Munich HR startup Personio feels forced to lay off 100 employees. The product and technology division is affected.
Billion-dollar Munich startup Personio is laying off a large number of its employees. Gründerszene learned this exclusively from corporate circles. When I asked Gründerszene, the company confirmed that it would lay off exactly 101 employees. The product and technology division is affected.
The first affected people are already searching for new job opportunities on LinkedIn. According to the company, about 2,100 people currently work at the unicorn.
Personio was founded in 2015 by Hanno Renner together with Roman Schumacher, Arseni Vershinin and Ignaz Forstmeier. With the exception of Forstmeyer, all of the founders remain with the company, but Renner has always been the managing director and sole registered CEO of the company. The Munich-based team develops software for personnel management and applicant management.
Decision 'has nothing to do with cost savings'
The HR startup has been one of the most valuable startups in Germany for some time. Since 2021 alone, Personio has increased its valuation five-fold, and after a financial injection in June 2022, the software company was valued at eight billion euros.
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However, the HR portal is not yet profitable – and is therefore highly dependent on investors' money. “We work in such a way that we can be profitable at any time,” Renner told Gründerszene a year ago. However, he continues to make conscious decisions about investments, for example, in product development.
According to Personio, the current decision has nothing to do with cost savings, but was made strategically with the goal of the company's future. When asked, Rhino HR did not provide any further details. Meanwhile, there were 150 open positions in the product and technology division affected by the layoffs alone.
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