Ryan Holmes

Founder & CEO, Hootsuite · 1 appearance on the record.

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Ryan Holmes founded the social media management platform Hootsuite in 2008 and co-founded the seed-stage fund LOI Venture alongside the youth charity League of Innovators. He is also the author of social media strategy books, including The $4 Billion Tweet and Saving Social.

17statements → 11claims → 2claims resolved → 3.94/5average certainty → 1.18/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 28said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 9 not checkable as stated how the 11 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

11 assertions · 3 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 11 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 9 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ryan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Holmes: Hootsuite has raised north of $200 million to date

“Yeah, to date I, you know, it's north of 200.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 11:07 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

How they sound: not measured why? →

We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ryan Holmes on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.

What they said17 What others said28 Episodes1

Everything Ryan Holmes said on Top Founders that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Holmes: Founders sleeping 2 to 3 hours is an unhealthy myth

“I don't believe in the myth of CEOs that don't sleep. I think CEOs that don't sleep die and die early, and so I believe in the power of sleep. I think that sleep is when you heal. I think sleep is when your mind recharges, and I believe in getting, you know, a…”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 24:44 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Insight

Holmes: Aspiring founders should do services work to find billion-dollar problems

“Agency is an incredible place. I, when I talk to young entrepreneurs that are, you know, they feel like I want to do a business. I don't know what it is. You know, I often will tell them, you know, go do services work for a while. Somebody is going to bring yo…”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 10:05 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes: Hootsuite generates 30,000 self-serve signups per day

“All of our leads are generated through our freemium signups, our pro signups, our self-serve signups. They come in through those channels. So we get, you know, 30,000 signups a day.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 13:42 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes: Hootsuite has 16 million seats

“That's sixteen million seats.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 18:23 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes confirms Hootsuite has passed $100M in ARR

“Yeah, we are.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 20:55 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Hootsuite is cashflow positive with no pressure to IPO

“We've built a company that's cashflow positive, and therefore there aren't any pressing forces for us.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 21:27 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes: Hootsuite customer contracts range from tens of dollars to millions

“We have teams of tens of thousands using our product on a daily basis to, Help connect with their customers, and so the model matures, so we go from tens of dollars to millions of dollars in terms of the spectrum of our customers.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 4:27 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Disclosure

Hootsuite self-serve LTV is hundreds; enterprise averages tens of thousands in ARR

“So I'm going to have to, you know, it's in the hundreds of dollars for LTV. And, you know, on the enterprise side you know, it's tens of thousands of dollars in terms of annual recurring and you know, just in, in kind of general numbers.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 5:38 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Supported

Holmes: Hootsuite has raised north of $200 million to date

“Yeah, to date I, you know, it's north of 200.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 11:07 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Disclosure

Holmes: Much of Hootsuite's funding went toward secondary liquidity for early investors

“A big chunk of the fundraising that we did do was for secondary liquidity for early investors.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 11:44 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes: Hootsuite has over 200 app directory partners and millions of installs

“We've got over 200, ah, different partners built out in our app directory so far. We have millions of installations of apps in our app directory.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 17:20 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Insight

Holmes: App installations and API integrations directly increase customer retention

“Every time we see an app install or an API integration, we know that that customer is more likely to stay with us because we're more connected, more meshed into their overall marketing and customer support stack.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 17:29 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Holmes: Hootsuite has customer deployments of up to 10,000 seats

“I mean, the law of large numbers, some of the big enterprises obviously take out, we have 10,000 seat deployments.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 18:32 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Hootsuite reaches nearly 1,000 total employees

“We are at almost exactly 1000 employees.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 21:39 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Disclosure

Holmes: Every Hootsuite team member is a company shareholder

“Everybody's a shareholder in the business, so you know, any offer we have to consider”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 23:16 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Hootsuite launched its first MVP in two months

“And we put out a prototype, really rapid, you know MVP, got it out in probably two months, and had immediate traction on it.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 7:16 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

Assertion Supported

Hootsuite charged nothing for over a year after 2008 launch

“Yeah, we didn't charge for over a year. So from 2008 fall to, you know, a year into it, we did not charge.”

Ryan Holmes Dec 6, 2017 ▶ 7:56 865 SaaS: Hootsuite On It's 16m Paying Customers, $100m+ ARR and Social Media Marketing

The other half of the tape: Ryan Holmes's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 23 times in 13 episodes on Top Founders. 5 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 20 Cameron Herold 3

Statements about Ryan Holmes, by other people (5)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Latka: The most successful SaaS companies originated out of agencies

“And the most successful SAS companies I've ever seen all came out of agencies. Qualtrics with Ryan Smith Ryan Holmes at Hootsuite. I mean, the most successful SaaS company started as agencies.”

Nathan Latka Aug 1, 2018 ▶ 19:46 1103 When should he quit his agency and go all in on software?

Prediction Open · timeframe Apr 2023

Latka predicts Hootsuite will sell for $750 million soon

“Probably going to sell Hootsuite for seven hundred fifty million bucks here soon.”

Nathan Latka Apr 25, 2020 ▶ 13:38 1736 He'll Never Win Unless He Shuts Down Agency

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Herold: Pushed Hootsuite aggressively back toward profitability during 2015 leadership meeting

“I led the leadership team meeting for Hootsuite two and a half years ago for Ryan Holmes and his team, and I really, really aggressively pushed them back towards profitability, so they did.”

Cameron Herold Aug 28, 2017 ▶ 11:57 765: How This Coach Can Charge $80k+ per Year for One Gig

Assertion Contradicted

Ryan Holmes shut down a $5M agency to launch Hootsuite

“He shut down his agency when he's doing five million bucks in revenue to go and force himself to be uncomfortable and go all in on Hootsuite.”

Nathan Latka Apr 25, 2020 ▶ 13:48 1736 He'll Never Win Unless He Shuts Down Agency

Assertion Partly supported

Hootsuite reached $200M revenue after shutting down its $4M agency

“He grew it to about three, four million bucks and just Professional service revenue. Everyone kept asking for them to manage manually their posting. So he said, I'm gonna build software for this. And then he shut down that agency. He totally washed away four o…”

Nathan Latka May 6, 2019 ▶ 8:07 1381 When should you shut your agency down to go all in on SaaS?