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.
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wow Akamai and KLA Tencor lay off over 1000 people but Qik’s layoff of 5 people gets the headline. that’s great.
Peter
http://www.thewebwar.com
Akamai and KLA had already been reported.
Also, you have to look at the percentages to compare the impact, which is about the same.
True but only if you’re looking at the impact on that particular company and not if you’re looking at the impact on the tech market or the economy as a whole. A small startup laying off 10% and a major tech company laying off 10%, although the percentages are the same, are much different.
It’s not all gloom and doom! They are companies that are still hiring!
Oh btw
Check out http://www.jobstaxi.com
New Jobs. AiLive. Ning.com. Blizzard. AdMob.
The Engine Yard layoffs were in the Rubinius team, not the whole company.
Best of luck to those being let go!
Did Qik fire that 15 year old kid that they clandestinely use as a means of getting coverage and favors?
Qik had 50 people? Are you kidding me? How does a company with no revenue or in the opinion of some, no revenue model have that many people? is that a burn of $500,000 a month or more. I’m sure that will go over well with any prospective investors. We all know that Qik clearly has a good marketing / PR team so hopefully that group of 10 people didn’t get whacked or we may no longer see weekly announcements here on Techcrunch.
Qik has developers offshore so your burn calculation would have to be adjusted to accommodate for that factor. I’ve been down to their offices in Redwood City and there is a pretty small group of people located there.
Blizzard are actively hiring. Check out http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/ .
Just a note, I mean yes, the world is going through a huge recession, and yes, there are a lot of layoffs that are happening to many companies. It’ll be great if TechCrunch shed some light to some tech companies that are still hiring. Lay off the gloom a little. Just my 2 cents!
Oh btw
Check out http://www.jobstaxi.com
New Jobs. AiLive. Ning.com. Blizzard. AdMob.
Qik is having trouble raising money (my friend works there) because of fears the carriers are not embracing them.
No Revenue, no business.
If they could ever get Qik in the iPhone App Store, I think it would be one of the biggest stories of 2009. I’m not sure all the press would be good, considering the privacy concerns and bad decisions ubiquitous live streaming capabilities could bring. Nevertheless, I hope the company does well. I think they have built a great service.
Shouldn’t Techcrunch do a little bit more of research before publishing these “sad” news?
As published a month ago: “Some Of These Layoffs Aren’t Really Layoffs”
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008.....y-layoffs/
Qik is a great example of a shiny toy that tech geeks like to play with, but was able to be funded in the what will become to be seen as the most foolhardy of web 2.0 bubbles. There is no way to reasonably make money with this.
We’ll all come to see that it’s going to get back to basics… once the huge pool of money that came from around the world to Silicon Valley VCs dries up, then it’s back to real products with real business plans to sell something tangible for real money.
Until Qik is dead, we have not seen the bottom because we’ll not have seen the end of heads in sand or heads up asses.
I was just looking at the layoff tracker and I see Sun being listed twice for layoff of 5000, one for USA and the other for world. However, I didn’t see any mentioning of the difference in the articles it points to.
Is this accurate?
Strands will never make it with the CEO they have in place. They will fritter away all the investment money with nothing to show.