Hootsuite’s Expansion Into Atlanta Is A Homecoming Of Sorts For Company’s CEO

Canadian social media management platform Hootsuite is moving into Midtown Atlanta’s Tech Square.

Opening the office in Atlanta is key for the company looking to hire tech talent and scale in the US. But CEO Tom Keiser has even stronger connections to the city.

Growing up in the southeast in Birmingham and Pensacola, Atlanta was the big city where I always aspired to be. I moved to Atlanta for the first time in 1992 to work for Ernst & Young and fell in love with the city. I’ve actually moved from and to Atlanta three times now! Although my home base for the last decade has been San Francisco, Atlanta is home and where I spend a lot of time,” Keiser told Hypepotamus. “One of my sisters and her family live in Atlanta, my daughter is a graduate of GAC (and lives in ATL when she’s not at school at Ole Miss), and my step-daughter is a senior at Emory. I’m also a proud partial owner of multiple small businesses in Atlanta and I have a home in Virginia Highlands. It all adds up to me getting to Atlanta often.” 

Atlanta will be Hootsuite’s 15th global office, or “nest,” as the company calls them. The office will be located in WeWork Coda to offer flexibility for a growing, distributed workforce that may not want to commute every day of the week.

The office will officially open on February 1, 2022. 

The move is also a testament to the Atlanta tech scene’s international connections. “With more than 325 Canadian companies operating in the state, Canada is an important partner for investment in Georgia. And it’s exciting to hear that Atlanta—named the number one tech hub in the U.S. two years in a row—was selected as a strategic growth market for Hootsuite’s expansion within the U.S.,” said Pat Wilson, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Economic Development, in a statement. “It’s a pleasure to welcome Hootsuite to Georgia, and I am confident the state’s many assets will help the company find continued success here.”

Hootsuite is a familiar name to anybody managing multiple social media accounts and pages. The platform serves over 200,000 customers in 200 countries. Hootsuite helps “organizations navigate the complexity of social to authentically communicate with who they want to connect with—and to accomplish what they want to—on social.”

Hootsuite plans on hiring over 60 people in Atlanta over the course of 2022.

The move of a larger private company in the social media SaaS space could also have other positive impacts on the Atlanta startup ecosystem. Hootsuite alumni have gone on to found 41 startups over the years, according to data collected by Crunchbase

While headquartered in Vancouver, Canada, Keiser said that Hootsuite has built a culture of “belonging” across a global workforce.

Employees around Coda and Tech Square will start seeing Hootsuite employees in the area over the next few months. But you may just catch Keiser at Truist Park or Mercedes Benz Stadium this spring. “I’m also a diehard sports fan with a huge affinity for Atlanta teams, particularly the Braves, Hawks, and Atlanta United,” he told Hypepotamus. “I was lucky enough to make it back for game four of the World Series and celebrated the world series championship in Vancouver with my Hootsuite colleagues.”