Crossbeam laid off about 15% of its staff this week amid a changing tech market

Data-driven partnerships SaaS company Crossbeam has followed a recent trend of venture-backed tech companies shedding staff members amid a changing and challenging 2023 market.

CEO Bob Moore confirmed to Technical.ly that the Center City-headquartered company laid off 17 people, or “about 15%,” of its staff this week, bringing its headcount to about 100 people.

The 2019-founded company’s bread and butter is in allowing companies to see how their customers and sales overlap without sharing too much sensitive information. In 2021, Crossbeam raised a $76 million Series C led by VC bigwig Andreessen Horowitz, following a trend of high valuations and rounds that other Philly companies and tech companies across the country saw that year.

“You have to ask yourself, ‘Are we ready for it? How far do we think we can see into the future?’” Moore told Technical.ly after that raise in 2021. “It’s different with Crossbeam than it was with Stitch or [RJMetrics, Moore’s previous ventures]. We’re in this very unique position, basically creating the category we live in.”

Although Crossbeam grew its revenue more than 100% this past year, 2023 is a much different market than 2021, Moore said this week.

“As we’ve seen across the tech sector, the kind of investments that made sense in 2021 don’t all map perfectly to 2023’s market,” the CEO told Technical.ly in an email. “We made these changes to stay in line with that new reality and keeping our team focused on our highest priorities, which meant reorganizing a few of our teams and unfortunately parting ways with some great people.”

The teams most affected by the layoffs are engineering and marketing, and the move was designed to keep Crossbeam working toward its mission and “stay focused,” Moore said. The company still has a “runway in the bank,” and is hiring in other areas that weren’t impacted by the layoffs, like product design and account management.

Moore has spoken about the tough decision to make layoffs before, in former venture RJMetrics. And more recently, he’s not alone: Since mid-2022, local and far-reaching tech companies have been laying off staff as the economic market tightens. Last week, The Meet Group let go some of its US and Philly-based staff, and Gopuff has had multiple rounds of layoffs in the last year.

Crossbeam is built on strengthening the role of partnerships, and it’s doubled down on building a community for technologists in these roles in the last year or so, including through a new in-person partnerships conference, called Supernode.

“Every industry needs a few cornerstone moments to pay attention to and gather around,” said Sean Blanda, Crossbeam’s VP of content, of Supernode in March 2022. “We have no delusions that we’ll be the only one, but we hope Supernode can be one of those touch points of our industry.”

And a month ago, Moore shared on LinkedIn why he felt companies making cuts to their partnership teams were making a “huge mistake.” He touted partnership teams’ role in direct revenue for companies.

“Layoffs are about saving cash by cutting low-ROI and non-core cost centers,” he wrote. “With a modern ecosystem-led growth playbook, partner teams are the opposite: Deals close 46% faster when partners are involved. They are 53% more likely to close. And ecosystem-sourced leads are driving a material amount of growth.”