Influencer marketing management company Grin Technologies Inc. has gone through more layoffs in March, following a round of layoffs in the fall.
Sacramento-based Grin joins a host of technology companies — from Salesforce.com Inc. (NYSE: CRM) to Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) and Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC) to Google LLC — that have announced layoffs in recent months as the tech economy is slowing following years of rampant hiring.
At least 10 former employees on their LinkedIn pages mentioned recent layoffs at Grin. None would talk to the Business Journal. Most thanked Grin for offering the opportunity to work with talented people.
Grin representatives didn't respond to calls or emails from the Business Journal seeking comment.
News site Insider reported that Grin confirmed that it had laid off 60 staff in November, mostly in sales, representing 13% of its staff at the time. The publication said that some of the employees involved in this new round of layoffs said it was larger than the first layoff and it touched all departments. Some said they realized they were being let go when they were disconnected from Grin's Slack account. Slack is a real-time internal messaging program.
In November, Grin CEO Brandon Brown posted about its layoffs on the company website.
He said Grin's customers were dealing with inventory challenges, difficulty finding financing, increasing costs and inflation, and so they were cutting back on expenses.
"The pandemic was a booming time for e-commerce, and Grin saw its revenue double in 2020 and triple in 2021," he wrote.
"Inspired by years of significantly beating our targets, we created big plans for 2022. As a company that prides itself on taking big swings while competing in an emerging category, we felt it was the right move to make big investments and try to capitalize on the momentum," he wrote on the blog.
"Unfortunately, the economic downturn, challenges in execution and industry disruption all negatively affected our results in 2022," the blog said. "The outcome is that our cost structure is not in line with our revenue."
In that November post, he said the company was paying 12 weeks of severance to all departing employees, offering three months of COBRA for health insurance and paying out all unused paid time off. Grin also offered those affected three months of career coaching and job search support services.
Another group of employees have been let go in recent weeks, according to LinkedIn posts.
Grin built a platform that manages the logistics, record keeping, analytics and payment for influencer marketing, which is online social-media marketing and endorsements.
Brown and co-founder Brian Mechem started the company in 2014 to market social media influencer advertising. The company in 2017 pivoted to provide systems to manage that kind of advertising for their direct-to-consumer clients. Most companies that use Grin’s influencer-marketing tools already have influencers, who may be paid by the companies whose products they promote or, often, they receive gifts from those companies.
In October 2021, Grin raised about $113 million in a venture capital round. It was only a short time ago, but the entire market for venture funding changed dramatically in early 2022 when the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates. Grin has raised a total of $145 million, according to tracking site Crunchbase.
Grin was part of the ninth cohort of the Launch Accelerator in 2019. That same year, Grin raised $6 million in a financing round led by San Francisco venture capital firm Bullpen Capital and included investors Moneta Ventures of Folsom and Launch Accelerator.
