UNBOUND is HubSpot’s annual event bringing go-to-market teams together to rethink how businesses grow and adapt. At first glance, it might seem like a simple name change. But if you’ve been part of this journey since the beginning as I have, you’ll know UNBOUND signals something much bigger.
This update isn’t about leaving inbound marketing or the spirit of the event behind. HubSpot still serves the same like-minded community, only now the the event's vision is better aligned with the AI-driven environment everyone is adapting to. But in order to understand how HubSpot got there, we need to look backwards.
Back in 2009, HubSpot’s founders published Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs and fundamentally shifted how businesses approached growth. The inbound methodology explored in the book introduced a simple, yet powerful, idea: Attract, Engage, Delight. It challenged the idea that marketing was only effective when it is interruptive.
By 2011, that thinking came to life in Boston with the first ever INBOUND event. What started as a gathering of marketers quickly became a global movement bringing together thousands of people every year to learn, connect, and rethink how businesses grow.
I attended my first INBOUND in 2015, not long after Salted Stone became a HubSpot partner. Walking into the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, I remember feeling completely overwhelmed in the best possible way. It was the center of the universe for anyone serious about marketing, sales, and customer experience. I filled an entire notebook, page after page of new frameworks and ideas, from speakers like Seth Godin and Brené Brown who reframed how we think about customer connection and growth.
The experience renewed my perspective.
The electric floor of INBOUND15 in Boston, Massachusetts.
Every year, INBOUND delivered a new direction for leaders to aspire to, enabled by a host of new HubSpot features and updates. For me, one moment stayed with me more than any other: INBOUND 2018.
There, Brian Halligan stood on stage and declared that the traditional funnel was “dead.” In its place, he introduced the Flywheel — a circular model designed around customer-centric growth. That resonated because for years, many of us had been feeling that the funnel didn’t reflect reality anymore. Customers weren’t moving predictably from awareness to consideration to decision. They were researching, engaging, disengaging, and returning, often multiple times, before becoming a customer. The Flywheel gave language to something we were already seeing.
And over time, I evolved this into something called the Infinity Track® — a model that removes the boundaries between marketing, sales, and service, bringing them together into a single, unified revenue engine. It's an always-on, interconnected model that reflects how modern buyers behave. It also gave us a way to map where technology, including AI, can have the greatest impact across the entire customer journey.
It was at INBOUND 2023 that AI moved from the sidelines to centre stage. HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah spoke of the rise of generative AI and its role in amplifying human capability. He said it was (and still is) about augmentation, rather than efficiency for efficiency’s sake, helping us execute at a level that simply wasn’t possible before.
By 2024, with the introduction of Breeze AI, Dharmesh’s vision of amplified human capability became embedded within the HubSpot platform. And it’s fundamental to why HubSpot arrived at renaming INBOUND.
INBOUND grew into the main event for business leaders serious about growth.
Late last year, I had the opportunity to be part of a HubSpot focus group exploring the future of the INBOUND brand. We reviewed different concepts and directions. And when UNBOUND was introduced, it immediately made sense. Because what we’re seeing right now is an expansion of what’s possible in marketing, sales, service, and operations.
Crucially, the fundamentals of inbound haven’t changed. If anything, the principles are as relevant today as they were 15 years ago. Value still wins attention. Trust still drives decisions. And customers still expect to engage on their terms, not ours. What has changed, however, is the scale and speed at which we can grow.
It's all thanks to AI lowering the barrier to entry. We now work in an world where anyone can build digital experiences, so the real differentiator is no longer output. Rather, it’s the ability to express your brand identity, tailor the experience using customer data and AI, amplify content distribution, and evolve continuously using real-time learnings. (These are the tenets of Loop Marketing, which adapts inbound marketing for this new AI-enabled landscape.)
UNBOUND represents that shift toward being more ambitious. No matter which function you are in, everyone works across the whole customer journey and owns the customer experience. Every leader has to push beyond rigid funnels and static playbooks. That means adapting to a world of constant change and iterating on how your brand delivers for customers and achieves growth. This is the essence of UNBOUND.
HubSpot's inbound marketing methodology isn't dead, nor is its namesake event — they've simply evolved. A community of growth-mined leaders will come together again in 2026 as HubSpot officially launches UNBOUND this September, marking a new chapter.
What I’m most excited for is not just the product announcements, but how the event experience itself will change. If INBOUND was about helping leaders understand how to grow better, UNBOUND is about helping us execute growth without limits — a call to rethink what’s possible. For me, one thing is clear: UNBOUND isn’t the first evolution from HubSpot, and it certainly won’t be the last.
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