Earlier today, Flexport Co-CEOs Dave Clark and Ryan Petersen sent the following note to Flexport employees.

Team,

We begin the New Year with more optimism than ever about Flexport’s future. There is a lot to be proud of — together as a team, we have made significant strides to streamline our operations and strengthen our commitment to build the best technology and products for the benefit of current and future customers.

While we are looking forward to what’s to come in 2023, we must also make hard decisions necessary to set us up for long-term success. We are overall in a good position, but are not immune to the macroeconomic downturn that has impacted businesses around the world. Our customers have been impacted by these challenging conditions, resulting in a reduction to our volume forecasts through 2023. Lower volumes, combined with improved efficiencies as a result of new organizational and operational structures, means we are overstaffed in a variety of roles across the company.

As a result, today we are reducing the size of our organization and we will unfortunately say goodbye to a group of talented Flexporters. We are grateful for the contributions of those who are leaving, and each departing Flexporter has our gratitude for their contributions to the company. They will be treated with respect and dignity as their Flexport chapter comes to a close and we wish them great success in their future endeavors.

Supporting Departing Flexporters

Every Flexporter whose role is being eliminated will be notified by email with information specific to them and their exit. In the US, Canada, and Europe these notifications will be received in the next few hours. In APAC, local HR teams will reach out to those impacted in the next full working day (Jan 12). Impacted employees account for approximately 20% of our global workforce.

Departure support will vary by geography. For US employees it includes 12 weeks severance, 6 months extended healthcare, 2022 bonus payment, equity vesting acceleration including dropping the vesting cliff for those with 6 months or more of tenure, immigration support, and ability to opt into our alumni talent directory to help with future job opportunities.

The Road Ahead for Flexport

At Flexport, 2023 is going to bring extraordinary velocity – we are in the process of doubling our software engineering talent and moving to single threaded business organizations to build world class products faster, and we will continue to invest in delivering best-in-class operational execution for our customers.

The current slowdown in volume gives us time to focus on building our technology bench while the economy lags. Then, as the economy recovers, we will be ready to be the Flexport that we all want to be–the one stop for customers to make the movement of goods around the world easy. But to do that, we’re going to need to be nimble, fiscally responsible and focused on building fast with operational excellence.

We will come out of this economic downturn fit and up for any fight – to be our best and continue delivering amazing value and service for customers.

Dave and Ryan