Glowforge laid off more employees after an investment round fell through recently at the Seattle-based maker of 3D laser engravers, the company confirmed to GeekWire.
Co-founder and CEO Dan Shapiro declined to share how many people were impacted. In mid-December, Glowforge laid off 30 employees, and Shapiro said at the time that the cuts were necessary to help the company “get ready for what’s next.”
This week, Shapiro said the last few months at the 9-year-old startup have been “a rollercoaster,” despite what he called a successful launch of the new lower-priced Aura engraver, which was designed to bring home crafting to a wider audience of consumers.
“We had a challenging December when a new investment round was delayed,” Shapiro said via email. “Then another setback when it was canceled a few weeks ago.”
Shapiro said revenue from the Aura and Glowforge’s other machines — the Plus and Pro — is enough to keep the company going.
“Unfortunately, to be cashflow positive, we had to reduce the size of our company,” he said.
Glowforge, ranked No. 24 on the GeekWire 200 index of Pacific Northwest startups, had 145 employees last summer, and still employs roughly 75 people, according to the company’s About Us page.
“As a part of our restructuring, we’re moving from 5-day-a-week customer support to 7-day-a-week; we’re doing that by moving to a hybrid of U.S.-based and international support team members,” Shapiro said.
He said Glowforge is consolidating teams with fewer executives who have greater spans of responsibility. And internal AI tools will be used to offload busywork and let teams focus on high-impact work.
Shapiro founded Glowforge in 2015 with fellow startup veterans Mark Gosselin, the current CTO, and Tony Wright, who left the company in 2017. Shapiro previously sold the startup Sparkbuy to Google, and he created Robot Turtles, a coding board game for kids that was one of the most successful campaigns ever on Kickstarter.
The company raised $20 million as part of an extended Series E funding round in May 2023, and has raised $135 million to date.
The venture capital market has cooled considerably following a record 2021. More than 260,000 tech employees were laid off last year, and companies continue to make cuts in 2024.
“It sucks to lose great people,” Shapiro said. “As the company’s CEO, I’m responsible for this outcome. The folks who are leaving are brilliant, creative, and a part of the reason for our success. It’s my decisions that lead to them departing the company.”
Glowforge is providing support to those who were let go with visa assistance, outplacement help, severance, and a full year of medical insurance paid by the company.
