Scoop: Pendo lays off 5% of workforce

Pendo, a Raleigh software startup valued last year at $2.6 billion, has laid off around 5% of its workforce and slowed its hiring goals, CEO Todd Olson tells Axios.

Driving the news: The cuts came on Wednesday and affected 45 positions, mostly in recruiting and sales support.

• “Our hiring had outpaced our needs in certain areas,” Olson tells Axios. “We’re still growing rapidly but we simply had to adjust based on changes in the macroeconomic environment.”
• Pendo, a customer analytics platform for product adoption, nearly doubled its headcount last year and was approaching 1,000 total employees. But Olson says that worker growth had begun to outpace revenue growth, particularly as small and midsized business began taking longer to make software purchasing decisions.

Why it matters: After years of rapid growth, layoffs at high-flying tech startups have increased in 2022.

• Triangle tech startups have mostly avoided layoffs, although there were recent cuts at Avaya and Policygenius.

Pendo had previously indicated it could file for an initial public offering this year — though that changed as stocks entered into a bear market earlier this year.