Two weeks on, and we're still buzzing from Boston.
UNBOUND 2026 was the first edition under its new name. Formerly known as INBOUND for 15 years, the event was rebranded to UNBOUND in 2026, and fourteen thousand registrants spent three days at the heart of the HubSpot ecosystem. Tim and I were there for Koalify, and these are the three things we brought home.
1. The people (by far the best part)
Most of the year, the people we work with are names in a Slack thread, faces on a video call, or a portal ID in a support ticket. At UNBOUND they were standing in front of us.
We met partners we've worked with for years but had never met in person. We met customers who've walked us through every corner of their messy CRM. And we met peers building apps in the same ecosystem, all facing the same questions about where HubSpot is heading.
No other HubSpot event brings together this many partners and peers in one place. "We should grab a coffee sometime" turns into an actual coffee ten minutes later.
We also heard a lot of duplicate stories. Salesforce syncs creating second copies of every company. Enrichment tools adding contacts that already exist. New RevOps hires who inherited a mess on day one. Every story was different, but the frustration was the same: you can't trust reports built on records you don't trust.
2. The talks: it all comes back to context & trust
The main stage set the tone. Yamini Rangan opened HubSpot Spotlight with a number that stuck with us: while nine out of ten companies are using AI tools, only 6% are achieving outcomes they would describe as transformative.
The sessions we sat in on (front row, every time) kept circling back to why that gap exists.
The main stage set the tone. Yamini Rangan opened HubSpot Spotlight with a number that stuck with us: while nine out of ten companies are using AI tools, only 6% are achieving outcomes they would describe as transformative.
The sessions we sat in on (front row, every time) kept circling back to why that gap exists.
Do you trust your AI agents?
Nejc (Nates) Škoberne from Sellestial opened with two questions.
"Who has an AI agent running right now?" About half the room raised their hands.
"Who never has to check what their agent is doing?" Almost no one did.
That's the trust gap. The problem isn't adoption, it's confidence. Until you can trust the output, you haven't really saved any time. You've just moved it from doing the work to checking it. Closing that gap will matter more than adding another agent.
And a big part of trusting an agent is trusting what it reads. An agent that finds three versions of the same company, each with a different owner, will pick one. Probably the wrong one.
Don't use AI
Xilian Sansoucy's panel with Michael Kurson of FirstTouch started the same way.
"Who logged in to LinkedIn today?" Every hand went up.
"Who's connected with someone new in the past six months?" Every hand stayed up.
"Who's replied to a cold AI message in the past six months?" Nearly all of them came down.
Conversations are moving to LinkedIn because it still feels human. With connections and DMs capped, every message has to earn its place. People are still showing up and still open to talking. They're just ignoring messages that don't feel human.
Admins Unfiltered
Three HubSpot admins on stage: Donelle Lockhart, Jay Baumgardner and Matthew Alex Ruxton. No slides about best practice. Just what it actually takes to run HubSpot.
My biggest takeaway: everyone makes mistakes. The merge that shouldn't have run. The beta that broke something. The admin role isn't about never getting it wrong, it's about what you do afterwards.
The role gets talked about a lot. It doesn't often get talked about this honestly.
Battle of the Builders
Five HubSpot solutions partners. One stage. $100,000 on the line.
Pitching were Sawyer McGuire, Rebecca Harris, Josh Harcus, Jatin Chhabra and Anastasia Zhukova. Judging were Kyle Poyar, Emily Kramer and Adam Cuzzort.
Five AI transformation stories, a running clock, and judges who didn't let anything slide. Building is the part of HubSpot I enjoy most, so this was the session I'd been looking forward to.
Underneath the agents and the AI stories, every pitch was really about process. None of it holds up without a solid process underneath.
What tied it together
Every session made the same point from a different angle. AI, agents and outreach only work when there's something trustworthy underneath: good process, honest admins, and clean data. That's what turns CRM data quality from a housekeeping job into the foundation.
3. The pin hunt with fellow app partners
This year we tried something new. We teamed up with three HubSpot app partners for a game on the show floor: collect all four pins, earn a gold badge, and get a chance to win $1,000.
To complete the set, you had to find all of us:
- Tim Coppieters and me from Koalify 🐨
- Harry Bevan from Weave + Blend
- James Fyfe from portant.co
- Bastien Paul from Hublead
It turned out to be a great excuse to start conversations. People came over for a pin and stayed to talk about their CRM, their tech stack, and what's keeping them up at night. And because four apps were involved, attendees discovered tools they might never have found on their own.
Congratulations to Ian Jacob, who tracked down all four pins, earned the gold badge and took home the $1,000. 🏆
A big thank you to Harry, James and Bastien for making it happen. We'd do it again in a heartbeat.
4. The swag
Beyond our own pins, the show floor was full of great swag. This is what came home with us:
- Centralise: a Rubik's cube
- Salted Stone: a finger skateboard
- Howly: an owl sticker
- Weave + Blend: socks
- Radish: a sticker
- Purple Insights: a pin
- Sawyer McGuire: a Pokémon card
- Bryant Works: cards
- New Breed: a t-shirt
- And of course, a Koalify sticker 🐨
Picking a favourite is hard, but the finger skateboard got the most use on the flight home.
See you next year
UNBOUND reminded us why we build on HubSpot: the ecosystem is full of people who care about getting this right. Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hi, swap a messy CRM story or hunt down a pin.
If one of those conversations sounded familiar and duplicates are still slowing your team down, let's pick it up where we left off. Book a quick call and show us your portal. 🐨
