Loom, an enterprise collaboration video messaging service, has laid off 34 staff, or 14% of its whole employees, sources say. Workers throughout product and folks operations have been impacted.
The venture-backed firm confirmed the layoff and variety of folks impacted, and supplied the next assertion from founder and CEO Joe Thomas:
We’ve needed to make the extraordinarily tough choice to maneuver ahead with a discount in power throughout our crew. Every individual impacted was not solely a gifted worker, but additionally a valued particular person and teammate. We’re dedicated to supporting these staff by means of this transition each of their supplied severance in addition to profession assist. We’re assured within the path forward for Loom. This choice was in the end made to make sure we’re in a position to transfer ahead sustainably, particularly in gentle of elevated financial uncertainty, and proceed to ship on our imaginative and prescient for years to return.
The corporate was based by Thomas and Vinay Hiremath in 2015, hitting 1.8 million customers throughout 50,000 companies simply three years later. Per its web site, Loom at present boasts 14 million customers throughout 200,000 corporations — together with Netflix, Atlassian, HubSpot and Juniper Networks.
Just like Hopin, Loom benefited from a surge of individuals working from residence in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; the product was positioned to assist distant staff discover higher methods to attach with colleagues in a virtual-first world, and assist hybrid workforces discover a light-weight technique to skip some conferences. Then, once more just like Hopin, the startup carried out layoffs to assist it construct in what it describes as a extra sustainable means transferring ahead.
That development has attracted $203 million in recognized enterprise capital funding, with the corporate most lately asserting a Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz. The identical spherical valued the corporate at $1.53 billion, making it hit unicorn standing for the primary time. Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Coatue and Normal Catalyst are additionally traders within the firm.
Over a 12 months has passed by for the reason that startup landed the brand new financing and valuation, and per at the moment’s information, Loom joins the membership of unicorns which have needed to cut back workforces after touchdown the coveted milestone.
Lower than a 12 months in the past, visible creator instruments startup Picsart raised $130 million from SoftBank, touchdown a valuation of over $1 billion. The corporate laid off 8% of its employees final month, affecting 90 folks. Cameo, which additionally grew to become a unicorn final 12 months, additionally lately carried out layoffs that impacted 87 folks.
