Hootsuite founder and CEO announces he is stepping down
The founder and CEO of Vancouver-based Hootsuite has announced he is stepping down after 11 years at the helm of the social media company.
In a letter to investors, Ryan Holmes said becoming a first-time father has led to him doing a lot of reflecting.
“With a Herculean quarter of my life spent on building Hootsuite, it feels like it is the right point to take some time and reassess priorities,” wrote Holmes.
Hootsuite designs social media management tools that work with platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Holmes, 44, founded Hootsuite in 2008, and it grew from a handful of employees to around 1,000. In April of this year, the company went through a round of layoffs, rumoured to be in the range of about 100 workers.
It’s with a grateful heart that I’m announcing the start of a search for Hootsuite’s next CEO candidate. It’s been an honour of my lifetime to lead Hootsuite from a small company to a global enterprise of more than 1,000 employees supporting over 200,000 organizations.
—@invoker
Holmes says the search for a new CEO has already started and that he will move to the position of executive chairman of the board once the new hire is in place.
According to the investor letter, Hootsuite will hit $200 million in annual recurring revenue this year, something Holmes calls a benchmark when compared with similar companies. Rumours have circulated for years that the company could be going public.
“The business is at an exciting maturity, crossing the $200 million threshold and reaching profitability and this scale demands a CEO that is singularly focused on the business,” Holmes wrote.
Analysts have pegged the value of Hootsuite somewhere around $750 million.