BC Business
Here's what he's bringing to the table.
Today’s news that Hootsuite founder Ryan Holmes will be replaced as CEO of one of Vancouver’s most notable tech success stories shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.
Holmes, who will stay on as chair of the company’s board of directors, announced last November that he planned to step down.
His replacement is Tom Keiser, former COO of San Franciscobased customer service software company Zendesk. Here’s what we could dig up on the new guy.
The COVID-19 pandemic means that Keiser, who starts his new job July 6, can‘t visit Hootsuite’s Vancouver HQ right now. It’s unclear if Keiser will relocate to Canada when (if) it’s safe to do so. But given his roots in the Bay Area, that seems unlikely.
Going public has been a source of contention around Hootsuite for what seems like a gazillion years. But in an interview with Fortune, Keiser argued that he’s not hell-bent on achieving that goal.
“It’ll become clear if there is a trajectory to an IPO or if there is another path,” he said. “But we’re in no rush.”
Zendesk went public about two years before Keiser’s arrival.
In his four years at Zendesk, Keiser helped drive the company’s annual revenue from US$200 million to nearly US$1 billion. The tech outfit also nearly quadrupled in size to about 4,000 employees during his tenure.
Before Zendesk, Keiser was a top executive at two large U.S. clothing companies. He served as CIO of Ohio-headquartered fashion giant L Brands—the parent of retailers like Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works—in the mid-2000s.
Keiser went on to take the CIO role at Gap in San Francisco, spending five years with the company.
Keiser’s Twitter bio indicates that he enjoys fishing. Maybe he will try to spend some time in B.C. after all.