Fair.com, a startup offering flexible car leases, will be laying off about 40% of its staff. As a part of this downsizing exercise they are also letting go their CFO, Tyler Painter, the brother of the CEO and co-founder Scott Painter. The lay-offs are being considered as a key step for the business to get on the path to profitability.
The company has been valued at $1.2 billion after the last round of funding led by SoftBank last year. The company has raised close to $ 700 million from investors and about $ 1.5 billion in debt financing.
The move is seen as coming from the need to become profitable and financially sustainable. Recently some of the top bets by SoftBank ( Uber, WeWork) have been under the cloud on issues related to profitability. WeWork has seen a failed IPO, severe loss in valuation as well and will be undertaking heavy downsizing and structural changes.
Scott Painter, CEO – said in an interview earlier today that the reason for the move was to proactively come out to make changes to help the company become more profitable at a time when the “capital markets” are focused on profitability — perhaps more than the over-focus on growth that has fueled a lot of the biggest investments in recent years.
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[…] the Soft Bank funded company. A week prior to his exit Fair.com had announced cost cutting measures leading to layoff of about 40 % of the company’s workforce, that also included the company’s CFO Tyler Painer, brother of Scott Painter. The company has […]