The fintech startup incubator and holding company TIFIN laid off 21 U.S. employees and asked its top nine executives to take a 20% pay cut, according to an anonymously leaked email sent to WealthManagement.com.
Those cuts in personnel represent 10% of the firm’s staff of more than 200 employees, which are a mix of remote workers and those located in its Boulder, Colo., headquarters or its New York City office.
A company official confirmed the layoffs and said the firm was preparing for potentially tough times ahead but that it had continued to hire and had not seen any loss of revenue. The official added that the email, which was attached to a fake press release announcing the news, had come from a disgruntled employee.
The official said statements made in the press release sent to WealthManagement.com by "newAnonymousTIPfor YOU" about the loss of several enterprise deals and RIA clients were untrue.
In the attached email, dated Thursday, June 9, TIFIN CEO Vinay Nair detailed the company’s rationale for the measures in what he referred to as an “update” to a recent employee town hall.
Specifically, Nair stated the firm had “completed the process to rightsize [sic] our cost structure for the current environment.”
The firm had started with an annualized cost structure of approximately $74 million and had reduced that to approximately $64 million through cutting probationary staff, pay cuts among the top senior executives and other unspecified measures.
Also in the email, Nair wrote that the firm had annualized revenues of $30 million, a burn rate of $34 million and over $50 million in cash.
All of this comes on the heels of TIFIN announcing the close of its $109 million Series D funding round in mid-May and new $842 million valuation.
These layoffs come amidst a tough environment at tech startups across the country in general. TechCrunch, a publication that reports on the technology startup industry, noted in a piece Friday that total layoffs, according to Layoffs.fyi a crowdsourced database, had reached 16,000 in May.
According to market research publication CrunchBase News, 13 fintechs have laid off employees so far this year, including such well-known names as Gemini, PayPal, Robinhood and Vise, among others.