Two financial tech startups, Cadre ($CADRE) and Flywire ($PRIVATE:FLYWIRE), hit the news last week about incoming layoffs. First, we learned Flywire was planning to lay off 12% of its staff, directly flying in the face of its goal to hire 100 new employees by the end of the year.
Then, co-founder and CEO of Cadre Ryan Williams wrote a post on his website: “The professional respect and personal friendships I have with our team make it gut-wrenchingly difficult to share the news that we are reducing our headcount by 25 percent.”
It seems running a fintech startup during a global pandemic is quite hard, considering the entire US economy is collapsing in on itself, rendering the need for financial software unnecessary since every worker is in danger of being laid off or furloughed. Cadre gets people in touch with real estate properties and Flywire facilitates international currencies and payments. This might not be the best time to get into either real estate or international currency exchange rates.
Cadre's LinkedIn staff count has remained at 174 through the first few weeks of May. But soon, we'll see 30 or so employees unlist Cadre as their employer, in line with the 25% fall Ryan Williams stated.
Since December, Cadre has shed job postings by 84%. In an alternate timeline, that could be seen as a great sign, since Cadre was growing, meaning those job openings were being filled by talented people. But in our Coronavirus-plagued reality, it's rare to see a company continue hiring while budgets are being slashed and people are working from home.
Flywire is in a similar boat, having grown quite a bit over the years, especially in February when they acquired healthcare technology platform Simplee and all of its staff. Goldman Sachs led the Series E round of funding for Flywire, which hit $120 million.
But as the effects of Coronavirus began to ramp up for businesses everywhere, the employee headcount stalled completely until the news of layoffs came this month and people unlisted Flywire from their LinkedIn profiles. It's going to be extremely rough for startups everywhere, and as a startup ourselves, we genuinely hate to report on stories like this.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales, and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue, and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.