In a post on his blog, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis has announced that his human powered search engine has laid off 10% of its staff. Along with the layoffs Calacanis writes that the company will be doing some “smart things” to help cut costs, including outsourcing much of its editorial department to freelancers instead of in-house staff. Calacanis pegs the number of full-time staff cut at around 5 or 6, but that number could change depending on how well the freelancers work out for the company.
From his blog post:
While I anticipated and prepared for the ‘internet winter’ we’re now facing (you’ve read my posts and e-mails about the startup depression I’m sure), I failed to realize how bad the situation would get. It’s much worse than I thought it would be, and ignoring market conditions today would only mean deeper cuts down the road.
It’s my responsibility to make this hard decision and I don’t take it lightly. To the people impacted I’m very sorry that I wasn’t able to anticipate this better. It’s my fault and I’m sorry that you’ve got to bear the burden of my inability to better prepare.
The news isn’t surprising given the waves of layoffs we’ve been seeing in the current economic climate, especially given the fact that Mahalo investor Sequoia Capital recently presented the CEOs of its portfolio companies with a PowerPoint Presentation of Doom emphasizing the need to cut costs.
Aside from the grim tone about the economy, Calacanis does show optimism for the future of Mahalo. The cost-saving measures will give the company an extra year of “runway”, allowing Mahalo to stay afloat until 2012 without making any revenue, he says (which should hopefully be more than enough time to weather the storm).
Disclosure: Jason Calacanis and Mahalo are partners of ours in putting on the TechCrunch50 conference.
i guess the majority of folks including me expected this.
you mean, go on holiday, get back fire people?
What’s Mahalo? And that dude is a CEO? I thought he was a side show at Burning Man.
By 2012 Santa Monica will be underwater due to global wamring.
But if nobody’s there by 2012 there’s nothing to worry about
I guess Maholo = Goodbye today!
Compared to some of the companies that are laying off 25+%, 10% actually isn’t that bad. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely not good, but hey, it could be worse.
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
Wait a minute, you said Calicanus wrote this as a post on his blog??? Isn’t this the same arrogant ass that claimed he would no longer be blogging just a few months ago? Good things happen to good people, bad things …well you know.
I bet this will be posted on Mahalo tomorrow – yesterday’s news today
i think “internet winter” is an excuse for companies that were failing anyway to go ahead and lay people off. Lack of a business model and overfunding was the real source of their troubles.
Maholo = epic fail.
guide that got canned told me it was more like 30-50% clearance inside the santa monica office, including developers…. ouch. 10% yeah right.
um … ya … 50% would be more accurate
Mahalo = cheap SEO play disguised with clever marketing
Marketing is def not clever.
Hold on… that’s a major trade secret that you’re revealing. SEO trickery is where the big money is at.
Just can’t find any interest in Mahalo
I ate at Roy’s yesterday and the HOT host lady said “Mahalo” to me. I said “isn’t that a search engine”? She had a big confused look on her face. Moral of the story: No one gives a rat’s ass about Mahalo.
Ditto!
You forgot to tell us: which Roy’s restaurant has the HOT hostess
You do know “Mahalo” means something in a particular language, don’t you?
Seriously, who uses Mahalo? Suprised they get more then a handful of page views
Good luck in finding good and reliable freelancers! (writers)
Hey Mike if you read this, I still don’t see ChaCha laying off anyone. Think they would have by now since you claim they are headed to the deadpool, no?
Actually, that’s a really good point. However, now that Alan burst the karma bubble I imagine we’ll be hearing about ChaCha layoffs in the next couple days.
Cha Cha probably won’t have to lay off anyone since they cut the pay rate in half for part time workers, which equates to the majority of guides on their site. You thought 20 cents per text query was bad? How about 10 cents? Ha! Perhaps that is why they are having trouble keeping up with search demand as evidenced by all the emails they keep sending out b/c not enough guides are logged in and working. Here’s a clue: pay more!!!
Mahalo shows you the best websites and not the ones who game the system.
So, how does that make it a SEO play? It’s exactly the opposite!
Someone wrote Mahalo’s yesterday’s news today.
I don’t think that’s a fair thing to say, the site updates faster than Yahoo.
Its news team is a lot better!
I’m not saying it’s perfect, but come on now, 5 to 6 people got fired and all you guys like to do is talk bad about it so more people will need to be fired.
Constructive criticism is the way to go.
best, according to someone else.
This is:
a) not news worthy
b) making me smile
Now Mahalo can fade into irrelevance once and for all.
There is more to this
Look what someone commented here;
http://www.fuck...ed-10-of-staff/
If you have a look at any of the traffic indicators, Mahalo’s traffic has either plateaued or is in decline.
Lets be honest. It’s because Mahalo is a horrible start up. Who didn’t see this coming?
Is anyone surprised? Another CEO that prefers to do lots of stuff beside running their company. Like Seesmic’s CEO… Darting around the world. Spending time playing with mobile phones, driving around in $100K electric cars. It’s not that these guys shouldn’t be enjoying themselves – but when they spend so much time doing stuff other than running their companies it shouldn’t surprise anyone when their ventures fail or, at least, contract. At least, if they’re going to fool around they should do it away from the glare of the tech echo chamber and all the pseudo journalists and bloggers that write about them. Running a company, either as a CEO or President is hard work. Way harder then these guys think.
It won’t make any difference if one were to work 24/7 on the business if the idea is flawed in the first place.
Mahalo is changing their name to Manila.
Just sell your Jura $3000 coffee machine…genius!!!
http://calacani...life-at-mahalo/
$21M and he lays people off in this financial climate , what a fucktard.
No wonder he wants to go with the option of cheaper freelancers to replace them.
I don’t understand, they don’t have revenue, so why do layoffs? This smells like they’re using the economic downturn as an excuse. “stay afloat until 2012 without making any revenue.” This means the economic downturn doesn’t affect them one bit. People lay off when they forecast that revenue won’t cover costs.
Then the real question becomes… “Do we sell it on Craigslist or Ebay?”
Don’t really understand all of this VC advice and layoffs. Many of these companies rely on Internet advertising for revenue. Internet ad revenue is expected to grow next year, despite financial problems. Might not grow as fast, but still won’t be down.
Seems to me the only thing that is going away is funding. So companies that rely on funding to stay alive will be the ones taking the hit.
I thought that the retard stopped blogging… I suppose this is one way for finding relevanancy…
why do people hate Jason and Mahalo so much?
because he’s a turd, and mahalo is a stupdi concept that only took off a bit because of who he is.
Am I the only one who understands the meaning if this post?
Good luck, IT friends.
wondering if they even survive the long run…