From a friend: Everyone was laid off with no severance or benefits. The CEO put all the blame on a lender in order to explain why there were no severance packages. This sucks because they took it upon themselves to offer staff retention bonuses earlier this year to keep people around after the earlier layoff.
I'd be interested in whether the C-level got any severance or healthcare....
Why do you assume the worst, with absolutely no information?
The company is shutting down. I'd bet you a lot of money nobody gets anything.
(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…
What happens to the customers? Are there any business lines that were in their infancy worth exploring?
(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…
Given that you were in the company and presumably have an idea of how the company functions: where did the funding go? $260M gone in 1 year? "Convoy, which raised $260 million in a funding round last year that valued the business at $3.8 billion, on Wednesday told employees in an email that it would stop accepting shipments until further notice and that it was rescheduling or canceling existing loads." (wsj)
They got caught in the same thing that happened to Flexport and others in the freight industry.
Price per shipment cratered -> Revenue cratered. (They make a % of each shipment) -> Losses spiked up. (Because they had fixed cost)
Flexport had a burn run rate of $600M a year. Convoy had less burn but also less in the bank.
(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…
Given that you were in the company and presumably have an idea of how the company functions: where did the funding go? $260M gone in 1 year? "Convoy, which raised $260 million in a funding round last year that valued the business at $3.8 billion, on Wednesday told employees in an email that it would stop accepting shipments until further notice and that it was rescheduling or canceling existing loads." (wsj)
So many variables, but it's easy to spend $260M in 18 months at a decently sized company. If they have 1200 employees, that's about $12k per employee per month. So you could easily spend that much just on salary + benefits for software developers in Seattle.
(Ex-)Convoy engineer here. No mystery as to why this happened, sudden tight market and low available capital demolished us. External reasons given in the article were the same we knew and couldn't do anything about considering that none of the M&A options materialized. Detailed the shutdown on a call at 8:30am Pacific this morning. CEO said there'll be no severance or healthcare. Lot of talented folks in Seattle and…
I'm confused as to what Convy "had" anyway. Was it largely spot rates, a bid board, and lots of small carriers? Customers easily could just get rates / carriers elsewhere and walk from Convoy? No other services making income keeping customers around? Rates are pretty fluid in logistics, very strange that they would rely on that alone if that was the case.
Exactly, I'm very curious as to what was their edge
Cobra is such a huge slap in the face too for most people. We know you just lost your income as of today, but do you wanna buy this health insurance plan for 3K a month?
You can often use it to game insurance between jobs though. You have like 60 or 90 days to decline coverage, and it backdates to the day you lost coverage. So 46 days of gap between job 1 and job 2? Don't get cobra, just tough it out. If medical bills are >= 3k, then go ahead and sign up for cobra and get a chunk covered.
The COBRA option is pretty nice to have available as gap coverage if you need it even if it is pretty expensive at the family level. (Of course, personally paid 100% medical insurance in the US in general is expensive--especially at the family level.) COBRA at least means you don't potentially have to switch medical providers because of a short-term switch in insurance.
1.1B USD in funding! I'd definitely want to know more about how things came to be like this.
No customers. If you get $1Bn in funding that doesn't mean you get to hire 10 people and never run out of money. You have to hire 500 people and run out of money in 5 years!
Yes, OP is either from Europe or very entitled or both.
When you get on a plane do you think they fuel it to run out exactly at the moment the plane stops at its final destination, and not a drop more? Don't you think that they reserve fuel for emergencies?
Why shouldn't a business consider itself at 0 operating dollars but still have a full account for healthcare or equivalent severance?
Ex-Convoy employee here: if a company is shutting down, it obviously can't provide severance. It's not a matter of class or not.
If things are dire enough to close up shop now, they probably were dire enough to close up shop 2 months ago, and you can use the cash to give your employees some runway for finding new employment.