Mike Volpe, HubSpot’s former top marketing exec, attempted to get his hands on a draft of a former employee’s book about the company. In an article in Boston.com by Lloyd Mallison, the top marketing exec was fired for violating HubSpot’s code of business conduct and ethics code.
According to BetaBoston, the book in question is likely the one being written by Dan Lyons, a former journalist who worked for HubSpot last year. Lyons has already worked on the HBO show Silicon Valley and announced in February he was “working on a memoir of my ridiculous attempt to reinvent myself and start a new career as a marketing person inside a software company during the second tech bubble.”
HubSpot a Cambridge marketing software company disclosed also that a second executive had resigned and that a third, chief executive Brian Halligan, had been sanctioned for knowing about the incident but failing to alert HubSpot’s board of directors “in a timely fashion.”
According to Beta Boston:
The book is likely the work of Dan Lyons, a former journalist who worked in a marketing position at HubSpot until December. In addition to writing screenplays for “Silicon Valley,” the HBO series spoofing the tech-startup culture, Lyons previously penned the wildly popular blog Fake Steve Jobs, which parodied Apple co-founder Steve Jobs before his illness and death as a vulgar, self-righteous, and power-hungry executive impatient with others’ stupidity.
In February, Lyons announced that he was working on “a memoir of my ridiculous attempt to reinvent myself and start a new career as a marketing person inside a software company during the second tech bubble.” The book, titled “Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Startup Bubble,” is scheduled to be published by Hachette early next year.
It’s painful to lose your job for ethics issues, but choices have consequences. Fortunately for HubSpot their commitment to ethics is reflected in their tough choice to remove their top marketing officer for a violation. Rarely to you see a company take a very public stand in favor of their ethics guidelines – thus sending a clear message to their employees and customers that they have a culture of ethics in their organization!
Bravo!
