Decade-old question and answer based startup Quora, has recently announced that it will be laying off staff from its Bay Area and New York offices.
The announcement was made by the company CEO on the website.
In the statement, Chief Executive Officer Adam D’Angelo wrote that the layoffs and “organizational changes” were being pursued in order to focus on “scaling the organization in a financially responsible way.”
Although D’Angelo did not disclose the exact scale of the layoffs, reports suggested that Quora was locking down $60 million at a $2 billion valuation, noting at the time that the startup had around 200 employees.
According to Crunchbase, so far the company has publicly disclosed $225mn. Its investors include Benchmark, Peter Thiel and Y Combinator.
D’Angelo further wrote, “[W]e need to reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level from which we can focus on pursuing the mission and growing the business over the long term. We do not want to be dependent on outside capital, so self-reliance and careful management of our resources is crucial to our future.”
Layoffs have become a hot new topic in the past few weeks. Many Softbank-backed startups have laid off more than 5,000 employees combined. Indian hospitality aggregator OYO had recently announced that it would layoff about 20% of its UK workforce. These layoffs at multiple startups can be attributed to many factors, including a global economic slowdown. However, there have been reports suggesting that these layoffs are amounting to investors’ pressure to focus more heavily on cash flow.
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