SeekOut, a startup based in the Seattle area that offers recruiting software, has recently announced its second round of staff reductions within the last eight months, following a fundraising round of $115 million in 2022.
As initially reported by TechCrunch, SeekOut has decided to lay off 30% of its employees. The news of these layoffs was made public last week through LinkedIn updates from those affected.
Efforts to obtain a statement from the company regarding these layoffs have been made.
In a previous downsizing event in October, SeekOut let go of 7% of its workforce, which consisted of approximately 200 employees at that time.
Since its establishment in 2017, SeekOut’s software has been adopted by over 1,000 companies, aiding them in their recruitment efforts. The platform aggregates data from several sources on millions of potential candidates, incorporating platforms like GitHub and various academic publications, and includes diversity-focused filtering capabilities.
SeekOut achieved a valuation of $1.2 billion in 2022, joining the ranks of Seattle’s “unicorn” startups. At that juncture, the company disclosed that its annual recurring revenue had tripled in the preceding nine months, falling within the $25 to $50 million range.
However, the subsequent downturn in technology markets led many companies to scale back hiring and reduce their staff sizes, potentially impacting the demand for services like those offered by SeekOut.
Indeed, another job-seeking platform, also announced layoffs of 8% of its workforce last week, attributing these cuts to a global decrease in hiring trends.
This year, nearly 300 technology firms have already reduced their workforce by over 84,000 employees, as recorded by Layoffs.fyi. Last year observed layoffs of nearly a quarter-million tech employees, driven by a tightening venture capital landscape and heightened interest rates, affecting large tech companies including Amazon and Google.
SeekOut CEO Anoop Gupta, a former aide to Bill Gates who also led Microsoft’s Unified Communications Group, was recognized as CEO of the Year at the 2022 GeekWire Awards. His co-founders are CTO Aravind Bala, former Microsoft partner engineering manager with experience on products like Bing and Office, and Vikas Manocha and John Tippett, who also have Microsoft backgrounds.
Stephanie Camp, the earlier chief marketing officer at SeekOut, departed in March for a VP role at Zendesk.
The company is backed by notable investment firms such as Tiger Global, Madrona, and Mayfield.
