🎉 DEEP DIVE: The company that rescinded 75 offers 😡

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Good Morning Party People! 🎉

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ICYMI - A well-known startup rescinded 75 job offers just 72 hours before the candidates’ start date. Today’s deep dive gives you everything you need to know about the drama.

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Deep Dive: This Company Rescinded 75 Offers 72 Hours Before The Start Date

Imagine you’ve signed on to work for a $8B company. You’ve left your current job, made it all the way through the interview process, and inked your offer letter. And just 72 hours before your start date, your offer gets rescinded.

For 75 new hires at Flexport, this is exactly what happened.

Flexport, a supply chain management and logistics company with over $3.3B in revenue and over 3,200 employees recently made headlines when their former CEO regained control of the company and implemented a hiring freeze.

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The Flexport Backstory…

Ryan Petersen, the Founder and long-time CEO of Flexport recently left his company to join Founders Fund, a popular VC firm. Given that Flexport has yet to IPO, and that Petersen had been with the company since its inception in 2013, the move was confusing to many.

Prior to his departure, Petersen appointed former Amazon Consumer Chief, Dave Clark to lead the company. At the time of the hire, Petersen tweeted saying that the company doesn’t need another executive, but rather another entrepreneur. In March, Dave Clark took over as CEO of Flexport.

And just like that, the honeymoon phase ended…

Beef! Beef! Beef!

Everything at Flexport under new leadership was going swimmingly (at least from the outside looking in). That is, until the appointed CEO, Dave Clark announced his resignation on X.

The resignation didn’t seem too out of the ordinary until Petersen embarked on a tweet storm of his own…

75 excited candidates were ready to join the team at Flexport. But that all came to a screeching halt on Friday.

Making Things Right…

It’s easy to criticize Petersen for the move. But who knows how the company is actually doing? Hiring 75 with the intent to hire 200+ more could put the company in bad shape…

Despite the poor optics, Petersen, in a continued tweetstorm, asked for help in finding work for the candidates…

In addition to connecting the talent with companies actively hiring, Petersen also announced that the company has a stipend in place for the candidates whose offers were rescinded. They’re utilizing their talent team to help the candidates find work. And 7 VC funds that invested in Flexport also offered to help make connections to their portfolio companies.

Villain or Hero?

Hard to say if Petersen was in the right or if he was in the wrong. On one hand, hiring 75+ could potentially cause serious harm to the company. Not only would the new hires be at risk of getting laid off, but maybe the existing employees would be too.

On the other, getting rid of 75 people right before their start date is never cool. At least he owned it — and helped them get new jobs.

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