Rewind cuts 27 % of workers as its progress slows in parallel to Shopify 

Ottawa-based Rewind has adjusted its fundraising plans and laid off about 27 % of its workers after seeing lower-than-anticipated progress, BetaKit has realized.

Rewind, which helps firms on platforms like Shopify defend and safe their information, first introduced the cuts in a March 22 weblog publish to the software program startup’s web site.

“Our progress has a reasonably excessive correlation to [Shopify’s] stage of progress.”
– Mike Potter, Rewind

Rewind co-founder and CEO Mike Potter confirmed the layoffs in an interview with BetaKit, noting that 37 members of Rewind’s roughly 135-person workers have been impacted. “It actually simply got here all the way down to, we’re spending cash at a fee that’s not commensurate with the extent of progress that we’re seeing,” stated Potter.

Rewind, which derives nearly all of its income from Shopify retailers, noticed demand for its backup tech increase amid the pandemic-fuelled rise of Shopify and e-commerce. As Potter put it, COVID-19 was “a once-in-a-generation-type occasion” by way of accelerating Rewind’s enterprise.

However in response to Potter, Rewind—like Shopify—has seen its progress sluggish because the pandemic and demand for on-line purchasing has waned. In response, Rewind has shed greater than 1 / 4 of its workers and revised its fundraising plans, because it seems to grow to be money move breakeven within the close to future.

Based in 2015 by Potter and CTO James Ciesielski, Rewind allows over 100,000 e-commerce, SaaS, and accounting clients throughout over 100 international locations to backup, restore, and replica their information. The startup, which started by specializing in Shopify, now helps a spread of different platforms, from GitHub to Jira, Confluence, Trello, Large Commerce, and QuickBooks. Shopify nonetheless accounts for almost all of Rewind’s enterprise.

As demand for Rewind rose throughout the pandemic, the corporate had a busy 2021, asserting $19 million CAD in Collection A financing in January, its acquisition of Berlin-based GitHub backup service BackHub a month later, adopted by an $83 million Collection B spherical that September, because it ramped up for progress. Rewind’s buyers embody Perception Companions, Bessemer Enterprise Companions, FundFire, Inovia Capital, Ridge Ventures, Union Ventures, ScaleUp Ventures, and Atlassian Ventures.

Shopify has seen its progress sluggish amid the market downturn and a broader e-commerce slowdown—and this has impacted Rewind’s enterprise. As Potter famous, although many Shopify retailers are nonetheless doing properly, progress of latest Shopify retailers is slowing, and a few are churning as financial situations have worsened.

“Our progress has a reasonably excessive correlation to [Shopify’s] stage of progress,” stated Potter. “As they add extra retailers, we additionally add extra retailers. As they’ve seen a slowdown, we’ve additionally seen a slowdown in progress.”

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Rewind has been working to diversify its enterprise past Shopify and e-commerce for a while now, increasing to SaaS and accounting platforms. As Potter famous, the agency goes after these markets proper now however can also be seeing slower-than-expected progress in them, which he believes is attributable, at the very least partially, to the present macroeconomic panorama.

After market situations started to deteriorate final yr, Rewind adjusted its plans. As first reported by The Globe and Mail and confirmed by BetaKit, in mid-2022, Rewind laid off 5 of its six recruiters and a handful of different workers, scaled again its hiring objectives, and delayed its subsequent funding spherical.

The CEO claimed that Rewind has “no instant plans” to boost extra capital with “the bulk” of its Collection B spherical nonetheless within the financial institution. “We’re operating the enterprise in a manner that doesn’t require any further funding.”

Rewind’s newest cuts are geared in the direction of this purpose. Per the CEO, Rewind spent a while constructing out tech that permits it to again up any SaaS software. Now, with that tech largely constructed, Potter famous that almost all of those layoffs have been centered on the analysis and improvement and product aspect of Rewind.

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With these layoffs, Rewind is only one of quite a lot of Canadian tech firms to chop workers amid this difficult market atmosphere. As BetaKit reported, Calgary-based software program startup Symend not too long ago decreased the dimensions of its group by 25 % and Toronto accounting software program agency FreshBooks shed 10 % of its workers.

These firms, plus Wave Monetary, Avidbots, and EnPowered, contribute in the direction of what’s stacking as much as be an particularly robust yr for tech layoffs. Per Layoffs.fyi, 522 tech firms globally have minimize over 153,000 workers because the starting of January. This quantity places tech layoffs in 2023 on tempo to surpass all of 2022 in a couple of third of the time.

With its newest cuts, which Potter says mark a return to Rewind’s roots, the CEO believes Rewind is in a superb place to navigate the market downturn.

“We’ve at all times run [Rewind] in a manner that’s been extraordinarily environment friendly,” stated Potter. “I’d say we’ve gotten away from that core worth within the final couple of years as we’ve raised our Collection B spherical, and that’s actually what we’re getting again to.”

Characteristic picture courtesy Rewind.