivery stumbles. You’ll just accelerate bad reviews and churn. The need for solid foundations data, processes, and adoption has never been more urgent.

This is why HubSpot is pushing partners like HarvestROI to lead. Not to follow. Not to wait. To help clients adopt and operationalize AI responsibly.

Brendan’s Take: Consumption-Based Pricing and ROI

Brendan Blouin, VP of Growth at HarvestROI

One of the sleeper announcements was HubSpot’s move toward consumption-based pricing for many of its AI-driven tools. This is both exciting and a little daunting for customers.

Think of it like the early days of cell phone data plans: every text and megabyte cost extra. Companies will need clarity up front: How many credits do we need? What’s the ROI per credit? How do we avoid bill shock?

Our role as a partner is to help model those scenarios. To build a cost-benefit analysis for each use case. To show clients the ROI of consuming credits for enrichment, segmentation, or personalization, and to prevent the “$20,000 surprise bill” moment.

This isn’t just tool adoption. It’s financial operations becoming deeply tied to RevOps decisions.

Final Reflections

INBOUND 2025 wasn’t just about flashy demos. It was about vision alignment. We spent the week talking with HubSpot leaders like Angela O’Dowd, Jon Dick, and Yamini Rangan. Their message was clear: the future is unified, AI-powered, and partner-led.

For us at HarvestROI, that validation mattered. Our focus on adoption, on fixing broken setups, on embedding AI inside HubSpot; it all aligns with where HubSpot is going. We came away confident that our clients are in the right hands.

The takeaway for businesses? Don’t wait for the AI future to arrive. It’s here. And like any accelerant, it will multiply whatever foundation you already have for better or worse.