Vancouver’s flagship startup tech company is finally in the black.
Hootsuite declared today they are cash-flow positive for the first time since the company’s inception back in 2008. In a note to employees, founder and chief executive officer Ryan Holmes called the news “a validation of our approach.”
The company has raised nearly $250 million since it started and now has around 1,000 employees, most of them at their head office on 8th Avenue. They have a second office on 5th Avenue as well as space in London, Paris, San Francisco and Singapore.
“We’ll keep working with our partners from the big social networks to the enterprise software vendors to the startups disrupting the business world,” Holmes added.
Hootsuite said it has about 14 million users and 2,500 enterprise customers, including 800 of the Fortune 1000 list of the largest U.S. companies.
The announcement was an upbeat note in what has been a rocky stretch for the company. Last year, Hootsuite laid off about 100 employees, about 20 of them in Vancouver. Last March, Boston-based asset manager Fidelity Investments wrote down Hootsuite by 18%. And in May a former employee, Greg Gunn, filed a notice of civil claim in BC Supreme Court, claiming the company breached his employment contract by terminating him as a vice-president of new product growth without proper notice.
– With files from Darryl Greer
