Paddle Fires 8% Of Its Employees

Paddle, a UK unicorn providing payment infrastructure for SaaS companies, has let go of 8% of its employees, saying it needs to cut costs because inflation and interest rates are rising.

The company, which raised $200 million in Series D equity and debt financing last year and was valued at $1.4 billion, was a big winner during the Covid era because it got a lot of software companies that wanted to sell internationally to sign up with it.

During this time, the number of transactions on Paddle grew by more than 3.5 times, says CEO Christian Owens in a memo to staff posted on LinkedIn. However, the company is now having to change.

Owens writes: “We are well positioned to weather the impending storm, with a strong balance sheet and a product that solves a critical need for software companies.”

Still, the company is firing 8% of its more than 350 employees because it needs to save money, partly because it “made two key mistakes.”

“The first was assuming that the growth our customers saw during Covid was a signal of fundamental change and the growth would be sustained largely in perpetuity. The second was allowing our operating costs to increase at a faster rate than we were growing our revenue,” he writes.