PFM App NerdWallet Thins Out Staff Due To Lack Of Revenue Growth

Personal finance startup NerdWallet laid off 53 people on Thursday – about 11 percent of its workforce – due to its failure to hit profitability goals.

According to a TechCrunch news report, as part of the restructuring, NerdWallet’s sales and partnerships teams will be folded into various product teams.

“This was an incredibly difficult decision and not one we made lightly,” NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen wrote in an email to the staff. “Two factors drove this decision – we’re not hitting our profitability goals, and there are areas within our organization that aren’t running as efficiently as they should be.”

Chen noted that while NerdWallet did grow this year, the company hit “some unexpected rough patches that impacted our revenue, which taught us an important lesson in budgeting more conservatively moving forward.”

This is the third round of layoffs for NerdWallet this year. In July, the company let six people go from its marketing team. And in April, it laid off more than 40 people, which represented 8 percent of its staff. That round of layoffs included the VP of growth leaving the company and the COO Dan Yoo moving to an advisory position.

While just this past July, Chen had said NerdWallet was financially strong and that there were no more planned layoffs in the foreseeable future, things obviously changed for the company.

“This is the right decision for NerdWallet, but it’s also extremely painful,” Chen said in his Thursday email. “We’re doing everything we can to support people during this transition and wish them the best.”

NerdWallet has raised $69 million in funding, with its most recent round coming in May 2015 from Institutional Venture Partners.