Hootsuite, the Vancouver-based technology company, announced Thursday it had raised an additional $60 million in new funding. Its total outside financing is now $250 million, as reported by Fortune . The new financing is said to be a combination of debt and private equity.
The lead investor on the deal is Fidelity Investments, according to Fortune , a claim Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes would not confirm. Holmes did, however, express to Fortune enthusiasm for what the new investor will bring to the young technology firm.
“We are building a company that looks like a public company and one reason we’re excited about our new partner is their IPO expertise.”
In an interview Thursday with The Vancouver Sun , Holmes discussed the possibility of a Hootsuite IPO.
“We’re a private company right now. We’ve got great fundamentals. I’m excited about just continuing to build out our company and make it the best it can be. If that means heading toward a public company, we will do that. We’re not in a rush to do that; we’re doing it in a thoughtful way and doing it when it makes the most sense. We’ll wait until we have all of the best practices in place like governance and other things and continue to create value. I believe we are going to have an amazing opportunity to create value for investors if and when we do go public. But we’ll make sure we have a really exciting story to tell them and a great upside for anybody that wants to get involved.”
The company also acquired Zeetl, which Holmes says will help those in customer service and sales to better engage with customers through the integration of voice calls into the Hootsuite dashboard.
When asked by The Sun whether this “tweet to call” was an example of social media going back to old ways of communications, Holmes claimed all types of interactivity have their place.
“You have to pick the right tool for the job. There are some cases where support in social [media] is not appropriate and you need to change channels. I think this is a way of looking at support in a social era and looking at the most effective ways of doing support that are going to make the customer the most happy.”
Holmes told Mashable the voice technology will help companies control their brands by intervening quickly when there is an issue.
“It cuts out the need to DM, follow or any of the other rigamarole.”
Hootsuite was started in 2008 when staffers at Holmes’ Invoke Media needed an application to control social media information. They created the Hootsuite dashboard and offered it up to people outside Invoke by the end of that year. Fortune reports Hootsuite now has over 10 million users globally and Holmes stated that 744 of the Fortune 1000 use the product.
[Image: Hootsuite/Google]
