On October 8, fintech unicorn Stash announcement that its co-founders, who launched the company in 2015 and whose roles were reduced last year, were returning to the helm of the company they had created.
But an important detail was omitted: Stash was also restructuring and 40% of its approximately 220 employees, including at least three of its executives, were unemployed, according to three people familiar with the matter and confirmed by Planque. This was the second major layoff at Stash this year.
The changes came just weeks after the abrupt departure of its 2023 CEO, Liza Landsman, at the end of September. The board of directors, made up primarily of the company’s venture capitalists, approached co-founders Ed Robinson and Brandon Krieg to lead the company as co-CEOs, Robinson said. Fortune.
Robinson had left his operational role, although he remained a board member. Krieg had stepped down to head business development. Robinson called Landsman’s departure reciprocal, saying she was neither fired nor resigned. “Liza did incredible things for Stash…She was not the right person to take to the next phase,” Robinson said. Two people familiar with the matter said Landsman had resigned. Landsman declined to comment.
At the time of her departure, rumors were circulating among employees regarding a possible acquisition, recalls a former employee. And for good reason: two acquisition offers were then considered by the board of directors, say two people.
One of those offers came from investment platform eToro for a price lower than Stash’s latest valuation of $1.4 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter. The exact amount of the offer could not be confirmed. “We are actively exploring M&A opportunities globally,” an eToro spokesperson said. Fortunerefusing to comment on details.
Although the board ultimately rejected those offers in favor of a funding round, which Robinson says is now closing. The company plans to announce this investment soon.
Robinson declined to share details of the expected funding round, other than that it will be used to pay down some of the company’s debt and fund growth initiatives. Robinson says Fortune that Stash frequently receives acquisition offers and estimates that about 80 companies have expressed interest in an acquisition in the last six to nine months. He declined to name specific potential buyers.
Robinson said the latest restructuring aimed to remove layers of management and make Stash “less bureaucratic.” He insisted that Stash hadn’t eliminated any of its products and that its employees were still working on the exact same things, just with smaller teams. “We really wanted to try to remove a lot of layers and refocus the business,” he said.
Stash, which last had a valuation of $1.4 billion in 2021, operates in a crowded space of technology-based wealth advisory and investment platforms, competing with other companies including Betterment, Acorns and Robinhood. Stash positions itself as an “investing app for beginners” with a subscription model that provides users with financial advice and runs automatic investing services.
Stash, which is based in New York but has a largely remote staff, does not disclose revenue or other financial data.
Stash boasts that it now has more than 1.3 million subscribers, although this figure represents a drop from 2022, when the platform had 2 million. The company, struggling with debt, carried out a series of layoffs before October, including one in March representing 25% of its workforce, or around 80 people, bringing its workforce to 220 at the time.
The company had 500 employees at its peak, according to a report from Axios report.
“There was a general feeling that there was increased pressure from competitors, so things had to be stricter,” says a former employee.
The October restructuring was not mentioned in the company’s external announcement about its co-founders returning as executives, although two sources say it was the same day the company announced its internal layoffs. A Bloomberg article published the same day about the co-founders’ return also made no mention of the cuts.
Robinson said the company is not considering further layoffs and achieved positive monthly cash flow in November, the first time in Stash’s 10-year history. He highlighted a new AI investing tool introduced this year and added that Stash was considering bringing cryptocurrency trading back into its platform, which was discontinued under Landsman.