Spreadshirt Raises Money in this Economy? (2)
Published on February 23rd, 2009. By The Taddict, under T-Shirt News.
This isn’t normally the cup of tea that I write about but I couldn’t pass up the info. Spreadshirt, as I’m sure that you already know, is a custom t-shirt shop provider that competes with Zazzle and Cafepress but is originally based out of Germany. According to a TechCrunch report, they just closed a funding round of €10 million. That’s very impressive in this down economy. What isn’t impressive however, is the fact that they just had layoffs because their growth was only 40% instead of the expected 50-80%. When is 40% growth not good enough???
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2 Comments
The Taddict on February 23rd, 2009
I completely agree Robin. I was kind of making a lighter statement based on the frame of reference of the economy and less about the maturity of the company.
Who knows…the layoffs could have been exclusively in a division that was brought on for short term growth and had maxed their potential or obligation. Either way, layoffs are a necessary evil.
Robin Wauters on February 23rd, 2009
“because their growth was only 40% instead of the expected 50-80%. When is 40% growth not good enough?”
You answer your own question in the previous sentence. If a privately-held startup has revenue targets and it fails to meet them, that means it is or will be burning a significant amount of money that isn’t turning into enough revenue quickly enough to ensure there’s no collapse. So either you trim, or you die.