Productboard, a software startup backed by some of the world's biggest tech investors, has instigated its third round of layoffs less than two years after it became a unicorn, Business Insider understands.
The San Francisco-based company, touted as a Salesforce for product managers, was last valued at $1.7 billion in a round led by US hedge fund Tiger Global and Californian investor Dragoneer in February 2022.
Since then, the company has conducted a series of layoffs, beginning in November of that year when it cut a fifth of its workforce, two former employees said. Another 10% of its headcount was cut in August last year, they said.
Now, Productboard has begun another round of layoffs, the scale of which is unknown as yet, the former staffers said. Others have also spoken about the cuts on LinkedIn.
The company did not respond to BI's request for comment.
Productboard was founded in 2014 by two engineers from the Czech Republic, Daniel Hejl and Hubert Palan. The company boasts a list of 5,400 customers, including Microsoft, Zoom, UiPath, and Volkswagen.
It became a rising star in Silicon Valley, raising $261.7 million from the region's highest-profile investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Index Ventures.
Productboard is far from the only pandemic-era star to cull jobs as the economic landscape worsened. Startups and Big Tech companies alike have slashed their wage bills as the high-interest rate environment encourages businesses to prioritize sustainability over growth.
In January alone, 76 tech companies have laid off 21,370 employees, according to tracker site Layoffs.fyi. This year's cuts add to the 262,595 job losses announced in 2023.
Productboard employed over 500 at its peak in spring 2022, with CEO Palan even telling Bloomberg that the company planned to go public in 2025. Since then, IPOs have become increasingly rare with late-stage companies struggling to find follow-on investment as growth funding disappeared.
The startup builds software for product teams to collaborate and incorporate feedback from customers, designers, and managers to ultimately create a better end result. In all, that optimizes workflow.
The November 2022 cut at Productboard was deep but justified — many other startups had faced reductions of up to 15%, and Big Tech had already gone through two rounds of layoffs by then, one former employee told BI.
But a different former staffer told BI it instigated a turning point for the company. "It felt like everything sort of started drying up after the first round of layoffs — likely due to the market uncertainties; because of this the business felt like changes were required," they said.
One ex-staffer put consecutive rounds of layoffs down to the slow pace of growth. As a result, the company frequently reorganized, changed priorities, and staffers struggled to show results, they said.
LinkedIn now puts Productboard's headcount at 350.
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