IT company MacPaw launched projects and invested in them for a year, but they didn’t pay off. Also, some external projects that the company expected to deliver financial results didn’t materialize. As a result, there was a cash flow gap, which led to the layoff of 20% of the team.
IT company MacPaw launched projects and invested in them for a year, but they didn’t pay off. Also, some external projects that the company expected to deliver financial results didn’t materialize. As a result, there was a cash flow gap, which led to the layoff of 20% of the team.
This was stated by the founder and CEO of the IT company MacPaw, Oleksandr Kosovan, in an interview with Frobes Ukraine.
In November 2024, the company laid off 20% of its employees.
"This is a painful process, and for me personally it left a mark. But at the same time, it is a moment that forces us to take even more responsibility for the future," said Oleksandr Kosovan about the first layoff in the company's history.
The company faced "serious financial challenges" when some projects did not deliver the expected results.
One such project is Setapp Mobile , an iOS marketplace for phone applications.
“When MacPaw invested in it in early 2024, we didn’t yet fully understand what the rules of the game would be. The offer to join this project came from Apple. At that time, it seemed interesting. There were many requests from customers for more convenient interaction with mobile devices. We switched a significant team to the project and were able to implement it in a short time. When it became clear that it would not produce the expected results, we put it on pause and reviewed our financial forecasts,” explains the company’s CEO.
In early summer, MacPaw realized that the balance was not right. The company hoped that the launch of CleanMyMac 5 would turn things around, but by fall it became clear that the costs were significantly exceeding the profits. So the company “made a shock decision to change something in the moment and not burn all the reserves,” says Kosovan.
MacPaw CEO did not name the exact amount of compensation for laid-off employees.
"A significant amount, but I won't disclose the figures. We wanted this layoff to be our only one. The employees received decent exit conditions — compensation, vacation pay, and equipment. In total, the layoffs and reductions in other costs saved us $7 million a year."
After the reduction, the workload on the team increased, says Kosovan. This mainly applies to the performers - developers, designers.
“We are working on how to distribute tasks within the organization to fix this. We still have open positions. But the opportunities for employees who wanted to prove themselves have also increased. Many have taken on additional responsibility and moved to new positions. We left the people we value most in the company. We had to make difficult choices. After several weeks of such a depressed atmosphere, everything started to work better than before the cuts,” added CEO MacPaw.
