• Qik And Strands Each Trim 10 Percent Of Staff

    Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

    Erick Schonfeld is a technology journalist and the former Editor in Chief of TechCrunch. At TechCrunch, he oversaw the editorial content of the site, helped to program the Disrupt conferences and CrunchUps, produced TCTV shows, and wrote daily for the blog. He joined TechCrunch as Co-Editor in 2007, and helped take it from a popular blog to a thriving... → Learn More

    The cutbacks continue, even at seemingly healthy startups. Social recommendation engine Strands let exactly 10 percent, or 14 people go (7 in the U.S. and 7 in Spain), the company confirms. Strands has raised a total of $55 million, still employs 125 people, and is hiring for other positions. It also just announced a mobile version for Nokia S60 phones.

    Qik, which lets you stream live video from your cell phone, also laid off about 10 percent of its employees, which in its case amounted to five people. We got a tip that the reason for the layoffs is because the startup could not raise a $10 to $15 million round, but a spokesperson says that is not true and that we should stay tuned. We hope its not true because we love Qik. The company so far has raised only $4 million, but its investors include Marc Benioff and Marc Andreessen.

    Also this week, Akamai is laying off 110 people (7 percent), KLA-Tencor is cutting 900 (15 percent), four people lost their jobs at Engine Yard (Update: originally mis-reported as 66 percent–it’s only 4 percent), and 7 at PC Magazine, which is ceasing its print edition.

    We’ve added all of these to the Layoff Tracker, which is now up to 77,151 layoffs across 225 technology companies big and small.

    Tags: ,

    Sponsored Ads

    blog comments powered by Disqus

    Sponsored Ads

    Sponsored Ads

    Upcoming Events

    Disrupt SF 2012

    San Francisco, CA