HubSpot AI agent drives program eligibility for technology innovation company

How Custom HubSpot AI Agent Expanded LG NOVA’s Innovation Program

Understanding the burden of manual data, SmartBug Media^® built LG NOVA a HubSpot AI research agent to streamline data collection on minimum-qualified startups seeking to participate in its Innovation Program. The tool is customized from the proprietary SmartBug® AI Research Agent, which was originally designed to provide company profiles, industry analysis, comparable client examples, and discovery questions.

We personalized the AI agent as a "digital employee” inside LG NOVA’s HubSpot instance to track alignment criteria, generate actionable intelligence, and personalize sales sequence emails for its team.

Less manual research

With an AI agent capable of automated intelligence, LG NOVA is expanding access to the Innovation Program and reducing reliance on third-party data.

AI agent customization

The reimagining of SmartBug^® AI Research Agent makes it easy for LG NOVA to increase its pool of minimum-qualified startups for the Innovation Program.

Better bonds with candidates

Because the AI agent helps to isolate qualified Innovation Program candidates, the LG NOVA team can refocus on building relationships with each one.

Background

LG NOVA operates as the innovation arm for LG Electronics, tasked with engaging external innovators, startups, and investors to build products for the future. Unlike most users who leverage HubSpot as a traditional customer relationship management (CRM) platform to manage customers, LG NOVA takes it a step further by turning the platform into a central database to identify, manage, and evaluate minimum-qualified startups for its Innovation Program.

But the company receives up to thousands of nominated and non-nominated Program referrals, and it can only proceed with a small selection of minimum-qualified candidates. To identify these, LG NOVA could spend months building an internal HubSpot research tool or hire SmartBug to handle it. They chose the latter, leaning on our expertise as an Elite Partner to streamline the process using AI-driven technology.

The Need

Insufficient Startup Data Breeds Program Disqualification

LG NOVA’s Innovation Program provides opportunities for the best minds and companies to build products they might otherwise not be able to offer, but identifying the best candidates was a challenge.

The company receives up to thousands of entries every year, either nominated by partners or non-nominated from outside sources. And while partners provide business data with their nominations, only a small percentage of non-nominated startups meet the LG NOVA’s minimum qualified criteria because very little is known about them.

LG NOVA only evaluates startups that provide sufficient business data. The team couldn’t spend more than 30 minutes per person per startup evaluating startups across Crunchbase and other third-party sites to understand qualified candidates. There had to be a better way.

Our Solution

Putting AI to Work to Make HubSpot a Powerhouse Research Database

Custom AI Agent Development
CRM Integration & Data Mapping
Sales Enablement & Sequencing
Custom Property Workflows

To give LG NOVA a hand in research, SmartBug built a human-agent collaboration system directly inside HubSpot. The new AI Agent provides data enhancement to identify more startups that meet the Innovation Program’s minimum qualified criteria, expanding LG NOVA’s pool of candidates to further evaluate.

While the tool’s foundation is built on the Agent.ai platform, it integrates seamlessly within HubSpot, utilizing webhooks to map the agent's findings to specific HubSpot properties on each company record.

With it, the LG NOVA team can better understand qualified prospects by:

Automatically generating company profiles
Referencing profiles to understand how the company aligns with Innovation Program criteria
Extracting quick facts and industry challenges
Tracking alignment to target industries (AI, CleanTech, or HealthTech)
Categorizing new contacts into specific company types (e.g., startups, investors, partners)
Tailoring sales sequences to invite suitable companies into the Innovation Program

Phase 1: Scoping & Agent Creation

SmartBug defined the exact parameters for the specific tracks LG NOVA supports and creates ventures from: AI, CleanTech, and HealthTech. We used this information to build an initial framework in Agent.ai, customizing it to scrape targeted intelligence—such as track alignment and funding data for LG NOVA—using Gemini, Breeze Intelligence, and ChatGPT.

Phase 2: Customization & Troubleshooting

LG NOVA and SmartBug collaborated to refine the agent to ensure the AI behaved correctly and produced accurate outputs.

Phase 3: Integration & Launch

SmartBug integrated webhooks and HubSpot workflows to automatically route the agent’s findings directly into the CRM. The agent’s front-end interface was tailored so staff could easily enroll startups and instantly view research pinned right to the company record.

The Results

Less Manual Research
to Get Back to Relationship-Building

LG NOVA transformed its daily operations as the AI agent took hold. Instead of struggling against time-consuming manual research, the team gained access to an automated intelligence hub to drive real results.

The custom HubSpot AI agent has already created opportunities by better identifying qualified Innovation Program candidates and refocusing the team’s research on best-fit startups. Instead of researching the internet for more information LG NOVA’s team can focus on the collaboration model. By having the intelligent agent identify core startup details, LG NOVA is expanding its Innovation Program to more businesses in need.