November 2010 HubSpotter of the Month: Karen Rubin

In the second installment of our new series, we'd like to congratulate Karen Rubin as our November 2010 HubSpotter of the Month! HubSpotters love Karen for her enthusiasm for all things HubSpot, and HubSpot fans and followers might recognize her as the bubbly co-host of HubSpot's weekly marketing video podcast, HubSpot TV. Let's give it up for Karen!

Learn more about Karen and why she feels that sleeping is a waste of time below ...

November 2010 HubSpotter of the Month: Karen Rubin

Title at HubSpot: Product Owner

Role at HubSpot: I am a translator of customer needs. I talk with customers, as well as other HubSpotters, to learn more about what our product needs to do in order to solve their problems. Then I work with a team of developers to make our tools do those things.

How long have you been working at HubSpot? Since June, 2008 (Fun Fact: Karen hails as one of HubSpot's first 35 employees. 2.5 years later, HubSpot now has almost 200!)

Favorite Thing About Working at HubSpot: I love working at HubSpot because we are solving real problems for small businesses. We help lots of small business owners and marketers do their job more efficiently. We enable people to be great at marketing. We also have an awesomely passionate team here at HubSpot. I work with people who care about what we are doing and are always striving to do a great job. I love coming in every day!

Hidden Talent: I make people smile by being wildly inappropriate.

If you could have one super power, what would it be? This is probably pretty lame, but I would like it if I never had to sleep. I find that sleeping is such a waste of time. I would much rather be reading or working or eating. If I could be going all day long, think of how much I could get done!

What is your best, random bit of advice for inbound marketers out there? Don't over think your marketing efforts! When Mike [Volpe] and I started HubSpot.TV, we decided on a Thursday to give it a try and taped our first episode that Friday. The quality was terrible; we ended up losing the recording and only eight viewers have ever seen the show (two of which are my parents), but we learned something. The next week, we remembered to record the episode! The quality still wasn't great, but over the course of the past two years, we have learned new things from each episode and continued to improve the show.

When testing out new marketing efforts, you don't have to be perfect from the get-go. Be quick and dirty at the beginning, and learn as you go. Those early HubSpot TV episodes are still watched and generally laughed at, but they have helped build a podcast with regular viewership and a live studio audience. So it's been worth it.

What are your hobbies outside of HubSpot? I love to run, read and eat. Not necessarily in that order. Bleu cheese, really good gin and tonics, and my kitties, Gemme and Ciao, are particular passions of mine.

What is your favorite tool in the HubSpot software, and why? As a product owner, there are tools that I "own." These are the tools I have worked on for the last 2.5 years, and they are my babies: lead nurturing, email marketing, and list creation. They aren't perfect, but we continue to improve them and build out their functionality.

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