But according to a new report in Bloomberg, Hootsuite isn’t actually worth $US1 billion — or at least it wasn’t the last time it raised money back in 2014. But Ryan Holmes, the CEO (again, see the photo above), didn’t appreciate that a Bloomberg reporter would question his company’s valuation. He decided to respond to the author on Twitter.
This Twitter exchange was caught by BuzzFeed:
it’s never a good time for tech ceo’s to be sending tweets like this, but this is a particularly bad week https://t.co/ik5OgCVJRo pic.twitter.com/yU8Yg4H39t
— Caroline O’Donovan (@ceodonovan) February 28, 2017
That’s right, the CEO of a company that claims to be worth $US1 billion basically told a beat reporter to “eat a dick.” And we thought Canadians were supposed to be nice. You’ll also note that Holmes doesn’t contradict the Bloomberg reporter’s story; it seems very likely that when Hootsuite was paraded around as a unicorn, it was actually valued at far less than that special figure.
After BuzzFeed contacted Holmes and his PR team, the exchange mysteriously disappeared and Hootsuite pointed the reporter to this followup tweet:
@GerritD apologies. Wrong number.
— Ryan Holmes (@invoker) February 28, 2017
If Hootsuite PR wants us to actually believe that Holmes innocently tweeted a phone number that just happened to spell out “EAT DICK,” the company might have bigger problems. Ryan, buddy. Come on. You of all people should know that the internet never forgets. Never tweet.
[BuzzFeed]