From a paintball field to a web startup: the story behind Hootsuite

HootSuite founder Ryan Holmes

Ryan Holmes started his entrepreneurship journey in an unlikely industry. The founder of popular Twitter client and social media dashboard Hootsuite may be a web guy now, but he started out with something very offline: paintball. The Vancouver-based Holmes’ first business was a paintball company, which is still thriving and is run by his brother today. He then moved on to another offline business, pizza, when he opened and owned a restaurant. He finally moved into the web space when he founded full-service interactive agency Invoke in 2005. The agency focuses on building brand advocacy through social media tools, some of which the team developed out of their own personal needs – including HootSuite. “Find a need and fill it,” Holmes says about starting a company or developing a product. “Hootsuite was a need that we filled.”

The company launched in 2008 and now counts powerhouse companies like Disney and Dell as users. The dashboard makes it easy to run a company’s social media accounts with team workflow tools, and the ability to schedule Tweets, track statistics, and update on the move with their iPhone app. You can even attend HootSuite university, as the company announced this week they’ll be offering a professional training and certification program.

Hootsuite announced the finalization of $1.9 million in Series A funding in January – something Holmes is not used to. All of his companies up until Hootsuite were bootstrapped and self-financed. “We started businesses the old-fashioned way,” he says. “We made something and sold it, and then re-invested that money.” He felt it was necessary to take investment because the company was gaining a lot of users and traction, but 1/3 of the team was working on a zero-revenue product. Rather than limit their growth Holmes decided investment was the right choice so they could keep iterating and adding features. “We decided to take investment because we needed to.” He recognizes investment isn’t always the right decision, but says a company should consider taking investment if it needs more money than it’s bringing in before hitting a critical mass growth point.

Since Holmes has been involved in extremely diverse businesses – from offline product-based companies to online service-based companies – he has lots of advice for new entrepreneurs, or anyone who’s embarking on their second or third business. First he says partnering can be great for your company. You’ll have specific strengths at your business, but there will be areas where you lack resources or need help. Holmes says partnering can be a risk, but it allows you to fill your weaknesses. And he says you have to get over the desire to do everything yourself. “I think there was a bit of ego with me,” he says. “I wanted to be the lone wolf doing it myself.”

He also advises people to “Build your Deathstar” – to find the best channel you can use to promote your business. When he started his paintball business his most effective promotion channels were brochures and coupons. With Hoosuite their Deathstar is their Twitter account – the team spends a lot of time building up their followers so they can point people to campaigns and contests, and use it to build up their other accounts.

He also recommends starting a business for the same reason he started Hootsuite – to fill a need. “Talk to your friends, talk to your family, find out where their pain is and just fill it.”

Holmes has three simple mantras that he abides by as an entrepreneur: nothing’s owed, keep motivated, and hustle – he uses GaryVee as someone who motivates him to work hard. His one final piece of advice? “Do what you love,” he says. “If you don’t love it people can tell and you’re just not going to do well.”

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You can connect with Ryan on Sprouter at http://sprouter.com/invoker.