Socure, a fraud prevention and identity verification startup recently valued at $4.5 billion, laid off 69 employees this week, or 13% of the company’s workforce, cofounder and CEO Johnny Ayers told Forbes today.
The layoffs primarily hit the marketing, sales and human resources teams, Ayers said, with “very little impact on engineering, product development and data science.” Until he confirmed the layoffs to Forbes, Socure had made no formal announcement of its downsizing, but word began to spread earlier this week on Glassdoor, where the company was the target of some unfavorable employee comments even before the layoffs.
Socure founder and CEO Johnny Ayers says he’s trying “to get cash flow and profitability right.” Even before the layoffs, there were signs of employee unhappiness.