NOVEMBER 2015 BCBusiness 35
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How to ... keep growing and
stay true to your roots
Building a billion-dollar tech company in Vancouver has its challenges,
as homegrown success story Hootsuite can attest by Trevor Melanson
round the world, Hootsuite is famous for its social media dashboard, the go-to for
companies managing multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts—which, these days,
is pretty much all of them. But here in B.C., the company is known for another rather
remarkable accomplishment: staying home.
The Vancouver-based tech titan went from 20 employees to its current headcount
of 800 in just four years, evolving from a young startup into a major local employer—all the while
promising not to skip town. Often, the story for our tech startups ends much sooner: the company
sells for $50 million, deciding it doesn't have the resources it needs in Vancouver to become the
next Facebook. So how does a company like Hootsuite—founded in Gastown in 2008 by Ryan
Holmes—stay and grow so signiˆcantly?
From Hootsuite to Telus to TransLink, we explore some
of the biggest leadership challenges facing B.C. organizations —
and what you and your company can learn from them
stories by David Allison, Frances Bula, Dee Hon, Trevor Melanson, Matt O'Grady + Roberta Staley
illustrations by Steven Hughes
