Sydney start-up Kinde lays off staff, but tech downturn ‘not to blame’

The Sydney tech start-up landed a $10m funding round from Blackbird and others last year.

The Kinde executive team.

Sydney-based software start-up Kinde has laid off eight staff across its marketing and operations functions, but its chief executive says the redundancies have nothing to do with the deepening tech downturn.

Kinde, led by former Atlassian and Campaign Monitor executive Ross Chaldecott and co-founders David Berner and Evgeny Komarevtsev, raised $10.6m in funding last March in a round led by Blackbird Ventures and supported by Californian venture capital outfit Felicis Ventures.

The company, which now has about 20 remaining employees, was started in 2021 and offers development tools for software engineers and start-ups.

Mr Chaldecott said in an interview the redundancies were unrelated to the ongoing tech downturn, which has depressed start-up valuations and forced dozens of local companies to shed jobs and cut costs amid rising interest rates.

“Obviously you never want to make these sorts of changes. But as a company we realised that we really needed to recalibrate, to be super laser-focused on product. We are a product company first and foremost, and we’re still early stage, so everything we do needs to be focused on developing great product.

“We’re super well capitalised; this is purely a refocus on priorities for the year ahead. We have runway to last us for the next few years and this has had nothing to do with how much capital we had in the bank. This was something that felt like the right thing to do from where we need to focus on, and to build our product.”

He said he’s working to connect the laid-off workers with new job opportunities and has given them extended severance pay as well as letting them keep their company laptops.

“This sort of thing always sucks to do and it’s never a pleasant part of the job. But we try to lead with our values and support our people as much as possible. We’re trying to do everything small and big to make sure they will land on their feet and those people are supported as much as possible.”

Blackbird Ventures general partner Nick Crocker.

In interviews last year Mr Chaldecott said he believed an economic downturn was a great time to build a start-up, and said now that his views haven’t changed.

“I do actually think there are incredible opportunities for a lot of the people who are currently being made redundant, especially to become the founders of tomorrow,” he said.

“There are so many people with these incredible technical skills that now have a choice … They can either join the long line of people looking for new work, or they can actually do something to go and change the world, which is really what I believe is the big power of founders. They have that opportunity, to make a big, big difference in the world. And I think we’re starting to see it already, there’s more and more start-ups starting to appear.

“We really believe this is this is potentially one of the best times to start a business, and also there’s just less competition out there, so it’s a great time to for people to try and make their mark.”

Blackbird Ventures partner Nick Crocker, who is on Kinde’s board, said the lay-offs were a tough but correct decision for the start-up, and he was working with Mr Chaldecott to help find the affected employees new roles.

“Ross and the team just blew us away when we first met them. To see the product they’ve built since we first invested validates to us that early belief, and the product road map ahead this year is quite stunning,” Mr Crocker said.

“Lay-offs suck. For the people getting laid off, it’s something they’ll remember forever. For the founders who have to make the call, it’s often the most stressful thing they face in the first years of founding a company. But sometimes they have to happen, and when they do, it’s important they’re done with care, and respect. And Kinde lived its values in the way this process was managed.

“Ross and I talked about it as a hard decision, but the right decision. And we’re working with the handful of folks who were let go to find them another role in the Blackbird portfolio.”