Fintech unicorn Paddle cuts 8% of jobs

Less than a year after hitting unicorn status, CEO Christian Owens shared the news that Paddle has been forced to downsize.

London-based fintech Paddle has just laid off eight per cent of its staff in a company-wide effort to downsize.

The startup, which describes itself as the “complete payment infrastructure provider for software companies”, said it has suffered from a post-COVID dip after a period of rapid growth combined with sharp increases in inflation.

Paddle reached unicorn status in May after a £162m Series D funding round which saw it valued at $1.4bn, and is now letting go of around eight per cent of its 350 staff as it streamlines costs, as first reported by Tech EU.

CEO Christian Owens shared the news on LinkedIn after breaking the news to employees internally earlier in the week.

“What we’re seeing at the moment – both internal and external – is cyclical, not catastrophic,”  Owens wrote in the company memo published on LinkedIn.

“The software industry, the economy, and our business have weathered tough times before and will likely have to do so again in the future. What defines us is how we rise to these challenges and adapt our business to thrive.”

Taking responsibility for the decisions that led to the company now needing to reduce its cost base, Owens highlighted two “key mistakes”.

“The first was assuming that the growth our customers saw during COVID was a signal of fundamental change and that growth would be sustained largely in perpetuity,” he wrote.

“The second was allowing our operating costs to increase at a faster rate than we were growing our revenue.”

Paddle is also reducing expenses in other areas, including limiting 2023 hiring to “a small number of critical roles”, reducing its budget for promotions and salary increases and reducing its spending on software, tooling and people benefits, it said.

“These changes position us to weather the storm ahead, and support our customers as they weather it too,” Owens wrote.