As layoffs tear through the startup world, the micromobility industry, which has long struggled to be profitable, is getting hit. Just a couple of weeks after Bird laid off 23% of its staff, the next round of industry layoffs is affecting Voi and Superpedestrian, according to LinkedIn posts from former and current employees.
“…we at Voi Technology announced today that we are further increasing our focus on profitability and aiming to reduce headquarter related costs by 25% from current level,” Mattias Hermansson, chief financial officer and deputy CEO at Voi, posted on LinkedIn on Wednesday. “We focus this on reducing external spend primarily, but unfortunately 35 currently filled HQ related roles (~10%) are impacted.”
Hermansson went on to say that Voi is in a strong financial position after reducing spend in the first half of the year in response to the “changing environment for growth capital” and doesn’t “anticipate any additional capital raise over the foreseeable future.”
Superpedestrian confirmed to TC that it will be reducing the size of its global team by 7%. The company did not confirm to TC exactly how many staff members that equates to, but going off Superpedestrian’s LinkedIn page, which shows a total of 263 employees, the number of layoffs could fall somewhere around 18 staffers.
“This is part of a company wide effort to reduce our costs and accelerate the path to profitability,” reads a statement from Superpedestrian. “We continue our commitment to provide top quality services to cities where we operate our shared scooter fleets.”
