We have big news: HubSpot Media is acquiring Starter Story, one of the most trusted and popular media brands in the business community.
If you’ve spent any time in the world of bootstrapped businesses, online startups, or the indie founder community, you already know what a Starter Story is. But if this is your first introduction, buckle up, because this genre has a story to tell.
Content
What is the First Story?
Back in 2017, a software engineer named Pat Walls was burning the candle at both ends. His first startup had recently failed to get into Y Combinator. He spent his days at work and his nights trying to build something that would stick—a story many entrepreneurs know all too well.
Refusing to give up the business, Pat started a side project – something low-cost, quirky, and built out of genuine curiosity. He wanted to know how real entrepreneurs build their businesses from the ground up. So he started calling them and asking them.
He created the first version of the Starter Story out of Starbucks, posting his early founder interviews to Reddit and Hacker News to see what would happen. People loved it. He continued. In October 2017, the Starter Story went live, and it grew from there in a way that felt right at home in its pages.
Today, Starter Story is a multi-channel full media product that reaches over 100 million people annually. The numbers are hard to argue with:
- 800,000+ aggregated YouTube subscribers
- 600,000+ social followers combined
- 300,000 newspaper subscribers
- 4,500+ founders’ studies and discussions on its website
- 100M+ annual content viewing
But what makes Starter Story culturally important isn’t scale – it’s trust. In the community of bootstrapped founders, appearing on Starter Story has become a rite of passage. These are not easy success stories. They are honest, transparent about how founders built their companies: what they charged, how they got their first customers, what almost broke them, and what finally clicked. Income figures are included.
That combination of great loyalty and practical insight is rare. This is also why Starter Story has built a loyal, highly engaged audience.
Why HubSpot Media Got It
Let’s rewind the picture for a second.
The media landscape is changing in ways that marketers feel every day. Organic traffic is becoming harder to achieve. Paid acquisition costs keep rising. Audience attention is spread across more channels than ever before. The playbooks that worked five years ago – keyword targeting, algorithmic content at scale, banner ads – are increasingly hitting diminishing returns.
What works? Trusted, creator-led brands for the audiences they want. Products that people subscribe to, share, and return to — not because they were served a retargeted ad, but because the content is truly worth their time.
That’s what HubSpot Media has been building towards. Rather than renting paid channels, we invest in media assets yours it. Hustle, Mindstream, and Starter Story are now all part of that same thesis: if you want to reach the people who matter most to your business, create (or find) media they already love.
The Startup Story fits this strategy incredibly well because of the WHO it reaches. The First Story audience is made up of early stage founders – people at the time they are deciding what tools to build their businesses on. The seed before Series A, analyzes the options, moves quickly, and forms opinions about which brands they trust. That’s the main part of HubSpot, and the Starter Story gets them to their part, where they’re learning and making decisions.
It doesn’t match demographics. It is a mind it’s worth it. And that makes all the difference.
HubSpot Media: A Record Worth Talking About
We don’t make these kinds of moves lightly, and we have the results to prove why we keep making them.
HubSpot’s media network is now over 50 million conversations and tens of thousands of leads every month – a number that reflects actual audience behavior, not impressions. Only on YouTube, HubSpot’s channels are already integrated 20 million views per month.
Hustle, which was acquired by HubSpot in 2021, is a clear proof point. It has remained programmatically independent, kept its word with the community, and continues to grow. The same goes for Mindstream. We’ve learned how to be good stewards of the media products we invest in – adding resources without adding distractions.
As Starter Story joins the network, our combined number of YouTube subscribers goes up 2.9 million. That’s a real, engaged audience of people who want to build things.
A Note on Why This Matters
There is a version of this story that you can tell about media strategy and the frequency of acquisition. We will not say in that version.
The version we care about is this: there are millions of people around the world who want to build something. Some have a few months of side projects. Others stared at the blank Notion doc, trying to figure out what to do next. Others have already started and are milling about in the middle of the dirt. And Starter Story has been one of the most trusted, most generous resources available to all.
Investing in that – and helping it grow – is something we’re really proud of.
If you have never read a Case Study, go read one now. Then sign up for the newsletter. Then watch a few videos. Trust us this time.
And if you’re building one right now – welcome to the HubSpot Media family. We built these things for you.
