Veho, a package delivery company, confirmed that it laid off 19% of its employee headcount, or about 65 jobs. As first reported by The Information, these layoffs came after Veho grew revenue nearly 90% in 2023.
“We conducted a reorganization of our corporate team to improve efficiencies, accelerate our path to profitability and be able to invest more in areas that directly impact our clients’ needs and our growth,” according to a company statement sent to TechCrunch.
The logistic technology company, founded in 2016 by Itamar Zur and Fred Cook, is going after the last-mile section of delivery — how packages get from fulfillment centers to the customer’s door.
In early 2022, Veho was not in a bad way. The company had grown 40% in revenue and 20% in its customer base from the year prior. There were also plans to jump from 500 employees to 2,000 by the end of 2022.
It also was lucky in venture capital during the pandemic as shopping shifted online. At that time, the company raised $170 million in Series B funding in a round, led by Tiger Global Management, that bumped up the company’s valuation to $1.5 billion.
That was after announcing $125 million in Series A funding two months prior, the round that pushed Veho into unicorn territory. General Catalyst led that round.
With now over $300 million in venture-backed funding at its disposal, Veho added markets and brought on a number of executives at the end of 2022, including Eric Swanson as chief commercial officer and Brian McDevitt as chief revenue officer.
In the summer of 2023, the company went into 11 New England markets and was working with customers like Kroger, Saks, Nordstrom, Misfits Market, HelloFresh and Nespresso. At that time, Veho said it had 910 employees across corporate and warehouse teams and was looking to fill additional positions.
Even with the continued growth, the company wasn’t without problems last year, according to The Information. Those included laying off customer and driver support staff and shifting those jobs overseas.
Then Swanson left in March, according to his LinkedIn profile. In December, Veho appointed Deborah Surrette, a former vice president of sales at Oracle, to that role. McDevitt’s social media profiles still say he is CRO, however, The Information reported he left as well.
Increased freight rates and consolidation continue to affect the logistics industry, so we’ll have to see what happens. Veho remains optimistic, telling TechCrunch that its capital position “is very strong and we are building on our strong momentum and record peak season in 2023.”