Brian.
David.
We met each other--
[LAUGHS]
--12 years ago, and I remember it like it was yesterday.
I do, too.
You guys invited me to come and meet you here
in Cambridge, although not in this building.
And the email I got--
it's a memorial email because the subject line is so awesome.
It said, "We Have Based Our Company on the Ideas
in Your Book."
Let me go back even further than that.
Please.
I remember that email because we had a marketing guy.
And he was going away on his honeymoon.
And he was going away for two weeks to Bora Bora-- long trip.
And he had a stack of books on his desk this high.
Pre-Kindle.
Way pre-Kindle.
And he knew I like to read.
And I was like, "Well, it looks like a romantic honeymoon
you're going on."
[LAUGHTER]
And so he goes away and comes back.
And he leaves one book on my chair
with a little sticky on it that said, "Brian, read this one."
Nice.
And that was your book.
Nice.
And--
And then we looked you up.
And it was like, wait, he lives right around the corner
from us.
Let's see if we can engage him.
That's how that got going.
And this email came.
I go, "Of course, I've got to take that meeting-- a company
that says they base their company on my book," which
wasn't entirely true.
But it got me into the meeting.
And I walked into the meeting, and I
had-- it was an older-generation MacBook Pro.
It was a MacBook Pro.
And I opened up my MacBook Pro.
And we started to chat.
Now, we had known each other for one minute--
[LAUGHS]
--literally, one minute.
And you go, "Hang on, hang on, hang on.
We can't start this meeting until you tell me
about these stickers."
And I had three of the stickers that are on this one right
now that you pointed out, like, "What's that Nantucket
sticker?"
So I said, "Hey, I've been to Nantucket many times.
I own a house in Nantucket.
It's fabulous."
And then you said, "I go to--
"I go there all the time."
And I was like, "Oh, the Japan sticker--
why do you have a Japan sticker?"
"Japan?
What's that about?"
I said, "My wife is Japanese.
I lived in Japan for seven years.
Japan's incredibly important in my life."
And I lived in Japan for two years.
And we lived there the same time.
The same time-- and then I'm like, wait a minute.
We're both saw the future of marketing.
You started a company based on this idea of inbound marketing.
I wrote a book about what I call the New
Rules of Marketing, which is essentially the same thing.
And we both have this Japan fascination.
We both love Nantucket.
And it's like we're long-lost brothers.
And you're like, "What about the Grateful Dead--
[LAUGHS]
--steely going on here?"
And I said, "Grateful Dead's my favorite band.
The Grateful Dead, I've seen over 50 times."
And you're like--
I was like, "It's my favorite band, too.
I've seen them over 100 times."
And I remember that conversation led to your reaching
into your briefcase at the time.
You said, "I got two extra tickets
to fill in friends, basically--
Grateful Dead redux.
You want them?"
And you gave me those tickets that night.
And we ended up going together.
We ended up going together.
[LAUGHS]
And what's so cool about this is that simply
a couple of stickers on a computer
led to us having an instant connection in the first minute
we met one another, which is something that fandom can do.
It's something that sharing something with somebody
in a personal way can lead to something
that is incredibly powerful.
And in 12 years, we've probably seen the Grateful Dead together
50 times--
[LAUGHS]
--something like that--
A lot.
--six times this year so far.
[LAUGHTER]
A lot.
Six-- six times a year so far.
When you opened your HubSpot office in Tokyo, I was there.
Yes.
So we've been to Japan at the same time.
I went to your daughter's wedding.
We had beers together at Cisco brewery in Nantucket.
So the whole idea of fandom is you share things
with like-minded people, and the personal stuff
can lead to business.
I agree with that.