With brief, occasional, italicized and sometimes gratuitous commentary…
• From Business Insider:
"Weee!, the Asian and Hispanic grocery delivery service, recently cut 150 employees including several top executives, as the startup, recently valued at $4 billion, faces a tight funding market and broader ecommerce slowdown.
"The layoffs affected 10% of the company's workforce but were targeted mostly at its corporate ranks, including the marketing team which was almost entirely laid off, according to three people familiar with the matter. CEO Larry Liu also shook up his executive ranks, with his VPs of marketing and human resources out and his CFO, Ankur Shah, set to leave in the coming weeks, these people said.
"Weee!'s retrenchment is the latest in a wave of cutbacks within the grocery delivery world. In the last few months, rapid delivery startups like GoPuff, Gorillas, and Getir laid off hundreds of employees. Earlier this year, Instacart lowered its valuation to reflect the less exuberant economic environment.
"Weee! doesn't do rapid delivery and focuses on a subset of the market of people looking to buy Asian and Hispanic groceries, but the company still benefitted from the pandemic ecommerce boom. It has raised over $800 million since it launched in 2015 and earlier this year announced a $425 million Series E funding round led by Softbank which valued the company at $4.1 billion. Its other investors include Tiger Global, DST and Blackstone.
Liu told Insider in a statement that the cuts were not a reaction to a business slowdown or the economic environment, but instead were part of its long-term strategy."
Sure. Because laying off almost your entire marketing team always is part of your long-term strategy.
