It appears not to be possible to create a custom association between a company and another company. Could I confirm this?
Specifically I want to be able to model that a firm has invested in another.
This may be possible to model by adding the individual investor that did the investment, but often this is unclear or the investor has left but the investment firm still has an interest in the company.
You're correct, while it's possible to associate contacts to multiple contacts, companies cannot be associated with each other. I'd recommend submitting a request in the HubSpot Ideas section or adding to this existing request.
My personal assumption is that HubSpot is planning on introducing this but it will probably take a while.
At this very moment, the only solution for this would be custom objects – not available in the Starter subscription, unfortunately, only in Enterprise. Your suppliers could be such a custom object. (By default, HubSpot isn't very good at managing relationships that incorporate multiple companies or indirect sales.)
As far as easy (albeit insufficient) workarounds go, you can pin notes to the top of any record and include links to its related records. For example, on the company record of supplier 1, you pin a note including the links to the records of company A and B. This relationship will not reflect in any tool (list, workflow etc.) but it helps you at least navigate.
Best regards!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer
I need this too. My workaround has been to associate companies at the deal level (since you can have multiple companies assigned to a single deal). This enables you to report on these companies too (filter by comapanies with associated deals...).
Hope that's helpful. There's also a third party app in the marketplace called Associ8 but I haven't done a ton of dilligence on it.
You're correct, while it's possible to associate contacts to multiple contacts, companies cannot be associated with each other. I'd recommend submitting a request in the HubSpot Ideas section or adding to this existing request.
My personal assumption is that HubSpot is planning on introducing this but it will probably take a while.
At this very moment, the only solution for this would be custom objects – not available in the Starter subscription, unfortunately, only in Enterprise. Your suppliers could be such a custom object. (By default, HubSpot isn't very good at managing relationships that incorporate multiple companies or indirect sales.)
As far as easy (albeit insufficient) workarounds go, you can pin notes to the top of any record and include links to its related records. For example, on the company record of supplier 1, you pin a note including the links to the records of company A and B. This relationship will not reflect in any tool (list, workflow etc.) but it helps you at least navigate.
Best regards!
Karsten Köhler HubSpot Freelancer | RevOps & CRM Consultant | Community Hall of Famer