61–70 of 639 posts
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.
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How can there be no healthcare without a bankruptcy filing? Isn't COBRA mandatory?
C̶O̶B̶R̶A̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶d̶a̶t̶o̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶l̶a̶i̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶f̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶p̶a̶y̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶ …if the company still exists (see comments above and below)
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What makes you think the executives are making anything from this? It's a startup, it ran out of money, it failed, there is nothing left. Joining a startup is risky.
>It's a startup, it ran out of money, it failed, there is nothing left It may not be that clear cut ... From the article: The startup, valued by investors last year at $3.8 billion, had already whittled its staff down to about 500 people from a peak of 1,500, and was on track to run out of money in a matter of weeks
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What makes you think the executives are making anything from this? It's a startup, it ran out of money, it failed, there is nothing left. Joining a startup is risky.
Can we stop calling companies with 1,500+ employees and millions in revenue "startups". At what point does the shine wear off and they just become medium-sized companies like any other?
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How can there be no healthcare without a bankruptcy filing? Isn't COBRA mandatory?
COBRA isn't employer-paid healthcare, its an ex-employee option to pay for the previously-employer-offered plan, while the employer offers a plan to current employees . If there are no more company operations and no current employees, there is also no plan and no COBRA. This could also be an issue if a company restructured so it didn't have to offer employees health care because of size or everyone being part time or…
(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…
"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)
From another article: "Between the lines: The shipping and logistics markets have turned south since the pandemic era's boomtimes." I think what you mean is this business makes no sense when interest rates aren't zero and investors aren't looking for places to stuff money. >The trucking marketplace gained a lot of buzz a few years ago, raising over $670 million from top investors like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Capital…
It is really hard to get the kind of exponential efficiency gains in this space that a 'blitzscale'-focused startup needs in order to really succeed.
Trucking is an industry that relies heavily on relationships (trucker broker, broker shipper, broker facility, etc), and you're not going to change that (required for true automation) without already being at an absurdly large scale.
Convoy spent too much effort on chasing things that had the potential to give the company those exponential gains without addressing the high-touch nature of the industry (but were just not a good fit, and ultimately fell flat).
And Convoy—conversely—had very little incentive to spend most of its effort on iterative improvements to the core brokerage (which would have probably led to profitability, but not the kind of returns that VCs ultimately want)
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How can there be no healthcare without a bankruptcy filing? Isn't COBRA mandatory?
COBRA isn't employer-paid healthcare, its an ex-employee option to pay for the previously-employer-offered plan, while the employer offers a plan to current employees . If there are no more company operations and no current employees, there is also no plan and no COBRA. This could also be an issue if a company restructured so it didn't have to offer employees health care because of size or everyone being part time or…
start-up idea if anyone is bored: disrupt car shipping. When I moved from Seattle to Raleigh shipping my car was BY FAR the biggest headache. It's a 20th century business where you have to call people, who will bid for you, and you have no idea if your bid is accepted. Agents will promise a low price to get your business, then tell you a week later that bid was too low, you need to double it. I eventually just gave u…
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Can we stop calling companies with 1,500+ employees and millions in revenue "startups". At what point does the shine wear off and they just become medium-sized companies like any other?
By definition, a startup is any newly established company. We can argue over how much time defines what is newly established, but can't argue that the size, revenue, or money raised define what is new.