Wayflyer to cut 200 jobs

Wayfler is the latest tech company to slim down as many battle economic challenges 

Wayflyer co-founder Aidan Corbett. Photograph Nick Bradshaw

Irish tech firm Wayflyer announced that it plans to cut 40% of its global workforce, or 200 jobs.

The company today confirmed that 70 layoffs will take place in Ireland where the company currently employs 220 people.

The jobs cuts will bring its total headcount back to where it was 10 months ago, which is around 300 people.

The company is planning to relocate 10 roles from the US to their Dublin headquarters so the net reduction in Ireland will be around 60.

“We tried to scale our organisation very aggressively over the past 15 months, and in hindsight, we tried to do too much, too soon," said co-founder and CEO of Wayflyer, Aidan Corbett.

“We are sorry to be losing many great colleagues, who have helped Wayflyer become a market leader in revenue-based finance. However, we are now facing a challenging macroeconomic environment and this change will put the company in a stronger financial position to execute its plans for 2023 and beyond.” he added.

Wayflyer said it has notified the appropriate government officials and will soon enter into a consultation period for roles at risk of redundancy this month. 

"We are providing transition and benefits packages with the goal of making the transition as supportive as possible for impacted teammates," said Mr Corbett. 

The job losses at Wayflyer are the latest to hit the tech sector in Dublin where Stripe, and Facebook owner Meta have already confirmed job losses.

The job cuts at Wayflyer come only nine months after the company became Ireland’s sixth unicorn, after raising $150m in funding to achieve a $1.6bn valuation, and doing so in under three years.

Wayflyer provides revenue-based financing and marketing analytics for online businesses and the job losses follow the firm's Irish unit recording post tax losses of €22m in 2021 arising from expansion costs.

Numbers employed at the Dublin based Wayflyer  last year increased from 15 to 85 as staff costs soared from €1.7m to €9.4m.

Staff were briefed at 9am today by Mr Corbett and co-founder Jack Pierse on the job cuts.

Wayflyer said that the firm has enjoyed substantial growth in 2022.

Already this year, the company has secured over $550 million worth of debt from world-leading financial players including JP Morgan and Credit Suisse, while also expanding into several new European markets.