We all know that familiar feeling of dread: setting our alarm clocks for Monday morning on Sunday evening, or even earlier in the day knowing your weekend of fun has come to an end.
But HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan knows no such feeling, she said in an episode of The Grit podcast published last week. That’s because she uses Sundays as her own personal work day.
“I’m not scared of Sundays. I enjoy it because it’s my time,” said Rangan, who helms the $34 billion software company. “I get to decide what I’m learning, what I’m doing, what I’m thinking, what I’m writing. It is completely my schedule.”
Instead, Rangan—who said she struggles to sit still and take time away from work—carves out Friday night and all of Saturday to take a break. She spends this time going on walks with her husband Kash (a managing director with Goldman Sachs), doing yoga, meditating, and reading.
“Saturdays are precious to me,” Rangan said. “When I didn’t take breaks, I got burned out pretty quickly.”
HubSpot employees know Rangan won’t look at or respond to emails on Saturdays, but she’ll spend time on Sundays scheduling emails that hit inboxes in the wee morning hours on Mondays.
Rangan, who’s been with HubSpot for about five years now, typically starts her weekdays around 6 a.m. and is on work calls by 7 a.m. She says she will work as late as 11 p.m.
She joined the marketing software company right before the pandemic began as chief customer officer. The pandemic actually boded well for HubSpot as more and more companies started digitizing more of their processes and procedures. The company’s revenue more than doubled, said Rangan, who became CEO in September 2021. HubSpot was also recognized on Fortune’s Future 50 list in 2024 for companies that are likely to adapt, thrive, and grow. HubSpot didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment about Rangan’s worth ethic and how she’s impacted the company.
Rangan built her 25-year-plus tech career serving in leadership positions at other large software companies including Dropbox, Workday, and SAP. But the tech powerhouse came from humble beginnings.
Rangan was born and raised in South India, where she grew up in a 350-foot apartment with her parents and older sister. She says her mother inspired her to become a woman pioneer—whether it was becoming the first woman in India to win a major case, the first woman engineer to “do something really cool,” or becoming a doctor who would do something amazing, Rangan said.
She ended up studying computer engineering at Bharathiar University in India, and moved to the U.S. at age 21 to earn her MBA from the University of California—Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. She used her combined experience of engineering and business to become a successful salesperson, eventually climbing the ranks in the tech industry.
Although Rangan is successful—and has a near-$26 million salary to match—she reminds her two teenage sons they’ll have to work hard like she did in order to earn the lifestyle they live now. Rangan is one of the highest-paid Indian-origin CEOs in the U.S., alongside Nikesh Arora, CEO of Palo Alto Networks.
She takes her sons to India every couple of years to show where she and her husband grew up and takes her sons to see a local orphanage they sponsor to “give them a sense of what your responsibility is in society,” Rangan said.
“[It’s] not just for you to make money and live in the Bay Area,” she said. “It is to figure out how you can actually have a broader impact.”
