NerdWallet Lays Off 40

Personal finance startup NerdWallet just let go of 40 employees, or 8 percent of its total staff, including its VP of Growth. Additionally, NerdWallet’s COO Dan Yoo is reportedly moving to an advisory position.

The news, brought to attention by TechCrunch, comes as NerdWallet, which employs over 400, reported a “record-breaking” fiscal quarter.

“NerdWallet has decided to shift resources to align by consumer pain points, rather than by financial product families, and to consolidate multiple execution orgs under our CPO, Tapan Bhat,” NerdWallet CEO Tim Chen told TechCrunch.

Yoo, a former VP of business operations and analytics for LinkedIn, had been brought on by NerdWallet back in 2014.

This isn’t the first major round of layoffs NerdWallet has seen. In 2012, NerdWallet was seeing growth, but profitability and revenue had begun to flatten.

“Coincidentally, I was talking to different business leaders in the Valley for advice on how to prepare for hypergrowth, and it was apparent that there were major factors that were getting in the way of achieving our ambitious vision,” Chen told PYMNTS in an interview. “As a result, I led a reorganization of NerdWallet where several employees were let go. I was faced with a hard decision of making major changes to enable the company to reach the next level.”

Chen, who has been known to have anxiety about making any wrong choices, decided to lay off about 20 percent of his employees right before the annual company holiday party.

When asked the reason for the success to date, Chen told PYMNTS: “Our success has come from staying true to our consumer-first ethos and building a company of top caliber talent that mirrors that consumer-first mentality.”