Furnished Apartment-Rental Firm Landing Restructures, Lays Off 110 Employees

Furnished apartment-rental startup Touchdown informed workers at present that it’s restructuring and shedding 110 workers.

In a be aware to employees that he shared with Forbes, founder and CEO Invoice Smith mentioned that as the corporate scaled, it moved more and more to a “field-based working mannequin” that required extra folks within the area and fewer at its Birmingham, Alabama, headquarters.

Over the previous month, he wrote “almost 70 of our present group members have accepted new roles in area operations and moved throughout the nation to stay and work within the communities that we serve.” In the meantime, as a part of its restructuring, the corporate “lowered a lot of roles at Touchdown, totally on our central operations group,” he wrote. Smith informed Forbes by electronic mail that 110 folks have been laid off. On Touchdown’s careers board, a lot of listed jobs—for home-quality specialists and customer-service representatives—confirmed Mexico Metropolis places.

When Alabama Governor Kay Ivey introduced that Touchdown had relocated its headquarters to Birmingham from San Francisco in June 2021, the corporate mentioned that it deliberate to create 816 new jobs.

Smith mentioned that Touchdown’s income projection for this yr—$200 million, up from $83 million final yr—was unchanged.

A Birmingham, Alabama highschool dropout, Smith, 36, had made a fortune along with his earlier enterprise, on-line grocery supply service Shipt, which he bought to Goal
TGT
for $550 million in 2018. He based Touchdown to enchantment to individuals who needed the flexibleness to stay in other places—and to maneuver simply. It provided its members (who pay $199 a yr) quick entry to move-in-ready flats with the flexibleness to lease for as little as one month.

Touchdown, which we profiled as a part of this yr’s Subsequent Billion-Greenback Startups listing, raised $237 million in enterprise funding from Foundry Group, Greycroft and others at a latest valuation of $475 million.

However as WeWork’s rise and fall confirmed, there’s each large potential in new fashions of actual property—and large threat. Which cities would have demand and potential profitability? How might he lower set up prices? Modify pricing and advertising for seasonality? Smith, who owns roughly one-third of Touchdown, had been working to resolve such complexities with knowledge—and plenty of it. “I get bored actually simply,” he informed Forbes in July. “I’m interested in fixing these difficult issues.”

Within the be aware to employees, Smith wrote that the corporate had first constructed centralized group, then moved to the field-based technique after realizing it wouldn’t scale.

In late-August, Casey Woo, who had been Touchdown’s chief monetary officer, left the corporate. In an electronic mail final month, Woo, who had beforehand labored for WeWork, referred to as his departure “mutual and really amicable.”

Competitors within the short-term rental area has been growing from corporations that embrace New York Metropolis-based Blueground and San Francisco’s Zeus Residing, in addition to Airbnb and resorts which have pushed additional into extended-stay choices.

Touchdown’s restructuring and layoffs come as quite a few tech startups, amongst them Bolt, Carvana and Klarna, have achieved layoffs this yr.