Ryan Holmes, the founder and current chief executive officer of Hootsuite has announced his exit as Hootsuite’s CEO.
Stepping down after almost 10 years as CEO, Holmes will be moving to the executive chairman position once the right person is chosen, he announced on Twitter today.
Speaking to the Financial Post, he said an IPO or a sale is still a possibility, but the primary mandate for the new chief executive will be to expand the company’s product offerings, explore possible acquisitions and further strengthen the business.
“And if we do well at that…we will ultimately be rewarded, whether it is an IPO or through inbound interest through M&A, but that’s not going to be the prime focus of the successor,” Holmes said.
Ryan Holmes founded Hootsuite in 2008 and has helped the company form many partnerships throughout the years.
More recently, Hootsuite announced its partnership with Proofpoint – a leading cybersecurity and compliance company – to deliver real-time predictive compliance for customers in regulated industries. This feature, announced Oct. 28, will put up the guardrails, and give Hootsuite’s customers in regulated industries the confidence to empower their people to capitalize on the power of social media to achieve their business objectives, particularly around social selling.
“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,” Holmes wrote in a tweet thread.
Hootsuite was branched out from Invoke Co. – a 2000-born interactive agency specializing in web application development, social networking, social marketing through a variety of sectors.
Creator of Hootsuite, Memelabs, Vidrollr and many other stealth incubation projects, Invoke Media was also created and started by Holmes. He currently serves on the board of directors of Invoke.