Coming into 2023, Snyk CEO Peter McKay said in a memo that he anticipated a tough start to the year, but he expected to accelerate growth in the back half of the year.
Now, McKay said he knows that “challenging market conditions are likely to persist into early 2024, so we must once again adapt.”
The Boston cybersecurity company has decided to lay off 128 employees primarily from its go-to-market and corporate functions.
A series of layoffs
This is Snyk’s third round of layoffs within the last year. In June 2022, the company said it had laid off 30 employees across the global organization over the last quarter, citing “looming economic headwinds.” Then, in October, Snyk laid off an additional 198 employees. In a memo posted on the company’s website, CEO Peter McKay said this represented 14% of the total workforce.
The layoffs last October also focused on Snyk’s go-to-market team.
After these two rounds of layoffs, Snyk’s employee count stood at around 1,200. With these recent job cuts, Snyk is inching closer to the 1,000-employees mark.
“While this is undeniably difficult, we’ve chosen to take advantage of this moment to evolve our structure and focus as well as address feedback from our customers and all of you,” McKay wrote in a recent memo.
Following these two rounds of layoffs, in December Snyk announced a “down round” of funding. The company received a $196.5 million investment led by Qatar Investment Authority, or QIA, the wealth manager for the State of Qatar.
The funding brought Snyk's valuation down to $7.4 billion. Last year, Snyk was valued at $8.5 billion.
The Business Journal tracked 30 tech companies based in Massachusetts or with operations in the state that reduced the size of their teams in the first three months of 2023. The layoffs have continued since then, most recently with Wonderment laying off several employees earlier this week.
An evolving strategy
McKay went on to say that the developer security market has matured since Snyk launched in 2015. He noted that Snyk’s customers have shifted from early adopters to the early majority.
“These global brands are counting on our team to deliver on our developer security vision, which we know is so much more than a simple product purchase — it’s a cultural revolution. Simply put, they need more help from us,” McKay said.
As a result, McKay said the company’s near-term focus would be on “infusing new skill sets and enterprise expertise” into its sales, R&D, customer experience and partner/channel functions. He also said Snyk plans to move away from transactional customer engagements to a more consultative approach that goes beyond the sale.
“It’s never easy to say goodbye to Snykers and friends who have helped shape the foundation of our company, but I am confident that with these changes, Snyk is positioned to capitalize on the enormous opportunity in front of us,” McKay said.
Sign up for The Beat, BostInno’s free daily innovation newsletter from BostInno reporter Hannah Green. See past examples here.
