Startups Conserving Cash, Pink Slips Issued
The pink slips are starting to pile up. Beyond the 1,500 job cuts announced Tuesday by Yahoo, start ups with limited revenue have begun cutting back to stretch their existing capital reserves too.
Search start up Mahalo, which has raised more than $20m from firms including Sequoia Capital and News Corp, has laid off near ten percent of its staff.
Fellow Sequoia start up, music social network iMeem, which has raised more than $50m, is cutting as much as twenty five percent of staff. Reportedly, the company has also hired Montgomery and Co. to advise on the possibility of sale (via Paidcontent.org).
A few weeks ago, Sequoia Capital called a meeting for the CEO’s of its portfolio companies. The message of that meeting, as revealed in a slide show leaked online, was to emphasize fiscal responsibility; to batten down the hatches and proactively hunker down for a time of less available investment capital. It began with the not so subtle opening “RIP Good Times.”
Whether the layoffs at Mahalo and iMeem are a direct result of that meeting isn’t clear but Sequoia’s message no doubt was.
Other startups including Pandora Media, Jaxtr, Searchme (also a Sequoia company), Veoh and Zillow have also announced job cuts.
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