Wayflyer founders Aidan Corbett and Jack Pierse. Image: Wayflyer
The CEO of Wayflyer, which became Ireland’s sixth tech unicorn earlier this year, said the company ‘tried to do too much, too soon’.
Irish start-up Wayflyer has made the decision to lay off 200 of its staff worldwide, including 70 in Ireland.
The cuts will bring the company’s total global headcount back to where it was 10 months ago, which is around 300 people.
Wayflyer, which provides a revenue-based financing and growth platform for e-commerce companies, currently employs around 220 people in Ireland.
As part of the restructuring, the company is planning to relocate 10 roles from the US to its Dublin headquarters, so the net reduction in Ireland will be around 60.
“We tried to scale our organisation very aggressively over the past 15 months and, in hindsight, we tried to do too much, too soon,” said Aidan Corbett, co-founder and CEO of Wayflyer.
“We are sorry to be losing many great colleagues who have helped Wayflyer become a market leader in revenue-based finance. However, we are now facing a challenging macroeconomic environment and this change will put the company in a stronger financial position to execute its plans for 2023 and beyond.”
Corbett added that the company has notified appropriate Government officials and will enter into a consultation period for roles at risk of redundancy.
“We are providing transition and benefits packages with the goal of making the transition as supportive as possible for impacted teammates,” he said.
Wayflyer has experienced strong growth since it was founded in 2019 by Corbett and Jack Pierse.
At the start of this year, it raised $150m in Series B funding. This valued the start-up at $1.6bn and made it one of a handful of Irish tech unicorns with a valuation of greater than $1bn.
It went on to secure $300m in debt financing from JP Morgan and a $253m funding line from Credit Suisse to help with growth plans.
The unwelcome news about layoffs comes following a major increase in headcount at Wayflyer.
But it is not the only tech player making cuts in the current market. In the past few weeks, significant layoffs have been announced at Twitter, Meta, Stripe, Intercom, Zendesk and more.
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