It pains me to say this, but last Friday was one of the most difficult days for Vauld and myself since we decided to reduce our headcount by about 30%. This is not a decision we take lightly but given the economic slowdown, we concluded that this was the right course of action.
How we got here:
• The market conditions have gotten more uncertain, even for crypto companies
• A few market participants course of actions have created a lot of uncertainty in the eyes of customers
• We continued to hire in 2022 without listening to the early signs of the economic slowdown
The reduction impacts every team in the organization with a bias towards our marketing and talent acquisition teams. The bias is because we’re slowing down efforts associated with those teams. We are working with each person affected and:
• Pay them two months of their salaries as a severance payment and ensure that they retain their signing and/or joining bonus
• Provide 12 months of medical insurance for them and their immediate family
• Work closely with them to find a great place to work
To the colleagues who we’re parting ways with, I’m extremely grateful for your contributions towards helping Vauld serve 800k+ clients and offer world-class services, and I’m sorry. We know that you’re extremely talented and would love for our paths to cross when we’re hiring again.
Furthermore, we are:
• Reducing our marketing expenses
• Slowing down our hiring efforts
• Reducing executive compensation by 50%
• Pausing most vendor engagements
We know that resilient companies are built during bear markets. Sanju and I started Vauld during the last crypto winter and we’re here because we carefully managed expenses then. We believe that these measures are necessary so that we’re very strong in the long term. This in no way affects the services or products we offer to our clients nor their investments. With our team of 100+ employees, we’re going to ship significant products this year that our clients will love. We’re here to stay and will continue to play a part in accelerating the transition to decentralized money.
Darshan
