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Businesses The Almighty Buck

Kickstarter Loses Nearly 40 Percent of Its Workforce After Layoffs and Buyouts (theverge.com) 61

Posted by BeauHD from the time-to-create-a-GoFundMe dept.
Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter filed a regulatory notice in New York last week revealing it had laid off 25 employees, or about 18 percent of its workforce. But according to The Verge, Kickstarter told them that its workforce reduction "is more than twice that, as close to 30 employees decided to take voluntary buyouts as negotiated between the company's management and Kickstarter's employee union." From the report: "The filing is correct, however, it does not reflect an international employee that was affected, nor does it take into account further staff reduction via the voluntary buyouts offered to staff. In total, we'll see a 39 percent reduction in staff," a Kickstarter spokesperson tells The Verge. "The majority of those leaving chose voluntary separation packages, and everyone affected is staying on through this week through the transition."

The layoffs were first reported on Wednesday by Business Insider. The Verge reported last month that Kickstarter CEO Aziz Hasan had informed staff that the layoffs were imminent in an internal memo. At the time, Hasan cited a 35 percent drop in new projects on the platform with "no clear sign of rebound." [...] As part of deal, Kickstarter ultimately offered departing employees a severance package that includes four months' pay, four months of health care coverage for employees making more than $110,001 a year and six months for those who make less, nullification of any non-compete agreements in place, and a chance to rejoin the company if their job reopens within the year.
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Kickstarter Loses Nearly 40 Percent of Its Workforce After Layoffs and Buyouts More

Kickstarter Loses Nearly 40 Percent of Its Workforce After Layoffs and Buyouts

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  • Sounds like ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @06:25PM (#60057816)

    They need a Kickstarter to fund/hire more Kickstarter employees -- I'm guessing the results will likely be paradoxical.

    • I'm guessing the results will likely be paradoxical.

      Or ironic... Should layoffs and buyouts be happening at the same time, in a normal world?

      • I'm guessing the results will likely be paradoxical.

        Or ironic... Should layoffs and buyouts be happening at the same time, in a normal world?

        Well... Layoffs are involuntary and usually include some sort of severance pay/package. Buyouts are basically volunteering to quit with an enticement and severance -- as quitting probably doesn't count as getting laid off for unemployment -- and is usually targeted at the more expensive (and, perhaps older) employees. A legal way to lean and/or green the workforce. So, ya, I can see them happening at the same time, but each for slightly different reasons.

      • Low end workers are often only offered 2-6 weeks of pay, depending on the financial health of the company and other circumstances.

        Often, workers who expect to transition immediately to a new job will accept the buyout. And workers who expect to need a few months of job search to find something good enough, they're going to want to get laid off so they can get unemployment insurance. It all comes down to how easy the next job is to get.

        So yes you should have both. If you only have one then the people in the

    • I would recommend Indiegogo, because you get the funds collected even if you didn't raise your goal...

    • "Everything was going great, but our brother in law was in charge of all the money and he ran off with it all. We are terribly sorry about this, but the Kicktarter kickstarter campaign won't be able to fulfill its promises."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by SnowZero ( 92219 )

      A GoFundMe would be more appropriate in this case.

      For Kickstarter, they should get an undergraduate design student to make a video documenting the future of all workplaces and jobs and how Kickstarter can revolutionize it. Then we'd all fund it based on that completely impractical vision. After a few years of increasingly sparse updates, they'd eventually blog that it "just didn't work due to the toxicity of online non-believers" and go into hiding.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • No.

        When a TV show mentions a company like kickstarter, it isn't because it fit into their conversation. When you turn on cable Newsvertainment and they're talking about some new kickstarter project, they didn't talk about it because it was interesting. There are lots of interesting things to talk about, nobody on TV talks about something because it is interesting. They talk about it because they were paid to. You see kickstarter stories on the newsvertainment ["news"] all the time; those are all paid for.

        It

  • They could promise more kickstarters and get money whether or not they deliver!

  • Well-Earned (Score:2, Informative)

    by Kunedog ( 1033226 )
    One of them was a political kommisar with veto power over projects she personally didn't like. Not overly surprising news, this.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      They were doing pretty well before they hire the political officer, too. Then they chased off al projects by anyone know to be conservative. Hmm, chase off 40% of your customers, lay off 40% of your workforce. I think that's called karma.

      Of course, everything was fine until they were stressed due to the Rona. That's the thing about being anti-customer: you can get away with that in the good times, but as soon as the times become trying, you fail.

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by Cyberax ( 705495 )

        Then they chased off al projects by anyone know to be conservative

        And nothing of the value was lost....

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by DFurno2003 ( 739807 )

          Then they chased off al projects by anyone know to be conservative

          And nothing of the value was lost....

          Their bottom line would beg to differ.

        • And nothing of the value was lost....

          Exactly. Those profitable projects moved to competitor Indiegogo, setting records and making millions there instead (and increasing its marketshare). Nobody lost anything except . . . oh wait, I see what you mean . . .

          Kickstarter Loses Nearly 40 Percent of Its Workforce After Layoffs and Buyouts

          Sick burn, bro.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            I searched but couldn't find one of these conservative projects that was booted off Kickstarter and went on to make millions on Indigogo.

            • Jawbreakers comic book by Richard Meyers. https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com] There was a flood of similar after that just went straight to Indiegogo instead of dealing with Kickstarter for example Cyberfrog by Ethan Van Sciver. https://www.indiegogo.com/proj... [indiegogo.com] Big money lost by Kickstarter.

              • Do you have any information about them being kicked out of Kickstarter? That would be interesting.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by lgw ( 121541 )

                  They have YouTube channels. It was a whole thing, part of "comicsgate", though I didn't follow all that closely.

                  People who just want to write comic books that people want to read, with art that people want to see, are somehow "conservative" now. Richard Meyer had been criticizing 21st century comics as not coming close to the standards of the 80s and 90s, with corresponding terrible sales. People challenged him "it's easy to criticize, but can you actually do better", so he set out to do so. When he had

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                    From Wikipeida:

                    In early 2018, Meyer announced that his crowdfunded comic book Jawbreakers: Lost Souls, a collaboration with freelance artist Jon Malin, would be published by Antarctic Press. Upon learning that some store owners had discussed their decisions not to stock it, he encouraged his followers to publicly post and circulate their names, locations, and employee information.[11][37][38] He accused Edmonton, Alberta store Variant Edition of "bullying and intimidating their own customers" after the female co-owner tweeted that they would not stock the publication; the store was subsequently vandalized and robbed.[3] Dublin, Ireland, store Big Bang Comics, which was not stocking the book, received threats of violence on social media.[11]

                    On May 13, Antarctic Press announced that they were ending their relationship with Meyer,[39] citing shock over his behavior.

                    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

                    So nothing to do with Kickstarter, and it sounds like either he or his fans are responsible for his publisher dropping him.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by lgw ( 121541 )

                      Mark Waid was directly responsible for AP dropping him. There's a federal lawsuit over this, and I don't think the phone call that made AP back off is contested. He went to crowdfunding after that.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                You posted this in reply to my other request. Please keep it to one post so we can have a proper conversation.

                Anyway as I pointed out in my reply to that message Mayers was not banned from Kickstarter at all, he just trolled the publisher until they decided to cancel his deal.

                Can't find anything about Van Sciever being banned from Kickstarter at all.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Anonymous Coward

              You were probably looking for the wrong stuff, like maybe actual conservatives who don't want to randomly screw up things that are working.

              "Conservative" is now a code word for a certain kind of radical revolutionary, with a largely incoherent, pseudo-individualist, selectively authoritarian, faux-realpolitik, usually nationalist and often openly racist philosophy and a specific narrow set of unrelated hot buttons.

              Did you look for those?

      • Well, before you give people a Democracy... you had better find a way to control it first... funny how that stuff works out in the end eh?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Do you have some examples of conservative projects that were chased off Kickstarter?

        I googled but only found actual conservative projects on Kickstarter, no reports of them being refused.

        https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
        https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
        https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
        https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]

    • Get woke. Go broke. (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Get woke. Go Broke.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )

        https://www.kickstarter.com/rules/prohibited?ref=rules [kickstarter.com] Who do you think came up with these rules? Who do you think's job it is to interpret the vague ones? Couldn't find her name though, Google likely buried the inconvenient search results on page 137. Censorship sucks, even if it's not mandated by a government.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by sexconker ( 1179573 )

          Camilla Zhang. She pretty much killed Kickstarter. Indiegogo is the platform of choice for people who like money.

          Only established corps that don't need crowdfunding still use Kickstarter. It's like old people and Facebook/Twitter.

  • Take that communists! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ge, I didn't see this one coming. NOT! The best way to loose money, is to higher raging woke bigots to gate-keep. Don't you know, It's all about being virtuous and having the state approved politics, not providing a service.

    Kickstarter was hemorrhaging money prior to this pandemic after being infected with these SJW losers. The one good thing about this happening, is that Kickstarter can use it as an excuse to get rid these FUCKING COMMUNISTS imbeciles.
  • Maybe they can start a GoFundMe to help?
  • While Kickstarter *should* start to eat losses for everything that is clearly pre-sales and fails, they are plenty profitable as is as middlemen. It's how eBay and PayPal got people like Elon Musk rich - middlemen providing the minimal or no added value (luckily Musk wanted wealth to do interesting things with positive social effects, unlike say Jeff Bezos who just wanted his choice among wealthy neighbors to bang).

    Kickstarter is just like Uber though. The lack of profitability is only because of massive ma

  • Too little too late. Funny that the price of promoting violence cost them their entire company.

    • The company didn't go away at all, they're downsizing their hype machine to become profitable at whatever their steady state project rate will be. That's expected to eventually happen when you use a giant hype machine for years.

  • Get woke, go broke (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Texmaize ( 2823935 ) on Wednesday May 13, 2020 @10:58PM (#60058436)
    There will be much written in this thread. Most of it will be false, or conflated excuses for the simple fact of our time. Get woke, go broke. If you alienate more than half of your customer base, you lose a great deal of profit. That is what had happened.
    • And the day Kickstarter chose to be woke with Camilla Zhang gatekeeping purity tests instead of being about making $$$ they should have started making plans for this, employees should have been getting the resume ready, because it was inevitable. Well Iâ(TM)m off to the healthy and functional Indiegogo to back some âoebigotryâ projects...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      What did they actually do to offend people?

      "Get woke, go broke" seems to be fake news applied to every failing company in order to promote a certain agenda.

      There are plenty of counter-examples too, e.g. Gillette's sales went up 5% after it's "woke" ads. Nike similarly had a nice boost as it managed to reconnect with younger buyers who were starting to see it as a brand for having a mid life crisis.

      • Gillette's sales dropped after their stupid "woke" ads:

        https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/23... [cnn.com]

        P&G took an $8,000,000,000 write down on Gillette after that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The very first sentence of your own link:

          "Procter & Gamble said Gillette sales haven't budged after its controversial #MeToo ad -- but it's calling the campaign a big success."

        • Spoiler: The title of the linked story is "Gillette says it's satisfied with sales after controversial ad" and the story says:

          Procter & Gamble said Gillette sales haven't budged after its controversial #MeToo ad -- but it's calling the campaign a big success.
          Gillette's sales following the commercial were "in-line with pre-campaign levels," P&G CFO Jon Moeller said on a call with reporters Wednesday. Its subscription business, Gillette Shave Club, continued to grow sales and add new subscribers.

          • Keep reading to the end.

            "The company said on Wednesday that the sales for grooming fell 3% last quarter from the same time a year ago."

      • What did they actually do to offend people?

        Nothing happened, they're just taking false credit for the business cycle, and kickstarter reaching a plateau lower than their hype-induced peak.

        The people complaining aren't even in their target demographic. Sure, you can do different types of projects there, but comics for right wingers isn't really their bread and butter! LOL they could lose 100% of that and it wouldn't be part of the story.

  • Crowdfunding has lost some of its lustre. Kickstarter had a lot of promise, not sure if there's a simple explanation for why it's failing.

    The problem with relying on wisdom of the crowds is what happens when motivated, organized groups control the outcome of a project. Giving on-platform preferential treatment to projects of a certain type, exerting peer pressure over creators / participants through social media campaigns, expelling creators from the platform while finger pointing over why - these steps cha

    • So if crowd funding in general is souring why isnâ(TM)t Indiegogo laying off half itâ(TM)s employees. What is different, hmmm. Oh Indiegogo didnâ(TM)t hire multiple people to gatekeep out projects that didnâ(TM)t pass a woke purity test.

    • New projects went down 30%.

      Why do you believe it is failing?

      Can I ask you a question?
      Some blargs are red.
      Are all blargs red? True or false?

  • 8 people are inconvenienced in the company, meanwhile millions are getting duped on that shit hole giving scammer millions for light saber toasters and unicorn farts

  • Kickstarter alienated me by prohibiting critical comments about projects I've backed even though the promised rewards were more than 7 years in arrears. Even asking about a date, or progress towards the date, were prohibited. In one project the creator made a claim that he'd contracted with a company to ship the rewards and had delivered the material to this shipper for packaging and shipment. I called the shipping company, who said yea, the guy had dropped off two boxes but had never signed a contract

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