Case study · HubSpot
Partners were spending hours setting up reporting for every new client portal. I built the case for Blueprints before it was funded. It cut setup to under a minute and became part of HubSpot's onboarding.
By the numbers
<1 min
Partner setup per portal, down from about 4 hours, for a $200K MRR partner
95%
CSAT in public beta
15%
partner adoption in public beta
COMPANY
HubSpot
MY ROLE
Senior Product Manager
STARTED AS
Not on the roadmap
TODAY
Built into native onboarding
THE CONTEXT
Why build for partners if they weren't our focus?
On paper, partners weren't a group we were prioritizing. But HubSpot had a company goal to improve the down-market customer experience, and those customers work with Solutions Partners more than anyone. At INBOUND, partners kept telling me the same thing: every new client portal needed nearly the same dashboards, built by hand.
What did I have to prove?
Blueprints wasn't on the roadmap. My job was to show the problem was real and common, then find a safe way to copy a dashboard from one portal to another.
01 · HOW IT CAME TOGETHER
Blueprints never started on a roadmap. It started with partners telling me the same story, in person.
Phase 1
IS THIS REAL, AND HOW BIG?
→ It began with in-person conversations at INBOUND, not a planned initiative.
→ Partners described rebuilding nearly the same dashboards for every new client portal.
→ We went to the data to find how long it took, on average, to build a typical dashboard.
→ It tied to a company goal: a better down-market experience, where customers rely on partners most.
Where AI helped: synthesizing partner conversations and analyzing how long dashboards took to build.
Phase 2
COPY THE SHAPE, NOT THE DATA
→ First idea: add something to a dashboard's URL, so pasting it into a new portal triggered the blueprint. We scrapped it quickly.
→ Instead, it became a secondary action in the share experience, with light copy edits so it read clearly.
→ The heavy lifting was backend: copy each dashboard's shape and formatting, but nothing sensitive or portal-specific.
→ Blueprints is a Solutions Partner-only feature, so we built specific scope and permission checks.
→ Copying between portals was a new concept, so we went through legal review and approval.
Where AI helped: my designer and I drafted the modal and import copy, then used an internal AI agent to make sure it matched our approved style guide.
Phase 3
DID IT SAVE PARTNERS TIME?
→ In public beta, Blueprints earned 95% CSAT and 15% partner adoption. We also tracked blueprints created and installed.
→ Beta calls changed the plan: partners didn't need syncing, so we cut it and put sharing first.
→ For one large partner, setting up a new portal dropped from about four hours to under a minute.
→ Blueprints is now built into HubSpot's native onboarding.
02 · THE KEY DECISION
IT WASN'T
“Partners aren't our priority user, so park it.”
IT WAS
“Partners serve the down-market customers we're prioritizing, so their pain is our goal.”
It wasn't on the roadmap. Linking it to the down-market goal, and backing it with data on how long a typical dashboard took to build, made the case.
03 · THE TRADE-OFF
✓ In v1
Save a set of dashboards as a blueprint and share it across client portals, so partners could set up a new portal in minutes instead of days.
→ Left for later
Syncing updates to portals that already installed a blueprint. It was in the original plan, but partners on beta calls told us they didn't need it, so we cut it and put sharing first.
My role: I championed Blueprints before it was on the roadmap, took it from INBOUND conversations to the data, shaped the share flow with design, worked through the copy rules and legal approval with engineering, and took it from public beta into native onboarding.
04 · THE OUTCOME
<1 min
partner setup per portal, down from about 4 hours
95%
CSAT in public beta
15%
partner adoption in public beta
Blueprints is now built into HubSpot's native onboarding.
05 · WHAT TO TAKE FROM IT
1
If it's not on the roadmap, connect it to a goal that is. Conversations found the problem, and data proved how big it was.
2
A four-hour task repeated for every portal is a business problem, not a nice-to-have.
3
Fix it for one partner and you fix it for every client they onboard.
Sources: My work at HubSpot, and Email or export reports and dashboards (HubSpot Knowledge Base).
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