Hootsuite is considering basing an office in Ireland according to the company’s CEO and co-founder, Ryan Holmes… Possibly.
But don’t get too excited, in what sounded like more an off the cuff remark than an official announcement, Holmes said that Ireland’s credentials as the EMEA headquarters of some of the largest global tech companies made the country an attractive place for the four year old company to set up offices.
He was speaking alongside Moshi Monsters’ Michael Acton Smith, Flipboard’s Mike McCue, Barry O’Leary from Ireland’s IDA, and F.ounders’ own founder Paddy Cosgrave.
F.ounders is the invitation-only tech event (described as Davos for Geeks) which brings together over 250 of the world’s top technology company founders as well as a small number of individuals from other industries. In its three years the conference has received large praise in the industry, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey called it his “favourite conference.”
This year the event will welcome Paul Sciarra, Founder of Pinterest; Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker; Former Harvard President and former US Treasury Secretary and Obama advisor, Larry Summers; Men In Black Director Barry Sonnenfeld; Yandex’s Arkady Volozh; as well as NATO’s former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Wesley Clark.
If Hootsuite was to set up in Ireland it would be joining Twitter, Facebook, Google, Zynga, Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo! and would also confirm Paddy Cosgrave’s belief that,
“F.ounders sends a strong message to an international community that Ireland is a hub for the tech-industry and a great place for people to do business. The calibre of entrepreneurs that are coming to F.ounders proves that international start-up experts are excited about coming to Dublin to do business, to meet with local entrepreneurs and contribute to the economy generally.”
On the agenda for discussion at the conference this year is innovation, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, economic growth and investment.
When asked if he would be interested in setting up an office in Dublin Moshi Monsters’ founder didn’t follow Holme’s lead. He said that an office in Dublin wouldn’t make much sense considering their location in London.