Laura Fitton

Laura Fitton is a marketing consultant, public speaker, author and advisor. She made her name with @pistachio, her Twitter handle, co-authoring Twitter for Dummies and founding oneforty.com.

Once dubbed the "Queen" of Twitter, Laura Fitton has described her use of Twitter as a love affair. During her time as a marketing consultant, she came across Twitter, tried the platform out and was unsure of it. Then she discovered Twitter such allowed her to surround herself with interesting and successful people. This led to @pistachio, her eponymous Twitter handle, and to convince Guy Kawasaki, in 2007, Twitter was going to be big.

In 2008, Laura converted on her Twitter success and re-launched Pistachio Consulting. Pistachio consulting described themselves as connecting businesses to new ideas and innovations using the tools to microsharing.

Pistachio consulting was close to failing during 2008's financial crisis. Laura had a single client, Charity: Water, for which she was able to raise $25,000. This was one of the first donate by tweeting campaigns. Her success gained traction, being listed on Huffington Post as one of Arianna Huffington's top five favourite Christmas Day stories of that year.

In turn, Laura turned her expertise and experience on Twitter into co-authoring Twitter for Dummies in 2009 with Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston.

Laura turned to start-up work with oneforty Inc., or oneforty.com, an app store for Twitter which worked to catalog and curate the best extensions and apps for Twitter. The tool included a community of users who shared and rated the tools.

oneforty was able to raise $2.25 million through funding rounds until they were acquired by HubSpot in 2011. Before this acquisition, oneforty pivoted to a business user focus. The site turned into a place for business users to understand social media. They included information on how to invest a budget, what other companies were doing, buyers guides for brands and reviews of social media tools. The acquisition saw oneforty merge into HubSpot's App marketplace.

When oneforty was acquired by HubSpot, Laura Fitton was kept on as HubSpot's Inbound Marketing Evangelist. Her role is described as showing companies how to grow by helping people buy instead of marketing to them.