Flexport Lays Off 20% of Staff Following CEO Purge

Flexport is laying off 20% of its staff just weeks after its CEO left and the company purged his hires....
Flexport Lays Off 20% of Staff Following CEO Purge
Written by Staff
  • Flexport is laying off 20% of its staff just weeks after its CEO left and the company purged his hires.

    Flexport is a supply chain startup that had hired 23-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark as its CEO. After barely more than a year on the job, Clark resigned, citing differences with founder Ryan Petersen. Petersen took over as CEO following Clark’s departure, and immediately began firing executives Clark had hired and rescinding existing job offers.

    The company is now laying off some 20% of its staff. Petersen sent an open email to employees Thursday to announce the layoffs were coming, although staff would have to wait till Friday to know exactly who was impacted.

    “Today I have a difficult decision to share: We will reduce the size of our global team by approximately 20% with the process starting tomorrow, Friday, October 13,” Petersen wrote.

    Petersen emphasized the company’s strong position moving forward, saying the move would help it return to profitability.

    “With more than $1 billion in net cash, following this change, Flexport is now in a great position to take advantage of the opportunities in front of us to return to profitability as soon as the end of next year,” Petersen added. “I’ve spoken to more than 100 of our top customers in my first month back as CEO, and hope to talk to hundreds more in the months to come. It’s clear that our customers want us to be a profitable company they can rely on to solve important problems in their supply chain.

    “With today’s change, we’ll be able to get back to profitability without raising prices or placing our fortress balance sheet at risk. Instead, our path to profitability runs through delivering outstanding global logistics and technology solutions that solve customer problems. We will continue to relentlessly focus on the quality of our services as measured by on-time execution, quote to invoice accuracy, shipment milestone accuracy, direct customer feedback and net promoter scores.”

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