<aside> ℹ️ Earlier today, Oyster Founder & CEO Tony Jamous sent the following letter to Oyster employees. To ensure clarity for readers outside of Oyster's internal team, this message has been lightly edited, including the removal of employee names and internal Oyster processes.
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Hello team,
We have weathered many storms together over the past several quarters, and we’ve weathered them admirably. Throughout, we have been vigilant in making necessary changes to the business in order to keep Oyster in good financial health. Today marks the most significant change we have had to make.
Today, I must confirm that we are conducting a company-wide reorganization to align our staffing with our strategic priorities and financial imperatives.
This reorganization will result in the removal of a number of roles from across Oyster and the addition of new roles in strategic areas.
Between Oyster’s creation in early 2020 through our Series C fundraise in early 2022, we delivered incredible growth thanks to the powerful business you all created, buoyed by the acceleration of remote work and bullish capital markets.
Since then, the macroeconomic environment has dramatically shifted, creating headwinds for many businesses, including Oyster. These headwinds have dampened our growth expectations and radically changed the fundraising environment.
During our uncharted hypergrowth phase, we adopted an expansive company strategy - across growth, product, and operations - designed to capture market share at high velocity. This was the right strategy at the time, given what we knew about our market and category. As part of this strategy, we set ambitious growth targets for revenue generation and Team Member engagement, which filtered into our models for hiring, resourcing, and investment. In moving rapidly to align with these ambitious expectations, we became vulnerable to the seismic market changes in today’s market. As a result, we have over-invested in certain areas of the business relative to the new realities of our growth trajectory.
Shortly after our Series C fundraise, we started our transition to efficient growth. There were a number of levers we chose to pull: we slowed down hiring across many teams and then froze hiring across the company, we cancelled a promotion cycle and compensation review, and we implemented many cost-saving measures across department budgets, programs, and marketing spend.
These measures have been impactful. However, as we solidified our 2023 strategy and goals aimed at efficient growth, it became clear that these measures alone would not be sufficient to protect the company in this economic downturn.
The hard truth is we don’t know when the world will exit this phase of high inflation, high interest, and a declining employment market. As we begin the new year, the economic outlook remains uncertain. In such conditions, the responsible move for our company is to be even more vigilant about aligning the makeup of our team to a focused strategy in order to grow efficiently.
This reorganization allows us the opportunity to laser focus on efficient growth, automation and the customer experience. As part of our 2023 planning, we identified where we would need to grow across Oyster in order to be successful this year and beyond, and we’ve revised our organizational structure strategy accordingly.
All Oyster staff whose roles have been impacted will have the opportunity to express interest in roles we plan to hire in the first half of this year.
We are glad to be able to offer this process and hope to fill some of our 2023 headcount with existing Oysters. However, by redesigning the Oyster workplace in such a substantial way to align with our next chapter of efficient growth, we understand that not everyone will find a new home within Oyster. In such cases, we are prepared to support our impacted teammates in the most compassionate and human-centric way possible on the next step of their journey.