Hootsuite may open office in Dublin

SOCIAL MEDIA management firm Hootsuite is strongly considering opening an Irish office, chief executive Ryan Holmes said.

The head of the Canadian firm, which already has offices in London, said the State’s reputation for a talented workforce, in addition to the tax incentives offered by the Government, was a major attraction and there was a “very good chance” it would locate here.

Speaking at the Web Summit, he said: “There have been a lot of big players that have come here and brought on big teams that have skilled up and got the domain expertise to do what they do. I think that talent pool is ultimately going to be available to us in some way or other.

“Second key thing is some of the tax incentives. I don’t know what some of those would look like for us; we’d have to investigate.”

Hootsuite has already made the leap to Europe. “Our goal in London is to create better interactions with agency partners, and there are great agencies there,” Holmes said. “I think we’re also going to look at building out a sales centre as well; and whether we do that in London or Ireland.”

Flipboard’s Mike McCue said his company was also looking at the possibility of locating in Ireland in the future.

Elsewhere, PCH International’s Liam Casey told delegates at the closing day of the Dublin Web Summit that companies have to think big and look outside of the small Irish market. “Geography is history,” he said.

It’s a strategy that PCH has adopted successfully. The company, although headquartered in Cork, has significant operations in China. Casey outlined the challenges of doing business in a country such as China, including navigating the red tape that it brings. But start-ups and entrepreneurs have a common trait, he said, in that they never give up.

Casey announced a new partner for PCH’s accelerator programme scheme: Intuitive Automata makes Autom, a lifestyle and healthcare robot. Under the deal, the company will use PCH’s services to make and ship the robot, which converses with users and learns more over time.

Other big announcements at the two-day Web Summit included the launch of accommodation finder Hotel Tonight in Ireland. The last-minute accommodation app is designed for use only on mobiles, and offers hotel deals for the same day.

Bringing the day to a close was the announcement that SmartThings had won the Electric Ireland Spark of Genius start-up competition. The former Kickstarter project also opened pre-orders for its products, which will allow services such as home security to be controlled via a smartphone.